The Nomad Soul Review

8.7

Format PC

Developer Quantic Dream

Publisher Eidos Interactive

Genre Adventure

Reincarnation? Lap-dancers? David Bowie? When these three meet within one game, 'tis a sign of impending apocalypse. Still, Charlie Brooker isn't scared. For once...

Now, as game titles go, The Nomad Soul sounds like it should be pronounced in a 'scary ghost voice'. Like a restless spirit in an old horror movie going 'Woooo! Woooo! Avennnge my deeeeaaaath!'

It's a ridiculous title. Not since Tunguska have we chanced upon such a millstone of a name. It sounds like the name of a particularly dull Sting album (even though choosing 'a particularly dull Sting album' would be an impossibly oxymoronic task on a par with pointing out the deadest corpse in a morgue). And if Sting did write a song called The Nomad Soul, you can bet your nomad arse it'd have crapbag auto-pilot lyrics, no discernible tune, and a $500,000 video in which he'd wander through the desert clad in traditional Bedouin robes looking deep and mystical.

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky

Speaking of ageing cerebral musos, none other than David Bowie himself appears in The Nomad Soul. They were going to call it Omikron, but changed their minds at the last minute. Actually, Omikron is the name of the city in which The Nomad Soul is set. And before we go any further, it's worth pointing out that while some aspects sorely deserve being treated with derision, overall The Nomad Soul is A Good Thing. It's an insanely ambitious game, and while it can't possibly fulfil everything it sets out to do, it's good enough and different enough to warrant your attention. K? K.

We know Major Tom's a junkie

So what sort of game is this? Well, it's an adventure game with several twists. Twist number one comes right at the start, when a futuristic police officer pops up and addresses you directly, begging for help. 'I've just been killed,' he says. 'Use your computer to take control of my body.' So you do. The idea behind The Nomad Soul is that you're still yourself, see - it's just that 'you' happen to be controlling the body of a policeman in another dimension via what appears to be a computer game but is actually a gateway to an alternate universe. Y'know, just like in the movie Tron. Do you see? Good.

Twist number two expands upon this initial conceit. When you die, the game doesn't stop. Furthermore, you're not really dead - because although the body you've been controlling might be splattered across the floor like an upturned bucket of pig's offal, you yourself (ie the player) are still very much alive back in the real world, gawping into the world of Omikron via your computer screen. So, rather than spend the rest of the game lying on the ground trapped inside a stiff, you get reincarnated, in the guise of whichever poor sap touches the corpse first. You don't have to wait until you cop it before swapping bodies either - once you've got your hands on the appropriate spell, you can skip from one body to another should you run into someone you take a shine to. It's kind of like a game of existential 'tag'.

Of course, those of you who are paying any attention at all will realise that all this means that the 'Nomad Soul' of the title is - gasp - you. Later on, this theme is expanded upon in a rather clumsy attempt to make you feel as if your own spiritual existence is somehow at stake, but it doesn't really work. Still, it's different.

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues

Yes yes yes, but twists aside, what sort of game is it? Well, it's actually a surprisingly old-skool adventure game, complete with character stats, an inventory, and choose-your-next-response interactive conversations - y'know, like the ones in old LucasArts adventures. The bulk of the action takes place in a 3D, third-person, Tomb Raider-meets-Resident Evil-meets-Blade Runner environment, with your character (whoever you happen to 'be') scampering around the futuristic city of Omikron in search of clues, conversation, cut-scenes, and the odd splash of action. Remember Bioforge? It's a bit - a bit - like that.

Unlike, say, Outcast (another recent 3D adventure with a gigantic playing area), The Nomad Soul doesn't hit you over the head with confusing references to this strange new world you're running about in, and instead works you in gradually, by giving you a strong, intriguing task to complete: finding out more about the policeman you've 'taken over' and discovering why he and his partner died. But there's more to it than that: you might start out as a cop, but before long you'll find yourself questioning the sanctity of your adopted profession. Your uniformed colleagues are shifty and sleazy, and the chief of police is openly sinister. And someone in the department is trying to get you killed. Worst of all, the general populace outside the precinct is miserable and oppressed, with much talk of government-approved thought control and a hunt for a band of dissidents. we can be heroes, just for one day

Once you've solved the 'mystery of the murdered partner' - and it's by no means an easy task - the game's scope suddenly expands beyond expectations, turning what started out as an apparently routine police quest into an epic, pan-dimensional struggle of good versus evil. Coo.

Despite The Nomad Soul's apparent free-form, I-can-go-anywhere structure, the underlying story is rigidly linear, skilfully bumping you from one scenario to the next, lobbing a tricky problem in every so often. Annoyingly, a few of the puzzles themselves suffer from the dreaded 'adventure logic' that you only ever encounter in computer games, so it's sometimes hard to work out exactly what you're supposed to be doing... but then that's adventures for you. More worryingly, progress can sometimes grind to a halt completely because you've failed to discover an essential object - an easy mistake to make in an environment of this size, especially when (as happens here) the game expects you to be standing practically on top of things in order to be able to activate or grab them. Our advice: pay close attention to each and every location, and fiddle with everything you see. Be nosey.

As for the city itself, it's impressively realised - huge urban areas to explore, hundreds of polygonal citizens wandering hither and thither, thousands of objects to pick up and tinker with - although most of the stuff on show doesn't actually do anything (the huge number of pedestrians being a case in point - yes, you can go up and speak to them, but only when they're standing still, and even then there's a sorely limited range of responses). But it's more than mere window-dressing; it adds to the atmosphere, makes your environment that more convincing. There's no doubting the developer's technical achievements - they've created a seriously comprehensive alternate universe here, and they've made it work - an incredibly difficult trick to pull off.

It's not all adventures and problem-solving, though. The Nomad Soul displays a downright psychotic level of ambition by also trying to be a Virtua Fighter-style combat game and a Quake-style shooter... and a 3D platform game. Can it possibly pull it off? Of course it can't. But it doesn't exactly fail, either. See the accompanying panels for further discussion on the shooting and fighting elements - as for the platforming bits, they're clearly inspired by Tomb Raider, and they're fairly basic, really - just the odd bit of climbing here, and jumping there. It's a bit disjointed really - most of the time you can't climb walls, for instance, until suddenly you'll arrive at one section where you can - and indeed have to, in order to get any further in the game whatsoever.

Still, these 'action' sequences are sparingly used - for the most part it's effective interactive storytelling, plain and simple.

Under the moonlight, the serious moonlight

So what else do you need to know? Well, for one thing, don't get too excited by the whole 'virtual reincarnation' thing - it's fun changing bodies now and again, but it doesn't make that much difference to the overall feel of the game (for example, on several occasions bartenders still referred to me as 'dude' even though I'd been transformed into a woman). Furthermore, you can't just 'teleport' inside anybody, only a select few characters. Oh, and according to Eidos' press release, 'You simply cannot load an old game if you die, and must continue the adventure within a new body', which is cobblers, because you can.

The adventure itself is huge and compelling, and as for the fighting and shooting bits - they're not really all that great, but it's nice to have them there. But it's the size, the sense of other-worldliness and the sheer amount of variety that are The Nomad Soul's greatest achievements, and that's why it's ultimately worth paying money for. 'It's a flawed epic,' you might conclude. And you'd be right.