Knights of the Cardboard Castle

Remember how much I loved the Arkham Asylum and Arkham City games? Well, as one review put it Mark of the Ninja is mostly the same, except in 2D. It’s a brilliantly realized, well-crafted take on the stealth genre. The lead designer claimed that he wanted to make a game in which ninjas actually behave like ninja, that is being masters of stealth and misdirection. At this, the game certainly succeeds being a purer stealth game than almost anything I can think of.

• The game’s visuals are amazing with a stylized 2D cartoony look. The cutscenes are pure Saturday morning cartoon sequences. The art design, incorporating anime elements in a Western setting (here ninjas fight soldiers with automatic weapons and bandits with explosive traps) is reminiscent of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s evident that this saves them, this being after all an indie production, and yet this is precisely the right art style for this game.

• At the same time, the visuals do a fantastic job of conveying all of the information needed to play the game in an unambiguous manner. When sound is generated by actions, such as running across a surface for example, bubbles are drawn to indicate the range that the sound travels. When your ninja has a direct line of sight to something, the visuals are crisp and clear. When he does not, the visuals are blurred instead. When your ninja is in shadow, he is shown in black and white. When he is in light, he is shown in full colour. All of these elements show information to the player directly on the playing area without needing to add clunky UI indicators. They’re indicative of how well-designed the game is.
• That said, there are some minor issues due to the 2D nature of the game world. Some objects in the game are solid, for example, walls that you can climb. Others are mere background decoration. Sometimes it isn’t clear whether a column that you can see is climbable or mere decoration until you walk up to it.

• In this game, your ninja is stealthy but generally isn’t suited for direct combat. His agility allows him to jump pretty high, grapple onto many objects, stick to any wall, cling to some ceiling surfaces and generally suffer no injuries from falls. But he can only reliably kill enemies if the enemy is surprised. The types of kills included are all straight from the Batman games, including the old-fashioned sneaking up from behind, hiding in a vent and pulling an enemy in, hanging like a bat upside down and pulling up enemies passing underneath and so forth.
• But the game enables a complete stealth approach with no killing at all. Indeed, one of the alternate ninja costumes you unlock has enhanced stealth ability (no sound when running) but no weapon at all. Alternately, the game allows you to terrorize enemies too. For example hanging a dead enemy in the air will frequently terrorize other enemies who see the corpse. So does throwing the corpse of an enemy at another enemy while you are in stealth. Terrorized enemies run around wildly in a blind panic, shoot at anything that moves (including their own allies) and are unable to raise a general alarm. It’s great fun and you guessed it, there’s even a ninja costume that specializes in this.
• As usual, you can buy upgrades, which includes unlocking additional killing techniques, distraction items and killing items. Distraction items include noisemakers, flares and even a cardboard box that your ninja can carry around and hide inside when enemies are prowling! Attack items include caltrops, explosive mines and even a dart poisoned with a substances that terrorizes its target. I found that I could generally complete the game without using any items at all. They may be required in the New Game Plus mode but I was loath to use any in my normal run because you have only a very limited supply of items for each level.

• I’d say that the story is a cut above the usual with no big surprises. I guessed the two big twists of the game pretty early because the game drops decent hints but they’re still a lot of fun. The game has a psychedelic / dream sequence. Having recently played Mass Effect 3 which contains similar scenes, I wish to state that Mark of the Ninja handles it far more adroitly and convincingly.

I found the main game to be pretty short and I’m surprised to note that some reviewers found some of the later sections to be too difficult. The game length is extended through the optional challenge rooms, one for each level if you can find it I believe, as well as the optional objectives. These are pretty fun to do, ranging from a time limit for achieving the primary objective, to finding and sounding gongs on the level, to letting all dogs on the level sniff you and so forth. When you beat the game, you also unlock the New Game Plus mode which is punishingly difficult: you are only shown enemies in your direct line of sight, all enemies kill you in one hit, you aren’t shown the range of sounds and the visual cone of enemies and so forth. Experts and diehard fans can probably eke out many more hours out of this game in this mode. Overall a fantastically-made, well-designed game that I highly recommend to anyone who wants a real stealth game.