N+ Game by Atari/Silverbirch Studios Reviewed by Philip Wesley Save: batteries/cards (1 slot) Released: 2008 Works with: Nintendo DS/DSi/3DS ESRB Rated: E Rating Descriptions: Animated Blood Quick Opinion: Borrow it sometime to try it. Own if you can get it really, really, really, really, really cheap. **************************************************************************** Opening Snide Remarks: Once upon a time, there was a flash game called N. This flash game was free to play and developed a following of fans. Someone at Atari thought: "Hey. There should be a retail version of this game!" So, N+ was born. I picked it up from a bargain bin sale for $14.95 and now we shall begin a review of it. The N stands for Ninja. Just thought you might want to know. **************************************************************************** Gameplay Description: The premise in N+ is pretty easy to understand and explain. You play a Ninja who lives in a world where robots have gone crazy and gold is everywhere. Also, there are a bunch of doors that are always locked. Thus you must find the switch for the door, open it, and escape. Your ninja has no useful weapons to combat the robot traps, mines, and other obstacles. Instead, your ninja can run, jump, and cling to walls. You must use physics, gravity, momentum, and your reflexes to get through about 100+ levels of traps, inclines, and gold. Your ninja dies if he/she falls too far onto a flat surface, or gets touched by any of the robots or traps. That is the simple truth of being a ninja in this world. The gameplay amounts to selecting a block of levels to get through and then finding the switch and door in those levels. You move your ninja right or left and jump to avoid obstacles and gain momentum. You have an unlimited amount of lives and your progress is saved as you finish level blocks. Is this game fun? I really can not decide if it is or not. Many of the levels are more frustrating than anything else. It is an addicting game and you unlock neat extras like colors for your ninja, additional level parts, and other additional items like music or victory animations. The game features multi-player which requires you to both have a copy of the game. There was online multi-player but the server was turned off by Atari years ago. You can make your own levels but the level editor is ridiculously clunky and fairly limited. You can consider this to be a single player experience. Liked: Interesting challenge, good level design, and addictive. You can unlock a lot of interesting stuff by collecting lots of gold. Hated: No single card download play, terrible level editor, no online support anymore, and no real motivation to keep playing. **************************************************************************** Graphics Description: There are two options of graphic styles to choose from in this game: PLUS and PURE. The PURE option keeps the graphics at the simple style they were on the Flash game. Your ninja is an all black stick figure, unless you unlock the extra colors for him/her. The obstacles are a few pixels of red squares, red circles, yellow dots, and so forth. Extremely minimalist in all regards. The PLUS option adds a background and some more details to the obstacles. One screen shows a map and the other screen shows a close up view of the action. It looks simplistic and does what it needs to. There are no fancy cut-scenes, details, special effects, or so forth. There can be blood (which you can turn on or off) when you run into some of the obstacles. The ninja breaks into pieces when this happens. Liked: Simple graphics that are easy to understand and follow. Hated: There really is nothing to hate when it comes to the graphics. There is not a lot of "flashiness" in this "flash" game. **************************************************************************** Sound/Music Description: Go to the options menu and do the right thing. The right thing is setting sound effects to ON and the music to OFF. The music is trying to be "dark, brooding techno;" but it consists of about eight notes repeated over and over and over and over again. The sounds work fine for the game; but the music is annoying. Turn it off and live a happier life. Oh, go to the credits and there is a rap song about the ninja. That's pretty amusing and really great. Sadly, the normal music in the game is nowhere near as creative or fun. Liked: Sound effects were fine. Credits music is great for a while. Hated: The normal music is not good at all. Each composition is way too small and limited. I understand that it is going for an "8-Bit" style; but the music is only 8 notes long with no variation. It is literally an insult to chiptune music to call this horrific abomination of music "chiptune" music. **************************************************************************** Play Control/Game Design: The play control is fine, although the ninja kind of floats down slowly after a jump. It is a little off putting at first, but you get used to it. The level design is uneven with some earlier levels being much harder than many of the later levels. That said, the B & A buttons both jump, Y does nothing, and X makes you die. Some of the levels are obnoxious. One of them has you dodge a laser for about a minute before you can get to the place where the switch and door are. Of course, you can dodge the laser by standing in one spot and jumping every other second. Yes. This has those kinds of levels in it. Liked: Easy to pick up and try out. Hated: Uneven level design. **************************************************************************** Improve: More levels, I suppose? Having a working online community would have been good. Some balance in the levels would be good. RIYL: Games like VVVVV, Braid, or any of those Super Mario Bros. hacks that you see online. **************************************************************************** Final Words: Interesting title for those who enjoy physics based plaforming and games with uneven difficulty curves. I think that it would be okay to pay about $1.99 for this game; because half of the gameplay options in this title are gone from the moment you pop it into your DS. It would be like buying a van to discover that it only seats one person, and is missing the back tires forever. This is a bit unfortunate. I do think that the advent of downloadable games for the DSi/3DS and PSP means that this game could be revived, fixed up, and then sold as a download for a reasonable price of $2. Which is about how much it really worth. If you are me, you will play it for a while, unlock all the levels, then put it down to go play much more satisfying platform games. **************************************************************************** Score Gameplay: *** Graphics: *** Sound/Music: * Play Control/Game Design: *** Value: * Star Total: 33% Personal Opinion Merit: 15% Final Score: 48% Letter Grade: F ****************************************************************************