This must be my month for crack-addictive games all coming out around the same time.  Guess it makes up for a very thin movie-going season.  Anyhow, it happened again.  Whilst perusing the Xbox Live Arcade selections I spied this gem sitting off to one side, sad and neglected and half-off at a mere 400 points ($5) and said, “Good Lord!  N+ on the Xbox?  Half-price?” while at the same time my body, almost of it’s on volition, had not only selected the game but the two add-ons that cost points (240 or so or $2.50) and the free one for download, and before I knew it I owned one of the most simple and compulsive puzzle/platformers ever created on any system.  I even woke up early before work today (never happens) just to play for fifteen minutes and knock out a level or three.  So before we get into what it is and why I’m so excited (and I mean in a Bust-A-Move kind of way) let me say clearly up front that this game is a 9/10 and an absolute Must Buy!  Rare to see that endorsement in the intro paragraph, huh?

N+, according to the Wikipedia, is a Flash-based game released in 2008, which I didn’t know but it was near the end of that year that I got introduced to it on the Nintendo DS and fell head-over-heels for it’s simple, clever, frustrating impossible, brilliant gameplay.  The deal is you are a stick figure ninja and you begin on a level with a door and a key.  You, the ninja, move and jump.  That’s it.  The whole repertoire. Push any button, I defy you.  You’ll jump.  Period.  The level is designed to give you things to jump over/on and you find the key and activate the door, then get to (or back to) the door to finish.  Simple, right?  It is, really.  Sometimes.  There have been some DS levels as simple as the key and door are right across from you; though there is a huge level above you to jump around on, the solution could be as simple as “run straight across and you’re done,” which it was.  That very puzzle had a pal of mine frustrated for a good 5 min. because it couldn’t be that simple, right?  Sometimes, however…. I mean you just can’t do them.  You can’t.

Wikipedia also says the gold you see is dependent on the time you have to finish a level.  I do not believe that is correct but even if it is you have plenty of time to finish things up; rather, time has never been the issue.  The road is loaded with obstacles like mines, which can literally cover tons of the screen leading you to go “how the hell?”, sentry guns, drones, missiles and other sundries and the path itself is often full of impossible jumps and and severely timing-based maneuvers  that will having you curse a blue streak like no sailor has ever dreamed.  My pals and I have backed out of so many levels and moved on to another set, even if we were near completion, rather than snap the DS in half.  The levels are in sets of five puzzles on both the handheld and the Xbox and it is so wretched to get to puzzle 4 after doing some impossible stuff just to get there and not be able to finish due to it being so Goddamned hard.  Good thing there are billions of levels.

And I mean billions.  The DS had 99 plus a few bonus that I know about but the Xbox version that had downloadable content as well, three packs of 500 or so maps each not counting co-op or multiplayer.  That means even more guilt-free backing out because there’s gonna be tons you can’t do as well as tons you can.  With co-op as a perk you can also have a chum right there to help you in times of distress because let’s face it; some people are better at some types of these puzzles than others.  While handing off the DS with my pal Little Mike, he’d often breeze through four or five levels that had me getting noise complaints at my apartment only to cough the thing up in frustration only to watch me rip three or four straight right out.  Well, now it seems we can be pissed off at the same time while sharing each others pain with immediacy so not only are you having fun together with billions of jumping puzzles but you get to teach each other a slew of new swear words and education is always important.  Learn something new every day.

The skill-set developed/needed for this simple yet hard game is surprisingly deep, utilizing wall-jumps, momentum building leaps, springing platform acrobatics, elevators (of sorts), singly or in some twisted combination or another and when you add the “just wonky enough to kind of glide” physics and brilliant yet cruel, just cruel, level design and you have a masterpiece worthy of Mario.  Now you go and add 1500+ new maps and co-op functionality and Xbox Live support and you, sir, have gotten me on board and not only on board but I wanna tell people how utterly bad-ass N+ is and one you’d never look at with it’s stick ninja and some jumping but much like the often overlooked but highly-rated (by ME on this very site, twice because there were two of them) Boom Blox, once exposed to it’s awesomeness, even for a minute, and you become a die-hard fan, just a rabid animal for this game.  9/10 easy and that extra point is because I can’t shoot anyone, bathe in any blood (though my ninja bleeds when he hits a mine, breaks in half when he falls from a height.  Anything even thought of as dangerous kills him) and some of the levels are too damned hard.  Buy N+.  I don’t care on what format.  Neither will you.  Experience it’s universal awesomeness firsthand.  The Monkey has spoken. You’ll thank me.  Again.