Whoever said the life on a ninja was going to be easy? Despite the dangers of mini-bombs, electrified orbs and homing missiles, no matter how large the risk, gold will always draw the elusive ninja towards itself.
Originally a flash-game for the PC, the ambitious designers of N have taken the game to another level via handheld consoles. As with the original game, N+ allows you to take control of ninja (who is obviously clad in black, but appears as a very stretched, blocked version of megaman) whose main goal is to activate a set of switches by traversing around rather challenging mazes to get to the exit.

The Way Of The Ninja

The game play is rather simple enough – use the D-pad to move ninja around and X to jump – even without special skills such as double jump or shurikens to throw about, you’re still able to perform many different manoeuvres to help you through the mazes such as bounding off walls, running up and down slopes and shifting blocks. Certain levels allows you the help of high-tech trampolines that will get you the “hard to reach” areas. Be creative enough and you’ll dodge the enemies just like a ninja would.

Although it was a very thoughtful gesture of the game creators to add “life infinity” as part of the basic game feature – in which your character does not have a set number of lives which trigger ‘game over’ when they run out, they weren’t all that nice to have left in the timer. As the clock counts down, your screen will turn from a pleasant electric blue to a very threatening red. Not something that goes easy on the eyes. But not to fear, there are gold coin scattered throughout the mazes that will help to increase the total time left in the maze. But frequently, these gold coins are left in the above-mentioned “hard to reach” areas.

As with any other good titles on this platform, collecting points and completing maps sets will help you to unlock different animations for your character and different costumes.

The in-game music is bearable enough with a great selection of two monotone tracks but even more hidden in the options menu. But music aside, old fans of the PC-version of N will rejoice at the fact that you are able to choose between the super-crisp look of “Plus” Graphics or “Retro” Mode. Although we would prefer the look of “Plus” with the cleaner, sharper lines and more colour. A point to note is that the PSP does face some lagging in-between loading and frame flickering.
Another feature that makes this a true platform- game is the ability to create and edit levels. Creating levels are very easy to do, the incredibly intuitive use of the PSP control buttons allow even the amateur creator to produce complex mazes that explores the many possibilities of jeopardy you can get other players’ ninjas into. A rather fun task if you put your mind into it because your imagination’s the limit. Also, with multiplayer mode, you can challenge or join with a friend to run through the mazes you have created together.

This game isn’t exactly the Prince of Persia but regardless of what past platform games you have played, we’re sure N+ will keep you wanting to jump higher than ever or bound more walls because of its highly addictive gameplay.

Learning Curve: 8.5/10.0
Immersion: 8.0/10.0
Replay: 9.0/10.0
Graphic: 7.5/10.0
Audio: 7.0/10.0
Balance: 8.5/10.0

UrbanWire gives N+ an overall rating of 8.5/10.0

N+ is available on both the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Nintendo DS for S$34.90 from Atari.