Review: Mark of the Ninja

Mark of the Ninja is a stealth platformer for the Xbox Live Arcade and PC. It was developed by Klei Entertainment.

The player's ninja, about to get the drop on an unsuspecting guard.

A ninja is tasked by his master to hunt down and kill Karajan, a businessman who orchestrated an assault on their clan, killing many of its members. To aid him in his quest, the ninja is given a tattoo that greatly enhances his abilities, but will slowly make him insane. Aided by his companion Ora, the ninja has to storm the tower where Karajan resides, get past his small army of guards, kill Karajan, and finally commit suicide before the tattoo drives him completely mad.

Mark of the Ninja is a simple “reach the goal at the end of the stage” game. Keeping you from said goal are many armed guards that you have to avoid. The game says you are completing objectives like “infiltrate the compound” or “reach the next floor”, but they are really just ways to dress up the plot as something more complicated.

Gameplay revolves around sound detection and hiding in shadows. You are supposed to sneak past guards by climbing through vents, climbing along the ceiling, and hiding behind things, all while avoiding making sounds and staying away from overhead lights and guard flashlights. Making sound merely draws guards toward your location, but if they see you they will open fire and, more importantly, your score will go down.

Sound is represented by blue rings, which indicate how far the sound reverberates. Actions like running create large rings, while doing things like tossing guard’s bodies create smaller rings. Making noise is not always a bad thing though, you can deliberately make noise to lure guards away from somewhere, or get them to turn around so you can kill them.

A yellow ring means a guard has spotted something, but does not mean they have seen you yet.

You get a score for each level based on your actions. Your score is based on doing things like avoiding guards, killing guards, or collecting artifacts and scrolls hidden in the level. You lose points if you are spotted or if someone finds a dead body, though I do not understand why you lose points for that.

Your main pieces of equipment are your sword and your kunai, the sword for killing and the kunai for making noise. When you get a high score in a level, or complete side objectives like kill a bunch of guards a certain way, you receive coins which you buy new equipment and moves with. Most of the moves are useful, and some of the traps you can buy are helpful for killing guards when you cannot just sneak up behind them, but most of the stuff you can buy is unnecessary.

You will regularly come across simple puzzles, like finding a fuse box to disable some lasers.

This game is very good at making sneaking really fun, and gives you plenty of ways to be a sneaky ninja assassin. You can pick up the controls almost immediately, and by the second level you will by analyzing all the ways you can get past a guard and whether it is worth it to kill them. The game is forgiving if you screw up, you can restart any time from one of the game’s many checkpoints so you focus on getting by the guards in the manner you want to. If you do not want to harm anyone that is fine, if you want to be as creative as you can that is fine too. I never once found the game to be frustrating; any time I got caught it was my own fault, not the game’s fault.

Killing is accomplished with very simple to follow action commands.

The point system could use some work. You get points for doing things like moving bodies out of the way, or scaring guards, or killing them in needlessly gory ways, even when it would be impractical to do so. It would have been nice to get a high score without pointless busywork.

I found it hard to care about the story because I did not know enough about the main characters to empathize for them, and the main ninja has no personality. As far as I knew the ninja clan deserved to be massacred. I had to look up the names of the characters because they were so forgettable. The ending was good though, it was genuinely surprising.

Mark of the Ninja is a very fun, very easy to pick up and play game that no one should have any serious issues with. There are a few missteps, but they are extremely minor and should not affect anyone’s enjoyment of it. I would definitely recommend this game for any fans of stealth games.