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	Title: (Adventure) Nord and Bert Could Not Make Head Or Tail Of It
	Source: Zzap!64, #33
	Date: January 1988
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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*Infocom disk only £24.95*

The author of *Ballyhoo* strikes again. Jeff O'Neill's latest for Infocom is a
somewhat different style of adventure form the norm to say
the least. *Nord And Bert Could Not Make Head Or Tail Of It* (which shall
hereinafter be reffered to as *Nord*!) is a collection of eight short stories,
the first seven of which may be tackled in any order but must be
completed before entry into the last scenario is permitted.

All eight stories take place in the mixed up town of Punster where
you are to solve puzzles involving spoonerisms, homonyms and
other general verbal trickery. For example, in the *Shopping Bizzare*
scenario the player comes across a freezer containing the number 22
frozen onto the number 7, one soon realises that this is of course
the formula for Pythagoras's theorem, and inputting the word
PIE transforms the numbers into a fruit pie! The exact reason for
doing this remains a mystery to me and is one I shall probably not
bother to solve.

The kind of puzzles found in *Nord* are neither clever nor very
Infocom. Some are so simple that one wonders if it was worth
wasting the memory on them.

In the *Play Jacks* scenario you find and take an object called a
Jack of all Traits, this, as the name suggests is a gizmo which can
perform many functions. One such function is to clear the stark
whiteness of a particular location simply by having the player type
in the name *Jack Frost*. There is very little challenge here, there is
no feeling of pride at having cracked the problem and certainly
no incentive instilled to carry on to the next location or scenario and
see what mental challenges there are there. Most of the puzzles are
either very easy or incredibly obscure, and all are silly. They left
me with a feeling of 'why?'.

Mapping is made obsolete by the presence at the top of the screen of
all the locations accessible from the current one, you simply type
in the name to get there. There is an extensive help system available
which may be accessed at any time during play and contains clues on
every problem you will come across. Handy perhaps, but once
boredom crept (which didn't take long) I found myself using these
clues all the time just to get through the game as quickly and
with as little effort as possible.

I could quite happily winge on about *Mousse*, *Box Boy* and *Worst
Brat*, but there seems little point. Suffice to say that the usual,
professional implementation, the parser, the size of the game and
the general user-friendliness that Infocom include in their
adventures are all present, but where is the adventure? *Nord* is
not funny, not clever, not inspirational and very easy to
switch off. What are they playing at? Example the *Plundered Hearts*
review amidst these pages to regain any faith lost in Infocom.

<table class="larger" style="font-weight: bold;"><tbody>
<tr><td>Atmosphere</td><td>53%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Interaction</td><td>62%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Challenge</td><td>53%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Overall</td><td>57%</td></tr>
</tbody></table>