You’ll jump and grapple-hook your way around mostly linear levels (though occasional path choices and backtracking occur), clinging to walls and ceilings, hiding in floor grates, and pressing B to duck behind potted plants or in doorways – all in the name of avoiding detection. In a move that’s simultaneously refreshing and familiar, Mark of the Ninja is a 2D stealth adventure that, at first glance, looks a bit Metroidvania-esque.
You’ll be forgiven if you mistake what you’re watching for an M-rated animated series on Adult Swim.īut gameplay is most important. Anytime you make an undetected kill, the camera zooms in and darkens the background, highlighting you and your victim as you plunge your blade into him and then toss his body aside or through a grate. The look is gorgeous thanks to the same talented artists and animators responsible for developer Klei Entertainment’s other downloadable game series, Shank. Instead, it takes the best ingredients from both new and old examples of the stealth genre and mixes them into a potent knockout brew. Laudably, there isn’t just one trick in Ninja’s bag. And not often enough, it comes in its purest shape, in which you face near-certain death – or at least, extremely long odds – if you’re spotted. In other instances, it blends with an action title, like the Sam “Panther” Fisher version of Splinter Cell Conviction. Sometimes it slips in under the guise of a role-playing game, such as a no-kill play-through of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Stealth, befitting of its very definition, sneaks into our games in many forms.
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