It’s been brought to our attention that N+ is up for some XBLA Awards:
https://majornelson.com/archive/2009/02/26/the-second-annual-xbox-live-arcade-awards.aspx
This is awesome news, and we’re totally thrilled. Thank you Microsoft! It’s an honour to have been nominated, and we would love to win!
And that, dear readers, is where you come in. It’s that time again, time to Rock the Vote! Loyal N and N+ fans have a pretty solid history of vote-rocking: they’ve helped us win the 2005 Audience Choice award at the GDC for N, and the 2008 PopVox People’s Choice award for Best Console Game for N+ XBLA. And now, N+ fans with Xbox360s everywhere have the opportunity to help us win one of three awards!
Here’s how to vote (starting Tuesday March 3): https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/xblaawards/
Before we continue, we feel it’s very important that you understand we’re not asking you to vote for N+ if you feel there’s a better candidate for the award. By all means, listen to your heart. But if your heart is at all confused, we hope you’ll consider swinging the vote towards N+! 🙂
The awards N+ is up for are:
Best Original Game
Castle Crashers
N+
Braid
Penny Arcade Episode 1
Schizoid
Age of Booty
Now, there’s no way we’ll win this award against huge hits like Braid and Castle Crashers. It’s phenomenal that N+ was nominated, and we really appreciate it, but the competition is just too awesome.
Best Co-operative Multiplayer Game
Castle Crashers
Schizoid
Bionic Commando Rearmed
N+
Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2
Here’s where we’re hoping to shine — N+ Co-op Multiplayer is one of our proudest achievements. It’s surprisingly fun: as gripping and frustrating as Single Player mode, but the addition of multiple players breathes new life into the gameplay and eases the frustration ever so slightly. Plus, designing levels for Multiplayer was extremely satisfying, and by all accounts they are super fun to play through. So we feel we have a good shot at this one!
The last award we’re up for is this:
Best Innovation in XBLA
Braid (time travel)
A Kingdom for Keflings (use of Avatars)
Fable II Pub Games (retail game integration)
N+ (level sharing)
Duke Nukem 3D (dynamic replay)
It is a special honour to have been nominated in this category. We really appreciate that — it indicates to us that the value of our level sharing system is still apparent, even though it’s far from what we intended. That is heart-warming! However, there’s no way we’ll win against Braid. Come on, level sharing vs. time travel? No Contest.
That’s it! Congratulations to all the nominees, there are excellent games in each category and we know you voters have quite a task ahead of you.
If you enjoyed N+, please consider voting for us! It would mean a lot. Also, tell your friends!
Again, here’s the link with info on how to vote. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/xblaawards/
Rock!
Good luck with these!
*makes a reminder to vote*
Some of the big budget games suck just because the install base is so high and their profile is so large. I know i’ll be voting for you in all three catagories, I own Braid, Castle Crushers, and N+ and only one of them keeps me coming back time and time again.
Good luck guys!
Well, I’m not able to vote, of course (no Xbox), but I hope you do well!
Those are tough. I love N/N+ with all of my heart, but Braid was one hell of a good game…
I might have to split my votes. Sorry to say that, but I think you’ll understand…
@seang: Oh yes, we totally understand. That’s why we put this part in:
“Before we continue, we feel it’s very important that you understand we’re not asking you to vote for N+ if you feel there’s a better candidate for the award. By all means, listen to your heart. But if your heart is at all confused, we hope you’ll consider swinging the vote towards N+! :)”
We even mentioned several times that we expect to lose to Braid 🙂 It’s an unbelievable game, and we are sure it will win for Innovation and Best Original Game because of that. And we hope it does! Braid rocks.
It’s the Multiplayer Co-Op category where we think N+ really shines! We’re just hoping to win in this category.
Oh I agree whole heartedly about the co-op. It brought completely new aspects to the game that you tend to not think were possible with single player.
Since my last comment, I went and played through Braid again, and hands down it’s the most innovative game I’ve ever played. I guess it’s convenient I finally got my 360 back from the shop of 3 months of it not working.
One of these days i’m going to beat your pacificism score on Geo2!
Still can’t wait for more news about Robotology, it sounds more exciting each time you post something about it.
Is there one of you who typically posts more than the other on the blog/comments? I always feel strange trying to figure out how to refer to the both of you in sentences such as this? Any help?
I do the same thing sean. My mind always go ‘guys’…wait, mare’s not a guy… ‘fellas’…same problem…’yall’…too southern…It takes me about five extra minutes each time I post
nah we generally either take turns writing/editing or just compose posts together, so…
But use ‘guys’ — I (Mare) don’t mind. In my eyes, that term has acquired a more generalized meaning which encompasses both genders 🙂
Oh, good, because that’s what I’ve been doing already.
xD
BEST ORIGINAL GAME. This is hard to decide between Braid and N+
Braid was a tremendous experience for first playthrough, but it offers no replay value at all once you’ve solved all puzzles and got spoiled story-wise already. You can’t get addict to that game.
N+ shines in term of replay value. It’s always fun to replay the same levels even if you’ve already beaten it because you’ll try to get a better timescore.
I’ll go for N+ on that.
BEST CO-OP GAME
Schizoid’s core gameplay resolves around the co-op aspect. Without the co-op, Schizoid wouldn’t exist. I have to give credits to them for that.
But regardless, even if Schizoid’s gameplay is all about co-op, methink N+ is more fun, being able to play online is laggy, but great! I especially love the support of system link for lagfree co-op game. Local multiplayer is fun too but sharing the screen on a CRT TV is quite hard to play with a shaky zoom-in and zoom-out. There’s no problem if it’s on a huge 1080p HDTV though.
BCR’s co-op aspect is not what I call “co-op”. I call it two-player simultaneous play because I’m oldschool like that. You don’t really interact with player 2 in a “co-op” matter. It feels like playing 2 players in a single-player game if you know what I mean. The lack of online play is in factor also. It gets no vote for me.
GeoWars2 local multiplayer is not really fun because there’s no leaderboards for it. And there’s no online play, but I can understand that it is technically too difficult to pull it off.
Castle Crashers’s online co-op was so broken that it wasn’t fun at all. Now they’ve fixed it, but it’s too late for me to appreciate it because I’ve moved on to other games.
My vote goes to N+.
BEST INNOVATION in XBLA
I’m honestly surprised to see N+’s level sharing being in there. I mean, level sharing isn’t something new in video games, when we think about, say, Starcraft or such. It’s probably considered innovative because it hasn’t been done in XBLA before?
But then again, most games on XBLA in 2008 hardly have anything innovating…
Braid’s time travelling isn’t something new. We’ve seen it used in Prince of Persia Trilogy. I give them points for making clever use of time travels for puzzles though.
My vote would have gone to Schizoid if it was nominated. I think a game resolving around co-op only is interesting, especially if you can’t find someone to play with, then play the game as two players simultaneously (uberschizoid)!
I guess I’ll have to vote for Braid.
So yeah, N+ gets two votes from me!
Man. My XBOX 360 is an hour away, and I felt so meloncholy towards Braid.
Whatever. I’ll find some place to praise the PSP version, which is next to the keyboard.
[…] is up for three awards (there’s more detail in our previous blog post), and we think we have a shot at Best Co-Op Multiplayer Game because of N+’s stellar […]
Best game of all time award would be a more appropriate place for N.