In the conversation of great indie games, Mark of the Ninja doesn’t get mentioned enough. It’s as good of a stealth game as you’ll find and should be mentioned with the all-time AAA stealth IPs. This is how a 2D stealth game should play.
To be fair, there aren’t a lot of 2D stealth games out there. Even back in the retro days of the ‘80s and ‘90s, there was Metal Gear and…that’s about it. Games like Splinter Cell, Thief, and Metal Gear Solid started in 3D in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. So even though Mark of the Ninja is part of a sparsely populated genre, it sets the bar high.
The easiest games to review or talk about have a good mix of good and bad aspects to them. It gives you more to talk about and doesn’t make you sound like either a hater or a fanboy just dumping on a game or loving it too much. Mark of the Ninja doesn’t fall into that category. There’s very little to dislike about it. It feels crafted – a little indie gem of stealth goodness that absolutely makes you feel like a ninja. Too many ninja games focus on combat over stealth. Mark of the Ninja is all about hiding and striking from the shadows. You’re a ghost – one second your enemy is there, the next he’s dead and gone. You strike and disappear with none the wiser. That’s what Mark of the Ninja does, and does well.
Patience is key. Sometimes you have to wait and study the movement of your enemies. Impatience and hastiness will get you caught and killed.
Thankfully, the game is generous with auto-save points if you do get caught or killed. You can restart from your last checkpoint whenever you want and the game seems very aware of not making the player replay large portions of gameplay in order to get back to the point where they died. When you die, you start right at the section where you messed up, or close to it. You’re not penalized in any way either. The game just demands that you get good.
Each stage has three bonus achievements you can aim for, a hidden stealth-puzzle room, and three scrolls to find that give you bonus points. You get points for hiding from the guards, for every guard you take out, distracting the guards, every dead body you hide, etc. There are three point-thresholds to aim for as you work your way through each stage. Accumulating more points gives you access to more ninja tools between stages that you can unlock and upgrade to terrify and subdue your foes.
Every stealth challenge is constructed like a puzzle. You’re not on a timer of any sort, so there’s no need to rush. Your job is to think through each puzzle and execute it. The big difference being there’s not one set way to solve each puzzle. You’re given creative freedom, and the tools, to approach each situation differently. The farther you progress, the more ninja tools and weapons you unlock to give you even more creative freedom.
VERDICT
If you’ve ever played Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief, or any other immersive sim with stealth, Mark of the Ninja shares a lot of DNA with those games, only in 2D. Plus, it has a great story that’s told through animated cutscenes between stages and dialog during gameplay. It’s well-told and one of the better stories I’ve seen in a game in awhile. Mark of the Ninja is an outstanding game.
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