Most people might take their stealth tips from Solid Snake or Sam Fisher. Me, Iâm more in tune with, uh, the Kool-Aid man. Seriously. Just burst into the room in the most reckless way possible and âproblem solveâ by shooting people up close in the faceâthatâs how I do things. Patience, finesse and furtiveness arenât my thing.
So before starting Mark of the Ninja up, I assumed my brash nature would be at odds with what the 2D game required of me. I was rightâat first. The game starts with the assumption that you are already a smooth killing machine, and the pith lies in the tension between a playerâs clumsiness and the eventual embodiment of the refined ninja. The ultimate revelation comes in the transformation, in the metaphorical gain of the black belt. The game teaches you to feel at home in the shadows, to become quick on your feet, to bear the mark of the ninja proudly, with honor. And honor is one of the most important things in the game, but more on that in a second.
This much I can tell you about the premise, because I had a difficult time piecing the narrative together and not only is it lackluster, itâs not really why youâll be playing the game anyway. Youâre a ninja. Youâre a part of a clan that is endangered. And thereâs a corporate giant of sorts that threatens you. You bear the mark of the ninja, which is dangerous and will eventually require you to kill yourself. But before then, youâre to rid the world of Evil Dudesâand you know theyâre evil because they hide behind their technological doodads and you, you have honor. Honor means fighting with your sword, your fists, and using tools like smokebombs and bamboo daggers.
A curious approach to characterizing the Ninja, given that a quick Wikipedia search tells me that though their unorthodox methods of warfare allowed them to specialize in infiltration, sabotage and assassination, it was the samurai who upheld rules about honor. Doesnât hiding in the shadows and killing people secretly strike you asâŠwell, not honorable? Wouldnât an honorable fight mean a no frills one on one where both people can see each other? And plus, itâs not like that sword and dagger arenât technology either, no? Most things around you is technology, tech isnât just stuff like computers. So Mark of the Ninja strikes me like a (typical) conflation of Asian folklore combined with a naive, but common portrayal of how technology inherently erodes tradition (and ruins everything). Still, both of these aspects inform the mechanics and the narrative immensely.
WHY: Mark of the Ninja is a well-designed stealth game that makes the genre fun for both newcomers and veterans of the genre alike. I like to call it stealth popcorn.
Mark of the Ninja
Developer: Klei Entertainment
Platforms: Xbox Live Arcade
Released: September 7th
Type of game: 2D Stealth Game
What I played: I spent 7.5 hours playing up to the middle of the last level. Iâve unlocked a number of moves and tools, and have started attempting some of the challenge levels and special level challenges.
Two Things I Loved
When in the shadows, I look like Iâm wearing a black shinobi shozokoâthe true color stealthâregardless of what color it actually was.
Movement feels so good. My favorite is the swoosh you feel as you grapple from point to point.
Two Things I Hated
Make the laser puzzles stop, please.
Sometimes, though seldom, the guards would glitch out and not move and just look back and forth, making stealth impossible.
Made-to-Order Back-of-Box Quotes
Bring honor to your clan with Mark of the Ninja -Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku.com
âHuh? Whatâs that sound?â -Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku.com
The bulk of the game boils down to having a place that you must infiltrate, and the obstacles in your way change as you progress. First it largely involves mitigating a guardâs field of vision and their patrol path while maximizing your own economy of movement. Not stealthânot because this isnât a stealth game, but because stealth is not necessary to traverse the levels of Mark of the Ninja. This isnât a negative thing. Those like me, the initially clumsy and unrefined types, wonât get heavily punished for being unable to be sneaky enough.
It wasnât uncommon for me to go into a room and mess up, have something notice me, and then have to run away while alarms went off. And I could try again and again, for getting awayâbe it running back to the darkness, or going into a ventâwas easy. Thankfully! Feeling like I got slapped in the face whenever I made a mistake in other stealth games would make me resolve to defy the game and do things my way. I mean, if Iâm going to get caught anyway, might as well have some fun with it, right? Screw it. But here, trial and error wasnât frustrating. Once you become fluent in the language of the game, you can start doing things the ârightâ way. Move without being seen. Give your enemies more than just a âpeasantâs death,â which is where you donât kill your enemies gracefully and silently. Or donât kill anyone at allâhave it be like you werenât even there.
