N+ is fucking hard

PBF - Little Mac

N+ is fucking hard

Seriously. It’s very hard. Call of Duty 4 on Veteran? You have AI friends to help you through the hard parts. You have a GUN. In N+? Your only weapon is a self-sacrificing friend in co-op to blow themselves up on some mines. That, and you can jump. Not ON to anything, mind you, ala Mario. Touching them will kill you. But you can jump over them at least. Unless they home in on your position / lock-on and track you.

Still, it has been getting great reviews for its 4 player co-op-ability. And in this regards, the game is excellent. The game has a stick (go left and right), and a button (jump). You can give the controller to anybody and they will understand what to do. More so than Mario Party, Halo, Raving Rabbids, Rock Band, or any of those other Party Games. The games difficulty may turn some people off, but as long as it is not taken too seriously it is hilarious to watch failure as rag doll parts clear an entire mine field for the rest of your team.

A couple of nagging points, however:

First, the X button is self destruct. There are many parts where you will reach a point where you will want this. You can no longer complete the level or you’ve used too much time and need to do it again. However! The X button? I have friends who manage to accidentally hit the GUIDE button while gaming. They could have made this the Y button, or Back button at least.

Second, it’s buggy. Surprisingly buggy for Microsofts “we don’t let shit in here unless it’s perfect b/c we control everything” approach. The most noticeable is the save bug, where if you do not exit to the main menu you can lose ALL of your progress. Some people have complained even after doing that they still manage to lose their levels. After an hour of doing the same damn 30 second mission <cough>CoD4 on Veteran</cough>, I can’t imagine (and hope I never will) the frustration of the save not sticking. Also, the camera tracks players and zooms out accordingly in splitscreen. This includes body parts. Even ones that fall out of the level and continue to fall a million miles away. Or get stuck in a corner and bounce around causing the screen to jitter like a crack addict drinking 18 espressos.

Still, try the demo. Try it split screen with some friends (preferably all 4, since each friend is basically an additional Life/1-up to make it through a level).

N+ is a true example of a game that is easy to understand, and complex to master.

Oh, and the comic is from Perry Bible Fellowship. That man is hilarious!

2 thoughts on “N+ is fucking hard

  1. I’m one of the (lucky?) ones that can confirm that exiting to the main menu isn’t a guarantee. I’d already read the blog post so I made sure to do that and it still ate my progress from before CoD4 last night. Seems to have saved correctly the next time, so hopefully I never have to look at episode .04 again.

  2. Just played some more. MP Coop. Still very hard. Episode Mission 5 seems…impossible?

    Yes. Probably very impossible. No way to beat it. Really.

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