I’ve always wanted to be a ninja.

Unfortunately, I haven’t the athletic prowess nor the patience that such a trade necessitates. Thankfully, there have always been numerous games in which I can live out that fantasy: Ninja Gaiden, Shinobi, Tenchu, and now N+.

After being given the opportunity to take the PSP edition for a test drive, I come bearing two gifts for you, dear readers. One, a review of the enhanced port, and also a bit of helpful information: being a ninja takes patience. A metric ton of it.

I’m sure many of you have been scratching your heads in bemused wonder upon reading the first few paragraphs. That, or running to Google. What exactly is N+?

N+ is an updated and expanded port of the popular flash game N. Metanet Software, the developers of the original Flash creation, have licensed the IP for use by Atari and SilverBirch Studios. Thankfully, they’ve answered the cries of many an N fan to bring the classic to handhelds. After one port from Slick Entertainment to the Xbox LIVE Arcade repertoire, we have finally been offered N+ for the PSP and Nintendo DS.

It’s a masterful blend of titles such as Soldat and Lode Runner. Think of a marriage between a side-scrolling platformer and Prince of Persia. The game allows you to step into the shoes of a tiny ninja devoid of much detail. What the diminutive warrior lacks in visuals he more than makes up for in design, delivering some of the most realistic physics ever seen in the genre. As the unnamed protagonist (I named my little stick ninja Machiavelli), you are to navigate a mammoth amount of levels (over 300!) avoiding enemies, snagging gold, and finding keys to reach the end of each stage. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say dead wrong. Get it? Get it? Because N+ is an extremely challenging title. It is guaranteed to frustrate, because no matter how beautifully and gracefully your ninja glides through serpentine shapes and spirals, you’re going to be dying. A lot. As you progress through each level, anything from mines to turrets will be actively seeking to annihilate you. With that said, it’s evident you’re going to do a lot more than just rudimentary running and jumping. N+ has got you covered–not only do you run and you jump, but you can stick to platforms and wall-jump with the greatest of ease. It’s almost as if your ninja should have been an acrobat instead. Still, even with such fluidity of motion, it is still very easy to die.

Dying is not always horrible. Watching your little ninja explode into tons of tiny little pieces is often entertaining, in that Mario-underwater-level-running-out-of-breath-and-there-is-no-air-bubble-around sort of way. You know, being mildly amused at the death animation, but realizing you’re going to have to start the trek over again.

While the first few stages are simple to navigate and get a feel for the controls, the difficulty does begin to ramp up at such a rate that I found it difficult to avoid some of the floating mines along the way. The game mechanics are so deceptively simple that it’s easy to pick up and assume you’re in for a short and satisfying platformer when you couldn’t be further from the truth. Even the most experienced platformer veteran will find plenty of challenge here, whether avoiding mines mid-jump or reaching level exits before the time is up. While a healthy amount of frustration is definitely spice for the genre, it does end up becoming a little intimidating, and may drive some players away because of how unforgiving or impossible some levels may seem.

Don’t get me wrong, though. No matter how angry N+ will make you, you’ll want to keep coming back for “just one more level”. Planning out which paths to take to avoid enemy fire and to collect as much gold as possible will become second-nature to you, and trial-and-error will prove to be the best method to make real progress.

Each of the game’s levels are a treat for your eyes, and an escape from cluttered, busy environments. Clean visuals are only mildly altered from the original flash game, giving them smoother surfaces and sharpening it up a bit for the PSP’s display. Rather than focusing on area of the stage, the camera is fixed on the entire stage, so that when you want to make a move, it isn’t going to be scrolling along with you. The colors are very muted and pastel, ranging from light blues and grays to some yellows and purples. I found it a very refreshing change from either overwhelming blacks and greys or bland, uninspired backgrounds. There is plenty of space in which you can make your jumps and avoid enemy fire, and that is ALWAYS a good thing (coughJerichocough).

Ninjas are stealthy, and that’s something we can all agree on. It doesn’t mean that they can’t listen to music while they’re collecting gold pieces. In fact, I’m sure a lot of them run around with their Zunes or their iPods with their very own “theme song” blasting. No? Okay. Well, the tunes of N+ are definitely enough to get you grooving. Looping and soaring electronica sets the mood perfectly. Some of the tracks are catchy enough to get you out of your seat (UHN-TISS-UHN-TISS-UHN-TISS) while others fade into the background so you can let your skills take the spotlight.

Although it looks simple and easy enough to understand, N+ is a challenging little bugger that will take you quite a long time to complete, as well as test your patience. It boasts 200 single-player levels, 100 cooperative levels to play ad-hoc with your friends, and 50 versus levels in which you can use the same feature to compete with fellow ninjas. If that isn’t enough to satiate your hunger for N, it features a level editor that will allow you to create your own maps to play alone or share with your friends. Take enough time and you can recreate the faces of your favorite cartoon characters or create levels that play themselves. The PSP edition is chock full of content to discover and explore with your friends, as well as on your own.

So you want to be a ninja too, eh? I suggest you brush up on your jumping skills. You’re going to need every last one of them if you want to survive N+’s harrowing bombs, turrets, and time limits.

N+ receives four stick men ninjas out of five:

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Video Games, Reviews, PSP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.