The stealth genre doesn’t quite die every few years so much as it gets reborn from its own ashes, like the mythical Phoenix. The last-gen days of Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell gave way to…well, nothing at all for a while. But then came the action-y Splinter Cell Conviction and the genre-blending Batman: Arkham Asylum. So where does next week’s Xbox Live Arcade-exclusive Mark of the Ninja fit in?
Everywhere. And nowhere.
This gorgeous 2D side-scroller is pure stealth – like a Metroidvania-style game starring old-school Sam Fisher. It’s an interesting $15 yang to the yin that is developer Klei Entertainment’s other XBLA series, Shank. While those games have you rushing headlong into the action, slicing and dicing anything that gets in your path, Mark of the Ninja rewards patience and planning.
Guards patrolling a hallway? Wait for them to turn their backs before you swoop in for the stab. Too many guys blocking your path to pick them off one-on-one? Use a dart to take out a light, or make a noise to lure them into a murder funnel. Later on those darts give way to smoke bombs, caltrops, and other ninja-tastic devices.
In my time with Ninja so far, the two things that stand out mostare the game’s flexibility and its post-level scoring system. In what I consider a hallmark of any great stealth title, you can genuinely play it in different ways – and more than that, Mark of the Ninja will recognize and reward you for experimenting, doling out XP for things such as silent kills or successfully getting past someone undetected (read: not killing them). So whether you want to go for a full nonlethal playthrough (it’s possible) or extinguish every bad guy in sight, you’ll be lauded for succeeding in your desired course of action.
Unlock new moves, like one where you can tie up and display bad guys in order to terrorize other enemies, a la Batman.
This dovetails directly into the scoring screen at the end of each of the campaign’s dozen missions. You’ll get a full breakdown of exactly who you killed, spared, alerted, avoided, or intimidated. You also earn a numerical score as well as a list of which hidden items you found or missed. It allows stealth-game completionists like me to easily see what I can do better when you return to replay a completed mission.
So Mark of the Ninja is clearly the anti-Shank, but it does have one key thing in common with its Klei cousin: it’s downright stunning to look at. The studio’s signature art style and amazing animation rivals anything you’d see on Cartoon Network. It also looks like it’ll rival anything currently calling itself a stealth game, in its own unique little side-scrolling XBLA way. Get it on your radar so it doesn’t ninja-vanish off of the sales charts in the wake of Summer of Arcade.
Ryan McCaffrey is the Executive Editor at IGN Xbox. He used to own a DeLorean, which is weird. Follow him on Twitter, on IGN, catch him on Podcast Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
Source : ign[dot]com
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