Around 10 years ago, back when Flash games were the bees knees and high schoolers with PCs in their classrooms dedicated more time to Icy Tower than listening to their American History lecture, a skill based game with a small and agile ninja took the internet by storm. The flash game N was so immensely popular, it even spawned a console port with additional features but retaining its devilish difficulty called N+. Fast forward to today, and PlayStation 4 owners have the pleasure of taking on yet another set of challenges in N++.
It's easy to reference games like Super Meat Boy when it comes to difficult downloadable platformers, but the N games are rarely mentioned. Whereas Super Meat Boy was a challenge in precise platforming through speed, N and its respective sequels tasked players with slower but precise platforming. Sure, you had a timer, but instead of speedily trying to make it from one side of the stage to the next, you instead have to survey the level, think of the best possible route to both collect all the items while simultaneously dodge deadly hazards. You didn't have to necessarily do it quickly, you just had to be extremely precise.
N++ carries this tradition through over 2000 levels. Yeah, I didn't add a zero by mistake. While most of these start out super easy, literally taking just a few seconds to beat, the further you get, the more you realize just how devilishly clever the layouts are. Each enemy and item are meticulously placed throughout the level to ensure that your platforming skills are constantly being tested.
Just when you wipe your brow from surviving the onslaught of constantly moving balls that have annihilated you time and time again, comes a level where your every movement gets shadowed, forcing you to keep moving or die at your shadow clone's hands.
Aesthetically, N++ looks phenomenal, even with its completely minimalistic art style. I'm glad developer Metanet opted to keep the art style more or less the same from the original Flash version, though with an updated resolution, and instead focused on the fantastic level design. It might seem like it's easy to come up with a single-screen level that's both fun and challenging, but try to do that over 2000 times with wildly different variants. It's absurdly cool!
While I think that the game shines when played by yourself, it does come with multiplayer built in, allowing two players to either co-operatively finish levels or compete against one another.
Another awesome addition is the ability to craft and upload your own created levels, as well as download levels from others. Of course, this feature will live or die based on the community, so assuming there are a lot of crafty level designers out there, you could have a slew of extra challenging levels to tackle constantly.
Nowadays we tend to tie a game's price tag to the amount of replayability the game offers, or how long a game is. Considering the game has over 2000 levels, many of which are fiendishly difficult, it might take you a while to actually plow through the entirety of N++. Take into account that thousands or more levels await you if the community decides to make them and you have a game that you could be playing for quite a while. But taking that out of the equation, N++ is just chock full of platforming goodness. Its physics based gameplay is just as good today as it was 10 years ago when it first hooked us in grade school.
