There aren't very many puzzles in the traditional gaming sense, but rather, the whole game is a sort of puzzle, handing the player all the tools they need and letting them figure out a solution. Another features poisonous gas and moving crates that can be manoeuvred around as they proceed on their track. One memorable level has you infiltrating an enormous castle during a thunderstorm, with the occasional flashes of lightning giving away your position if you’re not hidden properly.

Knowing this, there’s always a tense air to every action you make, making each kill and narrow escape a thrilling experience.Įvery level is designed with unique mechanics in mind, organically introducing the concept to the player and then building upon it as the level progresses and becomes more difficult. One minute everything goes according to plan and then something goes wrong, demanding that you think fast on your feet to find a new solution. It’s moments like these which show how well Klei has mastered the design of a stealth game, with the overall pace oscillating wildly between calm and chaotic at the drop of a hat. Not seeing a difference, we chose to kill him for the extra points, but it turned out that he was wearing a heartbeat monitor which alerted the whole complex to the presence of an intruder. There are some real consequences to player choice, too, with some surprising outcomes happening in what should’ve otherwise been a straightforward plan.įor example, one mission saw us having to steal an item off a guard, and we were given the choice of killing him or just pickpocketing the item. You can choose to kill all the guards in a room, let them all live, or bypass the room entirely in favor of taking an alternate route, and each one of these ways is equally viable. Each level is laid out in a relatively non-linear way, giving the players ample choice in exactly how they’d like to approach the solution to a problem. Mark of the Ninja is a stealth game through and through, playing the tropes straight in a way that encourages experimentation, creativity, quick reflexes, and quite a bit of planning. It all meshes together quite well, making for an experience that’ll have you eager to play that next level to see what happens next, and that’s before we even get to the stellar gameplay. Even so, there’s plenty of dialogue laid into each level as well, with Ora being frequently used as a convenient device for conveying exposition and light tutorializing. Each stage is bookended by a brief fifteen to thirty second voiced cutscene that echoes the art style of Samurai Jack, and these go a long way towards setting the tone and getting you accustomed to the cast of characters. It may not be a terribly emotional plot, but it's certainly engaging and well-paced, with much of this being due to the excellent voice work and cutscenes. As the plot progresses and the protagonist becomes more unhinged, the lines begin to blur in more ways than one as alliances are called into question and friends become foes. While Ora remains a normal (albeit badass) ninja, the protagonist has received the eponymous Mark of the Ninja, a tattoo which grants the wearer superhuman reflexes and senses, but eventually drives them mad. Mark of the Ninja follows the story of a nameless ninja-sometimes referred to as “The Champion”-on a quest with his fellow ninja, Ora, to slay the evil Count Karajan for attacking the Hisomu clan with his private military group.

It turns out that time has been extremely kind to this game Mark of the Ninja still stands as one of the best stealth games ever made, and now it looks and sounds better than ever. Now, six years later, Klei has brought Mark of the Ninja: Remastered to the Switch, promising all the content of the Special Edition along with a few other improvements. Boasting gorgeous hand-drawn visuals and tight, open-ended gameplay, this new platformer quickly developed a reputation for its quality, cementing it as a cult classic and a genre standout. In 2012, Klei Entertainment (which would later go on to produce Don’t Starve) debuted Mark of the Ninja on the Xbox Live Arcade, introducing a bold 2D take on the stealth genre.

Mark of the ninja remastered glitches