As the titular ninja – which leads one to wonder, who the mysterious Mark is that is being alluded to – you leap into the shadows, employ a variety of tools to accomplish your goals, and sometimes, gank someone with your blade. ![]() What separates Mark of the Ninja from the many venerable stealth legacies of games like Thief, Dishonored, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid is the degree of precision by which its mechanics have been crafted and its levels and enemies have been laid out. ![]() When the noise of your footsteps are precisely measured, and when enemy cues are easily read, every mistake you make is yours and yours alone as developer Klei Entertainment leaves none of its design to randomly generated chance. I suspect that for some people, the game’s broad cartoon style leads them to underestimate the craftsmanship of this, when in truth, it actually serves to support its design ethos. Shattered lights, distant footsteps, shadowed line art, they all communicate the state of objects with such clarity that playing Mark of the Ninja ceases to be about getting lucky and more about measuring the precise reach of your enemy’s senses and the exact applicability of your noise makers and smoke bombs. The only source of frustration I had with Mark of the Ninja is the game’s decision to create a very sticky ninja. It’s a choice I respect mostly because it means you’ll never fall off an edge due to your impatience or exit a vent when you shouldn’t.
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