Challenging? Yes. Addictive? Yes. Humorous? Yes. Entertaining? A wholehearted yes. Weird? An understatement. Nord and Bert Could Not Make Head or Tail of It is possibly the oddest, must surreal game ever released by Infocom. Designed by Jeff O’Neill as a work of interactive fiction, Nord and Bert Could Not Make Head or Tail of It was released in the late eighties simultaneously to multiple formats (including the Amiga, Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari, and Macintosh). It is a single player game that is comprised of several chapters, all dealing with different types of word play and puzzles.
The plot of Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It is a little bit vague, but loosely concerns the town of Punster, which is being overrun by idioms and puns that have come to life, or at least manifested in some way. (For example the chocolate mousse available for purchase at the local grocery store is a large, brown moose that smells of fudge). With such confusion at hand, the user must go in to each disaster and sort it out in an effort to restore Punster to normalcy. The game is divided into several chapters, and each chapter has its own specialty as far as puzzles are concerned. The first seven chapters have independent stories and can be completed in any order.
Basically, each chapter represents a part in the town that has been somehow affected by the word rebellion. Upon completing each chapter, the user will receive a password, and will require seven such passwords to access the eighth level.
The user will see himself in a sitcom performing slapstick humor and telling knock-knock jokes. He will find himself punning on the word “jack” and using all sorts of words and phrases with the word “jack” in it to get out of jams. He will find himself in the homonym grocery store with the aforementioned moose, as well as other oddities. He will be farming and using tons of old clichés, many of which have already fallen by the wayside. He will go to a restaurant and sort out how he can compliment and insult people, all in the same breath, by using idioms. He will attend a manor house, which actually features some semblance of stereotypical interactive fiction with its puzzle solving requirements, and finally he will use spoonerisms when accessing a tower. After succeeding in all of those odd situations, he will meet the mayor of Punster, and will utilize all of his word skills once again, since this scenario is a mix of the first seven episodes.
Nord and Bert Could Not Make Head Or Tail of It is a very unique little game with an odd theme, odd characters, and odd puzzles. The whole game is just weird and a whole lot of fun, to boot. Give this one a try for a singular gaming experience that you will never forget.
