Planetfall

Swabbing the decks of the SPS Feinstein is routine work. When you joined the Stellar Patrol, you knew you'd have to clean up your act! The bane of your existence, Ensign Blather, is breathing down your neck as usual... but the next thing you know, you're the sole survivor of a shipwreck in space, hurtling toward an unknown planet in a tiny escape pod.
That's the opening sequence of Planetfall. Infocom's science fiction text adventure is energized by a definite sense of humor, and its packaging lives up to the publisher's excellent reputation. The game comes complete with a plastic Stellar Patrol ID badge, three interplanetary postcards, an incomplete letter to the folks at home, and a witty, easy-to-read instruction manual entitled "Today's Stellar Patrol".
As in all of Infocom's text adventures, the computer understands a wide vocabulary of complex commands instead of the usual two-word entry. For example, instead of typing in "Go door," players can try "Examine the door, then give the book to Floyd" and be understood.
The game begins with a routine day aboard the SPS Feinstein, progressing automatically to the inevitable blow-up. Figuring out how to escape the disaster is easy enough - it practically hits the player over the head. However, because the escape pod is fully automated, there isn't an awful lot to do for a number of turns, and it would have been nice if all that wonderful description of the scenery in space ran without offering so many prompts.
Once on the planet, the gamer must face a number of challenges. The most pressing is to explore the deserted city for food, water, and a safe place to bed down for the night (a new concept in adventure gaming). Eventually, the shipwrecked spacefarer meets Floyd, a playful, childlike robot with a sensitive soul. Together, they have to devise a way to save the planet from certain doom - and signal for help to win the game.
This tongue-in-cheek brain-teaser is one more excellent addition to Infocom's terrific product line. Be warned that there are a few challenges that seem nearly impossible - like figuring out a number between zero and 1000 that opens a locked door - but with patience, players are likely to stumble on the answer (no, you don't have to dial each and every number).
Planetfall is difficult, but not impossible, taxing but not too frustrating, and Floyd has a way of growing on you.

Planetfall is a science fiction all-text adventure in which you are an Ensign 7th Class of the Stellar Patrol. You soon find yourself marooned on a planet, uninhabited except for a robot named Floyd. Other than wanting to get back to your Galactic Union, the game's purpose isn't clear until much later, when a computer within your computer provides some much needed detail on various aspects of your newly found world. Along the way, you will find four subsystems to repair, and disease, hunger, and radiation poisoning to overcome before one of the alternative endings makes everything clear. The different endings may indicate that you failed to do something necessary to achieve the optimum solution.
The puzzles are generally clever, but not quite as interactive as other Infocom games. There are several "choke points", particularly early on in the game, that block alternative actions until they have been solved. The vocabulary is quite good, as one expects from Infocom, although it seems that an excess of typing is required at times just to prove the point that the game has a multiple word parser. In some regards, the parser seems restrictive and unnecessary for precise syntax.
Planetfall isn't quite as tight a game as its predecessors. There are numerous rooms in this game that are just window dressing, in which nothing pertinent to the game can be accomplished or learned. To "complement" this, there are a number of red herrings, which, with one exception, are not developed enough to seriously mess you up. Inventory management may be a problem, as there are a plethora of objects to manipulate, many of which are irrelevant and have absolutely nothing to do with the few that are the keys to the game. The puzzle is to determine which is which.
Floyd is a pleasant enough character to have around as a traveling companion, but somehow he's not quite the same show stealer as are several of the robots in Suspended. All in all, Planetfall is an interesting adventure, suitable for both the novice and for the experienced player, but not quite in the same league as some of the other recent Infocom releases.

Overall rating:	B	Difficulty:	B	Originality:	B
Puzzle quality:	B	Ease of use:	A	Documentation:	A
Text quality:	A	Vocabulary:	B+	Holds interest?:	A
Graphics quality:	N/A	Save/restore:	A	Value for money:	A