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Previous | << 1 2 3 4 5 >> | Next | Show All - Space45, November 25, 2023
- ENyman78 (Gold Beach, OR), October 29, 2023
- Max Fog, October 19, 2023
6 of
6 people found the following review helpful:
What a Difference a Robot Makes, August 24, 2023If Zork I is Infocom's most iconic title and Trinity its most critically admired, then perhaps Planetfall is the most likely to engender sentimental attachment. Reviews breathlessly enthuse about its supporting character, Floyd, and rightfully so. I am fairly confident that Planetfall is the first bit of electronic entertainment to make people cry (excepting tears of frustration). Nothing can take such an accomplishment from Meretzsky or Planetfall.
It would seem, though, that attitudes toward Planetfall have shifted over the years. It is the second highest-rated Infocom title ranked by IFDB. If I am not mistaken it was, for a time, rated more highly than Trinity. Be that as it may, it has not appeared on a "Top 50 of All Time" list since 2011, while Trinity, Zork, and Wishbringer have endured. Stranger still, the once frequently-dismissed Suspended made the 2019 list. Were I still in graduate school, I would beg a site administrator to expose the raw rating data. When were these ratings for Planetfall entered? What is the historical trend? Since I am no longer in graduate school, we will have to settle for an obvious truth: tastes change, people change.
Then and now, Planetfall has had a lot going for it. You, the protagonist, are living on borrowed time and must (Spoiler - click to show)find a cure for the disease that is killing you. The setup instills Planetfall with something frequently absent from Infocom games: a sense of narrative urgency. As you explore a strangely abandoned alien science outpost, you solve an assortment of well-clued, satisfying puzzles. The gonzo hijinks of your robot companion, somehow, do not negate the empty outpost's ambiance of ominous desolation. The game's final set piece ending is truly exhilarating, Infocom's best so far.
Everything works so well that a player may not even notice how hard Planetfall works to--for lack of a better phrase--jerk them around. The inventory management implementation is rather extreme, even for Infocom. The game world is liberally populated with red herrings to clog up your limited carrying capacity. When you pick up one too many items, you drop not only the item you were attempting to carry but also drop another random item from your inventory. A long train ride separates two large areas--if you don't bring the correct items to the train you may as well restore your game. And you won't bring the right items. Really. You find a key and lock combination (Spoiler - click to show)that work far away from your current location. After you lug yourself, saddled as you are with food, sleep, and disease timers, across the entire game world (truly! end-to-end), you will discover that the combination is completely worthless. Elsewhere, It is likely that you will find yourself hungry and tired while carrying a large ladder--having dropped your food to free up carrying capacity--down a very long hallway. Planetfall is also the first Infocom game to incorporate sleep and hunger timers.
That this mix still succeeds says a lot about the creative powers of Steve Meretzsky. What other game could require the management and planning of Suspended without the satisfactions of a management and planning game, and yet enjoy the love of so many people? What is Planetfall's secret? It can't be the ending, (Spoiler - click to show)which stretches credibility so far that one of the "Eaten by a Grue" podcasters thought that it was a dying hallucination of the kind found in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." The secret is Floyd; what a difference a robot makes! His implementation is incredibly shallow--you can't ask him about anything and you can only get him to do a few things, and yet it really does feel as though he is your friend. He is the Eliza of computer game sidekicks. People who have written about IF academically tend to be interested in Floyd, and why wouldn't they be?
For its ability to rouse actual tears, Planetfall qualifies as too big to judge. Thus, I assign no rating to it. Even if, decades ago, you--tired, hungry, and sick--left the laser at the far end of the train tracks, you must still admit that (Spoiler - click to show)the scene outside the Bio Lab got to you.
Worth a look, if only to know what everybody else is talking about. Or was talking about. For many, it will be worth more than a look.
Edit: I should mention that I encountered a nasty problem with release 39. Dropped items did not appear in room descriptions. I'm not sure what triggered it, but I recommend playing another version.
