Mare

Awesome, thanks, Kaes!

No, we're absolutely not offended at all -- we love reading things like this. Thoughtful honesty and genuine feedback are so valuable to us -- we feel this sort of candid criticism is progressive in general, plus we think listening to players helps us to make better games, so we don't see a down-side here!

oh, I forgot to mention, Metanet did the SP level design for N+ DS/PSP as well. Well, Metanet and the SUBLiME winners: http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/sublime.html

Mare from Metanet here just to let you know we totally agree with your analysis in this article, and many of the comments -- N+ does feel rushed, and all of your points are things that we too feel, had they been fixed, would have made a better game.

There are so many thoughtful and astute observations in the article and in the comments, and it's really fantastic to read them.

Just a quick note, as dtd pointed out, Metanet did not do the development of N+ PSP/DS, we licensed our IP and stepped into the role of Consultant. Development work was done by Silverbirch Studios, a company also based here in Toronto. As you already know, Atari published.

The game was actually supposed to be released early in 2008, in an even less polished form, but we felt it was just not ready and pushed for a delay -- fortunately Atari agreed and Silverbirch was willing to work on the title further. Although these (that you noted) and several other issues remain, the delay vastly improved the game, which is the outcome we were hoping for.

And just a quick note on Metanet. We're insanely nit-picky people, especially when it comes to our games. If you read our devblog regarding our new game, that should become obvious, quick ;)
Anyway, we were much more hands-on with N+ XBLA (which was developed by the incredibly talented Slick Entertainment, who are based in Vancouver), and had more input on the game itself, and I think it shows: though both versions are faithful, N+ XBLA is much closer to N, all the way down to the nitty gritty details. N+ DS/PSP are not quite the games we would have made, but as you've all pointed out, there are still many reasons to play 'em. :)

There's some misinformation in this article that I've just got to clear up. :)

Atari and Silverbirch are producing N+ for PSP, and also DS. Woohoo! Both are scheduled to be released later this year.

Also, we have not confirmed how many levels there will be in any version of N+, and also have not confirmed any user-created levels. The stats in this post sound much more like they belong to N v1.4 for PC, not N+.

We'll post this officially on the Metanet news page shortly!

Mare (of Metanet Software)