As you may remember, we took a real shine to N+ when we got to play it hands-on at Atari's booth on the E3 show floor. It shipped for the DS on August 26 and should be sitting on the shelves of your favorite game retailer now. So, now it's time to ask the question: is it worth your $30? How'd it turn out? Is it worth buying over, say, the 800 point XBLA version or the totally free browser game version?
As always, we'll turn to a sampling of the game's highest and lowest review scores as aggregated by Metacritic. With its overall average sitting at 81%, it looks like N+ has acquitted itself quite well on this platform. Do note before we get started, though, that a lot of outlets reviewed the PSP and DS SKUs of N+ together despite the two games offering different level and feature selections. For our purposes, we'll try to focus parts of the reviews that are specific to the DS version.
The high score comes from the surprising source of IGN, with a 9 out of 10. Daemon Hatfield has nothing but praise for N+'s simple premise and physics engine, especially pleased with its short, portable-friendly levels.
N+ is a celebration of old school gaming. Without any context or setup, you play as a ninja navigating grey environments in search of gold. If you boiled the platformer genre down to its purest essence, N+ is what you'd get. You move and jump. That's it. The controls are dead on, and the game has a very clean, minimal style. Levels are quite short -- perfect for portable gaming. In each, you'll need to help your ninja buddy make his way to the exit. Various traps and obstacles will get in the way, and there is also that pesky time limit to keep an eye on. Luckily, there is plenty of gold lying around that will add seconds to the clock. The game runs on an impressive physics engine that lets you slide, bounce, and float to your destinations.
The second-highest score comes from another surprising source, Game Informer, not an outlet known for being especially friendly to portable, retro, or indy titles. Regardless, N+ merited an 8.75 out of 10 and high praise from reviewer Bryan Vore. That said, the portable N+ SKUs appear to be missing certain features that were much-loved in the XBLA version, something a potential buyer should definitely note.
The game takes a hit for lacking leaderboards (what good are high scores?), online multiplayer, and Xbox Lives four-player matches. The co-op stages are cool, but you can only pick five to play in a row. Since the game doesnt keep track of which ones you completed, its easy to forget where you left off. Versus play includes three decent new modes that have players compete to hit the most switches, play tag, or race to the finish several times on the same stage before moving on to the next one. Once you complete the matches, youre unceremoniously dumped out to the title screen. Wheres the victory fanfare or the stats?
The low scores come from fairly surprising outlets, too, but are also worth some attention. Nintendo Power only awarded N+ DS a 7 out of 10, but I had to dig out my May issue to find the review text. This bad boy is so old that the cover story is first English language info on FFIV DS. Given the multiple delays N+ on DS experienced, it's very possible that what Nintendo Power reviewed was an early build riddled with problems that the were fixed by the time online outlets like IGN were getting their builds. Certainly reviewer Steve Thomason's text quotes an inaccurate MSRP (N+ actually shipped at $19.99), and his experience with the level editor doesn't sound much like what other reviews had to say about using it. Here's the full text of the single-paragraph review.
Puzzle-platformer N+ is a case study in elegant simplicity. The core mechanics couldn't be less sophisticated - use the Control Pad to run and the A button to jump - yet the game hooks you with wonderfully devious level design and the pure delight of watching your diminutive ninja bound across the screen like Neo from The Matrix. More than 100 single-player levels and an equally beefy selection of two-player co-op boards will put even the most seasoned gamer's platforming skills to the test, and a robust (though unintuitive) level editor lets you build your own creations and share them with your friends. The easily frustrated should probably stay away, and for what it is, the game's MSRP of $29.99 seems a bit steep. Otherwise, this is a fun little gem.
GamePro is the other low score, offering a 3.5 out of 5. I can't say a think much of how the game was treated by the mothership, to be honest, this is really one of the poorer reviews I'e seen out of them lately. The full text of a review that supposedly covers both the DS and PSP SKUs is a mere three paragraphs long, and the tone of Emily Balistrieri's text is bored, uninvolved, and completely lacking in detail. Especially nice as a sign of how little GamePro cared is that the version of the review posted in the DS section still has screencaps from the PSP SKU - even though the text itself mentions that the DS and PSP level selections are very different, and that the DS presentation differs significantly from the PSP's. All told, this is the sort of review that really fails, because the text could've just as easily have been written by someone who never played either version of the game at all. Here it is in its entirety.
So what do you get for spending budget price dollars on a hard copy? A variety of challenging levels to start with, a level editor so you can mastermind impossible feats of ninja daring, and access to a Wi-Fi community where you can upload levels for other players to try, play and rate the levels of those other players, and decide who really knows how to make those ninja work!
The PSP version is nice not only because it's less of a pain to get online, but also because it has a higher resolution screen so they don't usually feel bad putting the whole arena on there. The DS uses the top screen to show the overall map, but it's sort of tiny, so the bottom screen is a zoomed in view. Actually the levels included in the two different versions appear to be, if not completely different, than at least noticeably so-perhaps an incentive for the true N addict to purchase both.
Personally I'd say the real draw to go beyond the browser game is if you really want to create your own N levels, which personally, I don't. While N+ is a polished game, I am fine leaving N as a nice Internet distraction, even if the controls aren't quite as tight as when you play these handheld versions. Don't forget, too, that N+ is already an XBLA game for just 800 Microsoft points, a cheaper option unless you really want to draw your custom levels with a DS stylus.
