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11 people found the following review helpful:
Great early Infocom game, February 1, 2019by Michael Roberts (Seattle, Washington) This is one of my favorite Infocom games. I think it stands out as an important transitional game in Infocom's early years that was hugely influential on their later games, and we all know Infocom was hugely influential on IF in general. One of Planetfall's best-known innovations is of course Floyd, probably the first attempt at an NPC sidekick. The bag of tricks the game used to make Floyd seem continuously present and interactive formed the basis of NPCs in countless subsequent works. The innovation that was more important to me, though, was less about technology and more about the game design philosophy. Planetfall was deliberately designed to be fair to the player. It probably doesn't qualify as "merciful" by modern standards, as it did let you back yourself into an unwinnable corner, but its puzzles were logical, consistent, and well clued; at no point did you have to read the author's mind or exhaustively try every VERB+OBJECT combination. That was a huge break from the fashion of the time, which conceived of the adventure game as a contest between designer and player without any constraints on the designer's sadistic omnipotence. There was a certain pleasure in beating a game that had such blatantly unfair rules, but even the most obsessive players got tired of that after seeing one or two such games. IF wouldn't have endured (even to the limited extent it has) if the design philosophy behind Planetfall hadn't come about. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
- mils32k, January 7, 2019 - Greg Frost (Seattle, Washington), July 25, 2018 4 of
6 people found the following review helpful:
A fading star lost in time, May 4, 2017by Form 27b-6 (Southern California) Oh boy here's a tricky one. Now it's never a good feeling to trample people's memories, or to snatch their pink glasses, but it's necessary to give an honest assessment of the game, in its original context, but also in light of all the achievements made in IF since then. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
- ifMUD_Olly (Montana, USA), April 21, 2017 - Denk, December 11, 2016 - winterfury (Russia), December 10, 2016 4 of
4 people found the following review helpful:
Fun sci-fi Infocom game, but too many red herrings and empty rooms for me, February 3, 2016by MathBrush Planetfall is many people's favorite IF of all time, so I knew it would be hard for it to live up to the hype. However, I think I just don't like Meretzky's style (e.g. Sorceror, the puzzles in Hitchhiker's Guide, etc.). He tends to favor big, mostly-empty complexes with many useless items thrown in to make it hard to find the real puzzles. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
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10 people found the following review helpful:
Doesn't hold up, January 4, 2016by Dan Fabulich As I write this, Planetfall is #7 on the IFDB top 100, narrowly beating out Trinity and Blue Lacuna. No doubt it was one of Infocom's best, but now it has to be judged against the best games of the 21st century; it just doesn't hold up. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | View comments (3) - Add comment
- CasualGamer33356, October 14, 2015 - Robb Sherwin (Colorado), August 5, 2015 - Thrax, March 11, 2015 - morlock, January 14, 2015 - Janice M. Eisen (Portland, Oregon), November 10, 2014 - shornet (Bucharest), April 9, 2014 - MattC, February 2, 2014 - KidRisky (Connecticut, USA), December 20, 2013 - Hotspur, September 23, 2013 The game's greatest strength is its plot. Although relatively simple in itself, it is developed with control that rivals a novel. The details are revealed slowly. The goal becomes clearer to the careful reader as clues hidden in locations come together to paint a picture of what has happened and what must happen in order for you to return heroically to Stellar Patrol. In contrast, the game's greatest weakness is its inventory management. Inventory juggling has always been a problem in adventures. Most adventure gamers accept the fact that there is a limit to how much the player can carry. In most games, an item is included which allows the player to carry more without destroying the delicate limits of belief. Unfortunately, no such item exists in Planetfall. Worse is the fact that I try to pick up an item but only to find it tumbling to the ground along with some other items of importance. This happens a lot, sometimes in almost endless successions. Moreover, there is a lack of challenging puzzles. Beyond inserting objects in slots most puzzles can be easily solved by dying, working out what has gone wrong, and then trying something different. Floyd is integral to a couple of challenges and should have been used to much greater effect.
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