Reviews VideoGame / N

Ah, N.

Ah, N. No game makes me annoyed like you. Not because you're so absurdly hard, although that's certainly part of it. It's how good you could be, and how far you fall from that. You could have been one of the best, the one that becomes a beloved classic. It sounds perfect: 500 built-in levels, with yet more user-made levels to come. They could range from a claustrophobic run through hundreds of mines and lasers to playing a deadly game of pinball. It's such a good idea that N remains on my hard drive to this day, despite the numerous stumbling points that plague it. And what stumbling points, indeed. The hit detection is loose, the controls are VERY loose, and lag means that you'll be blinking around even when you're the only thing moving on the screen. I can't tell you how many times I've died because the trap I had five seconds to avoid suddenly gets close enough to kill me before anyone could react. The bounceblocks can either launch you far enough into the air to kill or make you jump so slow that the block catches up with you before you top out, and that's if you can manage not to just teleport through it. If you ever feel like leaving, you had better wait- the episode system means you have to play five levels all the way through, which can take a while depending on your skill, before it'll save. Unless you have ungodly resistance to sheer annoyance, you'll want to leave a lot, too. It really is too bad that such a wonderful premise could be so clumsily put into action. N has such potential, but the sloppy implementation means that it is a bittersweet experience, at best.