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Review

Odd Foes – Yes/No?

by RevStu (November 8th, 2010 at 3:16 pm)

The chances are that you’ll know whether you’re going to like this game or not simply from looking at the screenshot below and reading the words Nodes Of Yesod. So we’ll be fairly brief.

This is a 25-year commemorative edition (£1.19/€1,59/$1.99) of a game from the glory days of the Spectrum and the Commodore 64. It contains a faithful port of the 8-bit original (specifically the Spectrum 128 version) and an 2010 remake with some new gameplay features and objectives, but they both play very similarly. If you loved Nodes back in the day, you’re probably going to be very happy with this polished release. If you’re of a more modern era, you’re probably going to go “Huh?” and roll your eyes at what your grandad used to consider a top-notch game.

If you’re pushed for time, you can pretty much stop reading there.

Hello! Glad you could join us in the below-jump section of the review. For the benefit of fresh-faced newcomers, Nodes Of Yesod is a simple exploration-based platform game, in which you have to wander through lots of subterranean caverns (256 of ‘em, to be exact) in search of “alchiems”. The action takes place on single static screens, and you flick between them whenever you reach the edges. (Yes, there was a time when you couldn’t take scrolling play areas for granted.) Baddies patrol the caves, and falling a very long way will kill you.

It is – and remember, we’re still talking to the fresh-faced newcomers here – pretty slow and pretty boring. There’s a lot of trial and error as you have to leap blindly into new caves, jumping requires painstaking and fiddly accuracy, and not an awful lot actually happens – you just explore screen after screen until you find all the alchiems.

The new version is prettier (maybe 16-bit quality graphically, at a push) and gives you a map of sorts to navigate with, but is essentially the same game – it just makes you trek around a bit more. For example, before you can collect any alchiems you have to find a gun, then use it to kill some worms to get a glove. You’re told where everything is, so it’s just errand-running. Honestly, you’re not going to like it.

Pre-existing Nodes Of Yesod fans, however, are going to be pleased, because this is very much the same game you loved back in 1985. The virtual-pad controls work surprisingly well, perhaps because the d-pad is kept really tiny. This means that you quickly learn to make very small movements (helping keep responses fast), and that your thumb obscures almost none of the play area. You release the mole by simply tapping on your character, and the feel is exactly like that of the original.

(Cleverly, you can also tilt your iThing to make Charlie move very slowly in that direction, for when you need real pixel precision on a jump.)

I rather enjoyed the uncommonly sedate pace and the simple pleasures of exploring a lot of mostly-empty caves, but it’s hard to say how much of that was down to nostalgia. I certainly didn’t really get on with the new version – the graphics are a bit Amstrad-y and the way the map tells you where you need to go takes the fun out of just poking around. Don’t get me wrong – rationally it’s unquestionably an improvement, but it just doesn’t feel right. Somehow getting bounced around randomly by all the rubbery enemies is a lot more annoying when you know exactly where you want to be. Half the fun of Nodes was bumbling around at your own pace seeing what you’d stumble across, but the updated version is more like work.

And man, it’s hard to believe we used to put up with games as frustrating as this, where it could take five minutes of effort to climb up just two screens, only to then have to jump into darkness and risk falling to a random death when we only had three precious lives and no continues. (Now your game is saved if you quit out, and contrary to my initial impression you can continue when you’ve lost your three lives, which rather begs the question “Why bother having lives at all?”, since there isn’t any scoring.)

£1.19 is possibly also a little hopeful when the Elite Collection gives you six old Speccy games for 59p, but this is a league above that in quality terms. It’s a loving, celebratory port, and so long as you know what you’re getting you’ll like it very much. Youngsters, go and happy-slap your Facebook page or whatever it is you do these days.

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