~3 minute readGAMELINE
Planetfall
Planetfall
By Steve Meretzky
Apple, Atari, Commodore, DEC, IBM, NEC, Osborne, TI, TRS-80. Planetfall departs somewhat from Infocom's previous science-fiction fare. The heroes of Starcross and Suspended were an asteroid miner exploring the solar system in a one-man spacecraft and a man awakened from cryogenic suspension to save a planet from its own malfunctioning control systems. The character whose part you play in Planetfall is more of a comic antihero; the setting you find yourself in at the outset is reminiscent of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A life that otherwise might be viewed as glorious and exciting — that of an officer in the Stellar Patrol — is treated satirically, shown for what it really is (or could be): pure drudgery.
Aboard the Feinstein, you are an ensign of the lowest class, assigned deck-scrubbing duty by your malicious superior, Ensign Blather, This tour of duty is punctuated by the arrival of an alien ambassador, who, after giving you a tourist brochure about his planet, walks off leaving a trail of highly scrub-resistant slime. That's a high point of life on the Feinstein.
Fortunately — for us, the ensign, and the story line — there is hope for excitement in the Stellar Patrol. The ship blows up after not too much more deck scrubbing, and you find yourself in an automated escape pod — thrust upon your own devices, so to speak — plunging into the atmosphere of a nearby planet. After enduring the ordeal of a rocky landing followed by an unplanned splashdown, you fight your way to an alien shore. The planet was a human colony but seems to be uninhabited now. The first order of business is survival. Several abandoned dormitories give you a place to sleep and hang your spacesuit, but finding food becomes more difficult once you run out of the multicolored goo you found in your survival kit.
Planetfall is a game of discovery. If your first concern is survival, your second is probably getting back to civilization. A third goal is to discover what happened to the people on this planet. The more you discover — especially as you come across certain disturbing pieces of evidence—the more important this goal becomes.
Your first discovery is a little robot named Floyd. It is uncertain what Floyd was built for. His typical response to any request for help is "Enough talk. Let's play hider-and-seeker!" Floyd appears at first to be little more than an amusing diversion, a cybernetic puppy dog. Friendly and loyal, but not too bright. Still, among his playful ramblings there are bits of computerized wisdom, clues, and insights. (When you save the game, he says, "Oh, boy, are we gonna do something dangerous now?")
Like its predecessors, Planetfall is also a game of repairing machines and figuring out how to use them. Broken machines are common in the worlds of Infocom, and repairing them is necessary to set the world right. These puzzles are of planetary importance. Though they're often as simple as replacing burnt-out parts, there's usually a certain twist. The material or procedure necessary for the repair isn't always obvious. The final puzzles are more interesting and require intelligence and imagination to solve.
The situation you find yourself in, though it starts on the absurd side, becomes increasingly poignant. The puzzles are good; the character of Floyd is great. The climax is exciting, but you may find the denouement a letdown. Not that it isn't enough: It's too much. Instead of neatly tying things up, telling you the results of your actions, and logically concluding the unresolved plot elements, the ending goes a step too far, indulging in unabashed adolescent wish fulfillment. Although Planetfall, like the other Infocom games, raises the level of the adventure to something approaching interactive literature, the ending of this game reads more like a fairy tale. The game is excellent. You can always rewrite the final paragraphs in your own mind to make it a satisfying piece of fiction.
Apple II, II Plus, IIe; 48K. Atari 400, 800, or 1200; 32K. Commodore. DEC. IBM pc. NFC. Osborne. TI Professional. TRS-80, Models I or III. $49.95 from Infocorn, 55 Wheeler Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; (617) 492-1031.
This article appeared in
Softline
Jul-Aug 1983
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
