Reviews

Very underated game by Ocean, NOMAD was an excellent game which me and my best mate (Mark.G) played a ton and got very far with it.

Its well worth playing, its a bit frustrating when you cant stop instantly but you soon get used to it.

Excellent game by Ocean with a lot of good level design, quite a few screens to go through also !

Please play it today !

N.O.M.A.D. [Ocean Software]
by Simon Butler, Ian Weatherburn, Roy Gibson

10 months ago, In a superficial review on Spectrum 2.0 I wrote "Decent maze/shoot'em up with no oustanding features", but now that I've played more, I think it's a pretty good and above average maze/shoot'em up game, with inertia, gravity and other tricky things. The graphics are appreciable, particulary the background are very nicely drawn and coloured. It can become quite addictive, because when you die you feel that an improvement is possible, so you try again, eager to see what's next, the rest of the futuristic city. The first two sections have only one route, the maze part appears only in the greenish third section. The aim is to penetrate this place, find the enemies' headquarter and blow it up. Or something along these lines. You robot is a bit strange and a maybe a little clumsy, looks a stolid Number 5 [the Short Circuit star], and you have to learn how to control it, because of the inertia thing, the tendency to get stuck on the background or to slightly bounce against it, and because of rooms with different kind of gravity. The atmosphere is good, with often narrow passages, and there's a weird music in the presentation screens. Quite nice.
4/5


Old review, November 2014:
Decent maze/shoot'em up with no oustanding features.

This game and Light Force (FTL, 1986) have something in common: both are very cool games where you have to pilot a spaceship with a crappy design. This is the only bad feature N.O.M.A.D. has.

No matter what is the game plot about, here you have a game where you must advance in a (mostly) linear map (linear games are not very popular but this one & Exolon are great!!!) avoiding shoots from different enemies. Sometimes the control of the spaceship is difficult. A great (and underrated) Ocean game.

N.O.M.A.D. was a very popular videogame back in its day and although I never played it I always fancied its fame & glamour . . .

N.O.M.A.D. is good for what it is and presents many hidden virtues . . . the inertia fx being one of them ! !

The movement of the Android is confusing at first but soon you get into it . The graphics are colorful and very attractive ! !

The shooting is poor and slow and doesn´t add action to the game . . .

This is a fine product , addictive and very 80´s . . . ! ! ! !

4,5 / 5 .

A nicely put together precursor of flick screen shooters like Cybernoid, NOMAD bravely gave you quite a crappy craft/android to control.
No swooping like a champion here, the control method is a personal nemesis, rotate and thrust. You are also limited by weak shooting capacity, inertia and awkward crabby movement. In some rooms magnets come into play too, making accurate movement very tricky.
This awkwardness protects an otherwise quite easy game as the gun placements and alien traps are not that challenging.
Patience is required as the puzzle-shooter skills reward dogged play rather than flair.
NOMAD is repetitive, slow and has some bad game design, but it remains strangely compelling.

1985 Ocean Software (UK)
by Simon Butler, Ian Weatherburn & Roy Gibson

N.O.M.A.D. as some interesting qualities to it. It's not your average maze shoot 'em up game, firstly because you move in a linear maze and secondly the 2D maze mixed with the 3D android you control is definitely weird but somehow works. You have to learn how to control your android by inertia, which may seem at first something quite hard, but soon it gets easier. The shoot 'em up quality is bigger than the exploring bit, so if you fancy shooting your way thru with a little of adventure in it, this is for you. Add to that some colour, a detailed maze and some sound fx's and you would have an entertaining game if only the android control wasn't so jerky.