- Bernieman, April 18, 2023
- Kastel, April 13, 2023
- Phil Riley, March 24, 2023
- RonFromPgh, October 16, 2022
- Stu Dobbie, July 22, 2022
- RustyBones, May 4, 2022
1 of
5 people found the following review helpful:
A classic game, April 15, 2022I probably shouldn't review this game because I don't really have many nice things to say about it. I perhaps optimistically hope that this is not the pinnacle of what interactive fiction can be.
- cgasquid (west of house), February 13, 2022
- Lance Campbell (United States), December 24, 2021
1 of
4 people found the following review helpful:
A classic , November 29, 2021A classic old school vibe to it, really enjoyed it and would love to see more from the author!
- NorkaBoid (Ohio, USA), November 14, 2021
- Jim Nelson (San Francisco), August 22, 2021
- heasm66 (Sweden), August 10, 2021
- patsmad, January 15, 2021
- steamfire, September 22, 2020
- nosferatu, September 1, 2020
- jcompton, June 22, 2020
- The Defiant, June 17, 2020
- Zape, June 3, 2020
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Planetfall: an unWinnable State review, May 9, 2020There is a reason Planetfall is considered a classic. The puzzles are intuitive, the slowly unfolding narrative is mesmerizing, and Floyd. The only thing that marred my enjoyment of the game is what I believe to be a bug with the version I played, but more on that later.
Now admittedly, this is my first foray into Infocom’s catalogue, and, quite frankly, the first work of interactive fiction I have played to the end, aside from some rather small works here and there over the years, so my frame of reference for the sake of reviewing is a rather small and crooked frame. That aside, I know I had plenty of fun while playing, which is perhaps all the reference I need.
Positives
The world design, both in structure and aesthetics, is clear. As a player my goals were almost always clear, if at certain points perhaps too many at once. And while I am personally obsessive about mapping, navigating the world could largely be done without a map.
The puzzles of Planetfall are straight forward and intuitive. That’s not to say they are all easy, but they all make sense and can be reasoned out. (I did need one hint… I mean solution, you can read about that in the Spoiler-y Review.) There are no, “Why did that work?” moments in the game or, “How was I supposed to think of that?” solutions. This is perhaps the most winning aspect of Planetfall, the ease of interacting with its puzzles. I was lead to believe that Infocom games all had wildly difficult puzzles, often to the point of absurdity. Not so here. Everything feels doable and is a joy to play.
Planetfall tells you a story, and it tells it well. The story is presented in pieces through the environment and player discovery, though there is one info-dump in the form of a library computer. It can be a grim story with certain dark implications for those letting their minds wander, but a compelling story.
And Floyd. Floyd is great. But I do not want to ruin anything for those who have not given Planetfall a play yet so that’s all Floyd gets in the Spoiler Free Review.
Negatives
Let me just get my biggest negative out of the way. Due to what I believe to be a bug, there were two objects in the game that are not listed in their starting locations. It got to the point where I had only one problem left to solve before finishing the game and I could not do it because I was missing two objects. I knew what needed to be done I just did not have the means. After becoming exceedingly frustrated, I went to the Invisiclues, which told me what I already new. So I went to a walkthrough, which told be the bobbit was in the dry-cleaners and the swend-o-fenn was in the linen closet (names and locations have been changed for the protection of the innocent). Sure enough, when in the linen closet, issuing the command >take swend-o-fenn resulted in taken. I almost rage quit then and there, never to return. For the record I was playing the file planetfall-r39-s880501. A test of two other versions resulted with the bobbit being listed in the dry-cleaners room description.
The rest of what I have say here is really just quibbles. Having to eat is an artificial obstacle, but common of games from the era. Inventory management is a pain, especially since if you drop an item in a room you better remember where you left it, because the game does not tell you about objects moved from their starting position. You cannot use the command >x to examine, you have to type out examine or look at over and over again. There are also a few long commands that you have to type a number of time throughout the game that get annoying.
Conclusion
Planetfall is a delight. From its depths of story telling to the approachable puzzles to Floyd, there are many things to enjoy. Gaining accessing a new area of the game world or discovering new information is rewarding and fun. If you have not, do yourself the favor of getting this to your interpreter, you won’t regret it.
You can find the SPOILER-Y portion of unWinnable States review of Planetfall here.
- Ry (Philippines), May 2, 2020
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