Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for videogames. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!

We're trying a slightly different structure for the podcast this week. We've broken the podcast into two halves, the first half is spoiler free and the second half is spoilerful. Each half is roughly one hour long.

In the first half of our Mark of the Ninja discussion we break down the mechanical innovations that make Mark of the Ninja one of the most fun and deep stealth games in recent memory. We break down the game's various items and systems and highlight the different play styles that the game encourages. Billy also treats us to some insight on how he made it to the top 1% of the game's leaderboards.

In the second half of the podcast we discuss the story of Mark of the Ninja in all it's glory. We discuss what playing as a ninja who is slowly losing his mind does to the story as well as how western culture has romanticized ninjas and other historical warriors. We finish up by discussing how the pursuit of high scores effected Billy's experience with the game.

Episode 16 Part 1: Mark of the Ninja and Stealth Mechanics

Episode 16 Part 2: Mark of the Ninja and Modernizing the Ninja Way