Mark of the Ninja

Mark of the Ninja is a 2-D stealth game developed by Klei Entertainment. That’s right, a 2-D stealth game. This seems odd on paper but it’s pulled off with an astounding degree of success. The game has you sneaking across city skylines and tip-toeing through enemy strongholds while silently assassinating enemies along the way. The game provides you with an ample, concise repertoire of tools to expertly pick apart the bad guys. You’ll be sticking to the shadows, dodging security systems, and using subterfuge. You know… ninja stuff. All of the information in the game is presented with an astounding amount of clarity that allows for smooth execution and leaves no room for confusion or frustration. This clear communication breaks genre tropes that plague stealth games and makes for an accessible, enjoyable experience. Mark of the Ninja is one of the best stealth games to date and rivals many full retail release games in terms of quality and innovation.

The presentation and the graphics are smooth and stylized. The game is made up of primarily black foregrounds with varying warm and cool gray backgrounds depending on your locale. Large solid black shapes dominate the landscape giving the game a nice, bold, dark feel. While in darkness, your character is visible only as a black silhouette outlined in white - this is the game’s way of letting you know you are hidden. The only time your character’s color is revealed is in the presence of light which is represented by transparent yellow cones. A lot of work went into polishing the backgrounds. They’re simple, clean, and communicative. Interactive objects like gates, hooks, lights, hiding spots, and bells all stand out .This makes it easy to analyze an area and come up with an approach to tackle its enemies.

The game gives you a plethora of stealthy ways to deal with the opposition. Sneaking up behind a guard and silently slitting his throat is the most efficient way to dispatch an enemy. You can close the gap using several different methods: hide behind gates or potted plants and kill the enemy when he gets in range. You can distract enemies by throwing a dart at a bell or by knocking out a lamp while sneaking up behind them without notice. Drop from the ceiling and strike from above or set a trap in front of an enemy to kill him instantly when he walks over it. You can even hang from pedestals and string up baddies a-la the Batman Arkham games. You also have the option to avoid conflict altogether by sneaking through entire levels, sticking to the shadows of dank crawl spaces and shadowy doorways. The game rewards you for whichever approach you choose. You get bonuses for sneaking past enemies, performing stealth kills, hiding bodies, and executing specialty kills. The game provides you with an assortment of tools and plenty of varying ways to use them. It’s empowering to pull off these moves and you get a real rush when you clear an entire room using a variety of different moves on the fly. It’s especially rewarding to tackle an unknown area using the moves you’ve become familiar with to escape undetected. These different options offer up a ton of flexibility.

Executing these moves is a breeze thanks to the game’s sharp controls. Your basic attack and stealth kill is mapped to the X button while darts, traps, and distraction items are mapped to Y. You can hold the left trigger to pause time and toss out any item mapped to Y. Leaping at a wall causes you stick to it, allowing you to easily traverse vertical surfaces. It never feels like the character gets away from you at all. The game is built around precision and it feels incredibly tight. Something so simple such as the way your grapple hook snaps to an anchor point after you hit RB just feels right. The character always feels like he’s doing exactly what you want. The actions on-screen feel like a natural extension of what you’re thinking. Few games achieve this and this is why the game feels so fluid and exciting.

Each level in the game is made up of nine different goals. The first three are medals awarded for beating score objectives. Score is awarded by avoiding enemies, performing stealth kills, special kills, stashing bodies, and finding artifacts. The next set of goals is based around finding three scrolls containing haikus based on ninja lore. These are well hidden and require a decent amount of exploration. Some of these scrolls are hidden in challenge rooms. These rooms contain no enemies but are filled with puzzles involving lasers, boxes, switches and some twitchy platforming. The challenge rooms mix up the action a bit and are actually quite satisfying to solve. The final three objectives are specific to each level and have the most variation. These include things such as hiding a certain amount of bodies, smashing 20 lights, or beating an entire level without being detected. These objectives give you some purpose and ramp up the difficulty of the levels. They’re optional goals, but let’s face it, you’re going to want to get them all.

This game really brings out that compulsive, stealthy completionist in me. I found myself always trying to beat as many goals as possible; restarting over at the nearest checkpoint each time I was discovered by the guards. Fortunately the game has frequent checkpoints and fast load times that allow for quick restarts.

Completing all of the level’s goals nets you tokens that you can spend on upgrades. These upgrades include new assassinations, special moves, armor, and item upgrades. The new assassinations hold the most value as they give you more variety and flexibility when approaching enemies. Plus, most of them just make you feel like a boss. The item upgrades improve upon existing gadgets while the combat enhancements grant you extra armor and offensive capabilities. I didn’t dabble much in the combat upgrades as I spent the entire game trying to remain unseen. There are also various ninja suites that you can unlock that have unique attributes.

The way the game communicates information to the player is clear and easy to understand. Nothing in the game feels cheap or leaves you scratching your head. You know at all times exactly where you can hide, grapple, and distract your enemies. Circular shapes emanate from objects generating sound and transparent yellow cones show where light is present. Enemies have vision and flashlight cones in front of them that show you their line of sight. If one of the enemies hears you nearby, you’ll be surrounded with a yellow sphere that serves as a warning that they are searching for you. This gives you ample time to leave the circle and find cover elsewhere. Similarly, if you are spotted by the enemy and you break their line of site, a ghost-like silhouette is left behind showing your last known position. All of these visual cues make it a breeze for you to craft impromptu plans and make split second decisions.

Mark of the Ninja is engaging, precise, and smart. It gives you all of the tools and information needed to pull off amazingly stealthy displays of prowess and dexterity; all the while, looking slick and stylish. It’s an absolute blast to control your character and you always feel like a badass ninja. The way you feel empowered and the amount of flexibility you are presented with is truly awesome. The game is innovative, lengthy, well conceived, and well executed. It serves as an excellent example of what a modern stealth game can be and will hopefully influence design choices in games to come.