N+

"Every color missing from the limited pallet is made up for with fantastic gameplay"

N+: Every color missing from the limited pallet is made up for with fantastic gameplay

Presentation: 6

There are certain buzzwords video game and television producers use to excuse cheap graphics. “Stylized” ranks up there with the most abused buzzwords in any industry. We KNOW the game was made cheaply, and that's okay. Nobody is going to mind if the game or TV show looks a little sloppy as long as the core underneath stands strong with plenty of care put into it. You don't have to try to hide it, but that's just how the industry goes I suppose.

N+ is a game that is definitely made on the cheap, using less than 10 colors in the usual 1-player mode (though more colors are selectable in the multiplayer modes) but like any good developer, they've taken their limited graphics budget and turned it into something special. Blocky and flat models for both terrain and characters make the game look like, at best, a flash animation developed by a single person, and at worst a particularly smooth Atari 2600 title.

It doesn't look UGLY though, quite the contrary. Once you become engrossed in the game (and you WILL) you'll really come to love the game's unique look. It brings a feeling of strange wonder to the younger generation, and a feeling of nostalgia to those who remember Atari/NES era graphics. There are many nice touches, such as the flourish of laser beams and the titular Ninja's red scarf flying around his body with its own physics, or the various animations the Ninja goes through upon reaching his goal, such as pumping his fists in the air or collapsing from exhaustion. Despite being so simple, the game does have one graphical glitch. Sometimes the scarf can become caught on the corners of some platforms, and will stretch across the entire screen as you move around. It doesn't affect gameplay in the slightest and the scarf's pixels stretch so far apart you can easily still see what you're doing, so it doesn't impact gameplay at all, but it is puzzling that such a simple game has such a graphical flaw. Though as a final note, the ninja explodes and falls limp quite well when he dies, often with his body parts flying clear across the stage.

The game looks cheap. There's no way around that. But don't mistake “cheap” for “bad” because it still looks GOOD, and designing the game this way has clearly allowed them to pump the game full of more content than any other X-Box Live Arcade title yet. Very good, but the best, it is not.

Audio: 5

The music is pretty forgettable, and the sound effects are merely adequate, but being an X-Box Live Arcade title, you can always pop your own CD into the system while you play.

Gameplay: 10

Hands down the most fun you'll have on your X-Box 360 without a game disc in the system, N+ shows developers how to create a classically simple and addictive game without directly ripping off NES era gameplay (so take notes, other XBL developers). The goal is simple, get to the switch to open the door, then get to the door and complete the stage (while collecting gold along the way, to increase your time remaining) The game uses old-school sensibilities and the power of the newer consoles to create a game with the simple gameplay of an NES title with a physics engine so capable that measuring your momentum becomes one of the most important parts of the game. This doesn't amount to simple “run to gain speed” style momentum either, the ninja's momentum is affected by everything from the exact angle of the terrain he's on to how fast he's traveling vertically when he jumps off of a wall. Good timing can send the ninja flying up a wall with more speed than he gets from running across the ground, but bad timing will have him hopping futilely in place.

Timing is key in this game, as a matter of fact. After a few hours of practice you can have your ninja flying from platform to platform to wall to platform to wall like Spider-Man and The Flash's illegitimate offspring, but the game is complicated even further by the enemies who appear and the often fiendishly clever level design. The enemies take many forms, from electrically charged spheres who move in specific patterns, to Thwomp-style platforms that come down when you get too close, to gun and laser turrets who will take aim the nanosecond you show your ninja face. Perhaps the most irritating enemy though is the land mine, which is placed liberally throughout many stages to tell you where not to go.

There are many, many stages for you to wet your whistle on, some of which test your reflexes and timing, while others will put your gray matter to the test with a seemingly impossible riddle to solve to get to the switch and back to the door again. With 50 different single-player maps loaded with the game and more maps coming in the form of Co-op missions, the game is loaded with content and challenges that can keep you busy for quite a while. Even after you've gotten through all the doors, you can still go back and try to collect all of the gold (thus improving your completion time, since gold adds a LOT of time to your clock), which is a mean feat in itself.

On top of all of this, the game includes a stage builder and the ability to play stages created by other users, along with online play including Survival Matches, races, and Co-op, all of which can including up to 4 players simultaneously. That's a lot of content for your ten bucks, and easily the best value currently on the X-Box Live Arcade… possibly the best value on the 360, actually.

Story: N/A

As a cheap-o game, it has no story. So I can't really rate something that's not there, can I? I suppose I could make something up, but that's not really worth the time and I don't think GameFAQs allows that. So no rating.

Features: 10

Leaderboards, online Co-op and Versus modes, and a stage creator are all perfectly suited to this game and they all work quite well both in enjoyment and in extending the lifespan of the game to nearly limitless levels. Running through stages only to detonate on contact with a heat seeking missile is fun, but running through a stage with three other people only to one-by-one get blown into quivering chunks by those missiles is even more interesting somehow. Perhaps it's the satisfaction of knowing it's not just you who keeps dying.

Overall: 9

N+ shows just what can be done with a low-budget title if the developers have a bit of vision and creativity. We've seen enough Tetris and Columns clones, enough Run N Gun shooters and ports of old SNES era titles. Let's see what can be done with current technology. The sky is the limit with it after all, and as far as creativity, this game puts almost anything on the Wii to shame. A great value that any X-Box 360 owner would be a fool to pass up.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/10/08

Game Release: N+ (US, 02/20/08)