Review: This Week I Have Been Mostly Playing… N+
Author: Rees | Date: February 24, 2008This past Wednesday I finally managed to get my hands on a game I’ve been waiting absolutely ages for - the Xbox Live Arcade version of N, known as N+. It’s the latest incarnation of a cult classic free desktop game, which I was introduced to nearly two years ago by fellow teabagger OwningXylophone. I don’t know if he was a big fan or if he’d just heard the news that it’d be coming to XBLA, but that doesn’t really matter - what matters is that I’ve had it on my work PC and my computer at home ever since.-
Bouncy Blocks Are Tempting, But Will Probably Bounce You Straight Into Those Mines.
This game is an awesome timewaster, a game so simple to pick up and play, and yet so incredibly, ridiculously difficult to master. If you have a short attention span or a short temper, this game can be both a blessing and a curse - a lot of levels can be charged through in a matter of seconds, and a lot require a carefully timed, choreographed combination of moves to pull off. N is one hell of a clever game.
But what is it?
Well, if you hadn’t already guessed, it’s an honest, good old-fashioned platformer. It does, however, forego the completely unnecessary story that goes along with most platformers, replacing it with a ninja and lots of jumping. The ninja needs to collect gold to increase his time limit, and to hit a switch and exit through a door at the end of every level. That’s it.
But the beauty of this game is in the physics, the timing, and the excellent level design. Most of the levels can be completed in a multitude of different ways, and with each run being timed, but the amount of gold collected increasing your time (which is a good thing), the straight dash to the exit isn’t necessarily the best way.
Some levels are frustrating and will take half an hour to an hour to master, while some are a complete walk in the park - but all of them are fun, intelligent, and well thought out.
These Blue Things Amble Around And Zap You.
The XBLA version brings with it an excellent co-op mode, online race and survival modes (which should be fairly self explanatory), a level editor (for drawing a big cock and balls for your ninja to jump around on), and a meaty selection of 450 levels, with more coming along in future. We also get a rather 1980s menu system, which will bring a tear to the eye of any nostalgic 8-bit gamer, and a similarly old-skool chiptune soundtrack.
I can highly, highly recommend this game - in fact, I think it’s one of the best games on the Xbox Live Arcade. If you’re at all unsure and don’t think that my recommendation is enough (pah!) you can always play the lovely free PC version and make your own mind up. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The XBLA demo itself is excellent, and the entire game is only a 13MB download so there’s really no excuse, even if you don’t have the hard drive.
N+ is available now on Xbox Live Arcade for 800 points.
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