Despite his innate fear of the C-word, Bowie overcame his hangup to sing a song about it. "Ch...", he struggled. "Ch-ch-ch-" he bravely continued. And then, stutter over, a revelatory, terror-conquering moment! "Changes!" he cried, exultant, forcing the hated word through gritted teeth and dry lips. Such spunk! What a man! He wrote the soundtrack for The Nomad Soul, you know.
James Price

To begin, a puzzle. Can you re-arrange the following Q&A session, so sense it makes?

Q: What do you get if you cross a crap beat 'em up, a dated, unwieldy first-person shoot 'em up and an engrossing (if mildly flawed) adventure game?

A: Dodi Fayed's final cigarette! Ha ha!

Q: What is the following picture a representation of?: "/\/\/\/"

A: The Nomad Soul.

Simple, yes? On a daily basis, you solve elementary conundrums. Hungry? Go get food from the kitchen. No food in the kitchen? Go to a shop and buy some. Stop to consider the sheer wealth of options available to those in search of a snack, though, and the mind reels. Fast food joint? A slice of toast? Let's say that, for example, you fancy a plate of jam, two feet high and garnished with grass. It's unlikely, yes, but it's an eminently attainable goal. Let's go further and suggest that you fancy eating Thomas Harris's liver with a nice bottle of wine. You might not get your wish, but cause and effect kicks in to provide a resolution of some description - from a lifetime of institutionalised living, to "Ironic Sociopath Butchers Hannibal Lector Creator, Remarks 'Sithsithsithsithsithsith" headlines.

The main body of The Nomad Soul is an adventure game. It goes to great lengths to give the impression that its environs are worldly; that the city in which you begin is actually living and breathing. There are people wandering the streets and cars hovering above the roads. You can enter shops, apartments and bars with pole dancers. There's a police station, a morgue and a supermarket. "Nice place," you might think, on first viewing. "Very dystopian, very Blade Runner, very stylised... I like it!" And, rhetorical 'spoken' internal thought process concluded, you set off to explore.