Review
Planetfall
Editorial panel: John Alston Campbell
Review published on 21 August 2001.

A little more than just Grotch guano

Planetfall is one of Meretzky's signature works in interactive fiction.
 
Planetfall is a work of interactive fiction published by Infocom and penned by the infamous Infocom Implementor Steve Meretzky. You will have cursed his name at least once if you have ever played Sorcerer or The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but you should also be given a medal if you have completed either title without hints. Planetfall is Meretzkys first solo effort at writing for Infocom. As a pure text adventure, this game is interactive fiction in its original and truest sense of the form. The only graphics in this game comes from your mind, making it a title to be avoided at all costs if past gaming with Sierra On-Line titles has obliterated your imagination!

Story
Life is not so good as you begin Planetfall. Following in the footsteps of no less than five generations worth of ancestors working for the Stellar Patrol of the Third Galactic Union, you too have signed up for the service. Your family has high expectations. Your great-great-grandfather was High Admiral, after all. You have just been transferred to the SPS Feinstein, away from kindly Ensign First Class Lim and into the clutches of Ensign Cadet First Class Blather. Blather summarily confiscates your Double Fanucci cards, vetoes your application for Grotch feeding detail and relegates you instead to cleaning out their cages. You feel that you are forever stuck at the lowly rank of Ensign Seventh Class and are seriously thinking of quitting the patrol.

Your lucky break comes during a ceremony to welcome Ambassador Brgun-teelkner-ipgnum of Blowk Bidden Gordo, when you are allowed to leave the Grotch guano to clean the floors of deck nine. Unbeknownst to you as the ambassador is about to pass your "clean" deck leaving a trail of immovable slime, explosions are set to rock the ship and unless you are clever you will die along with the rest of the crew. Trot! You must figure out how to escape from your doomed ship, survive entry into the planets atmosphere below and work out what is going on.

J. Alston Campbell: The answers to the last question are revealed in the exposition of the game, and the subtlety with which Meretzky does it is really one of the games strengths. To reveal much more of the story would be to spoil it.

Production
The writing in Planetfall is for the most part good. The descriptions are adequate without being cumbersome. Not too much is given away on the first glance, making it important to look at even the most innocuous of items in order to get an idea of how to use them. The rooms are realistically laid out, with a fair quantity of them useful only in the sense that they set the mood of the game. All in all, you should not have any trouble immersing yourself into the game world.

P. Jong: Planetfall is based on the concept of interactive fiction told through a story interpreter pioneered by Infocom. The Infocom story interpreter is platform independent, and the game themselves are complied for a virtual computer architecture called the Z-Machine. There have been four versions of this game released since 1983 using the standard (3) and advanced (5) version of Z-Machine, with the last version dated 1988. The game supports 105 rooms and 45 objects, with a vocabulary of 669 words and 7,879 opcodes.

Gameplay
The game plays well and lives up to Infocoms standard. The parser handles most sentences with relative ease. As with other Infocom titles, it is only too willing to help you out if you phrase words incorrectly. The only problem I had was getting a laser to work. The game wondered why I would want to "turn it on." I had to change my mindset back to the early 80's to recall that I probably should "zap" something with it.

As an adventure, the game is pretty straightforward. Most of the game involves finding specific objects and the appropriate receptacles in which to insert them. Meretzky has placed plenty of red herrings which have no use at all but add much to the games realism. To break the "serious" tone of the game, Meretzky has added Floyd, your robot companion, whose boredom frequently gives you a few chuckles. Despite such an effort, the game may benefit from a bit more humor. Although the games beginning demonstrates the potential of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy / Red Dwarf ilk, this potential is never sufficiently realized.

Highs
There are very few characters in the game, but those who are there serve well to lighten the tone. Blather, the ambassador, and your sidekick Floyd are fun to play around with,  but only Floyd is with you for any length of time in the game. I find solving the puzzles quite satisfying even when most problems are relatively simple, such as working out how to avoid getting eaten by a microbe while being in miniaturized form. There are a few allusions to the Zork games that always bring a smile to my face.

The games greatest strength is the plot. Although relatively simple in itself, it is developed with control that rivals a novel. Details are revealed slowly. The goal becomes clear to the careful reader as clues hidden in locations come together to form a picture of what has happened and what must happen in order for you to return heroically to Stellar Patrol.

Lows
Inventory juggling is always a problem in adventure games. There must, of course, be a limit to how much can be carried; most adventurers accept this. If we are lucky the author will include an item which allows us to carry more without destroying the delicate limits of belief. I found no such item in Planetfall. Worse, Meretzky frustrated me endlessly. I often tried to pick up an item only to find it tumbling to the ground along with some other item of importance. This happens a lot, sometimes in almost endless successions.

The lack of challenging puzzles is another problem. Beyond inserting objects in slots most puzzles are easily solved by dying, working out what has gone wrong and then trying something different. Floyd is integral to a couple of challenges but should have been used to much greater effect.

Verdict
Planetfall is a good playground for beginners to learn some of the basics of adventure gaming. Infocom fans will also probably find the rewards of this game worth its effort. Meretzkys contributions to interactive fiction are significant; if they are ever considered serious objects of academic study then this early effort of his will need to be looked at closely. Sophistication that is seen in his later works, such as Zork Zero and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, is clearly in development here.