To be clear, Mark of the Ninja may not be harsh for being inept, but it doesnât reward you for it, either. You get a higher score if you play the way a ninja would, and levels have special sub-challenges that award you better scores and unlocks (and give you reason to revisit levels). Thatâs probably where stealth veterans will find something to do. Having the game tally your performance at the end, with a count of who you killed, who you sneaked by, and so on, in conjunction with becoming comfortable with the way the game worked was the central motivator in learning how to truly become a ninja.
I saw how much better I could be doing, and I got a taste of the devilish satisfaction that comes with, say, slitting an enemyâs throat and then throwing them off an edge without others noticing, that the game indirectly encouraged me to become better at it. It was like having the silent hardassâmaybe a teacher, or a parentâgrade your performance, coming up short, and then scrambling to meet their expectations. Because the truth of it is, they know youâre capable of moreâbut you have to realize it and and apply yourself. Until then all you see is a constant reminder of imperfectionâloud footsteps, spotted traps, alarms set off. Itâs just a matter of how much of of it youâre willing to acceptâŠa matter of honor, you might say. Appropriate, then, that levels score you by enumerating your âtotal honor.â
As you go on, the levels become more complex through all sorts of additionsâfrom guard dogs, to shielded enemies, to lasers and deadly gas and even weather effects. Most of these kept the game interesting and varied as you had to reconsider how to move through. At first these are simple configurations, but eventually you move onto complicated spaces bursting with things that can see me or kill me. The way you barely have any room to move seems daunting. But at that point, the game had taught me its secret art. I would crack my knuckles, and tackle the most well-guarded rooms. Still, the moments when the game shone the most tended to when it had just a few guards looking in the worst places (for me). No special high-security gadgets needed, just tight level design with a predilection for letting me approach infiltration in a handful of ways. Mark of the Ninja has this in shuriukens spades.
The exception was when the game started including too many puzzles that involved crates blocking lasers from eviscerating you. Initially something that mixed things up, eventually it became a cause for frustration that didnât feel like it added anything to the game. Other than cursing, I mean.
The ways you can approach the levels also evolve as you go along, too. You start off with items like daggers, which can break lights or smack a guard to catch their attention, and smoke bombs, which can trick sensors and give you room to escape. Then you get fancy stuff like flesh eating bugs, and you learn more complicated moves, like dangling someone out of the ceiling. Heck, you even get a cardboard box at one pointâas you should!
I tended to stick to setting up a mine, then throwing a noisecracker that would draw enemies toward it. Sometimes my killing was more personal, in which case Iâd have to catch the guard looking away from me, at which point Iâd be prompted to press x and either left or right (determined at random). Not meant to be a challenge per se, but itâs a good way to monitor if a player doesnât have patience and pushes buttons with a knee-jerk reaction.
The game also gives you ample information on your actions. The audibility of your actions is elegantly visualizedâsay, footsteps have a certain radius, and running has an even bigger oneâand this allows you to plan your actions tactically. You know exactly where to throw a trap without having a guard see it, where a guard will search for you after theyâve heard something, where guards were last before you lost sight of them, amongst other things. This, in conjunction with ample tools and multiple ways of approaching a room, meant I would sometimes have a sadistic satisfaction in deciding how I wanted to take care of things this time. Is this what Jigsaw killer from Saw feels like? I hope I donât bring dishonor to my clan talking like this!
Mark of the Ninja did something that I find remarkable: it made the stealth game approachable, without compromising the genre. Now if you excuse me, I have a stop a man thatâs been corrupted by the tendrils of technology. Iâll make sure he doesnât see me coming.
