You can choose to kill all the guards in a room, let them all live, or bypass the room entirely in favor of taking an alternate route, and each one of these ways is equally viable. Each level is laid out in a relatively non-linear way, giving the players ample choice in exactly how they’d like to approach the solution to a problem. Mark of the Ninja is a stealth game through and through, playing the tropes straight in a way that encourages experimentation, creativity, quick reflexes, and quite a bit of planning. It all meshes together quite well, making for an experience that’ll have you eager to play that next level to see what happens next, and that’s before we even get to the stellar gameplay. Even so, there’s plenty of dialogue laid into each level as well, with Ora being frequently used as a convenient device for conveying exposition and light tutorializing. Each stage is bookended by a brief fifteen to thirty second voiced cutscene that echoes the art style of Samurai Jack, and these go a long way towards setting the tone and getting you accustomed to the cast of characters. It may not be a terribly emotional plot, but it's certainly engaging and well-paced, with much of this being due to the excellent voice work and cutscenes. As the plot progresses and the protagonist becomes more unhinged, the lines begin to blur in more ways than one as alliances are called into question and friends become foes. While Ora remains a normal (albeit badass) ninja, the protagonist has received the eponymous Mark of the Ninja, a tattoo which grants the wearer superhuman reflexes and senses, but eventually drives them mad. Mark of the Ninja follows the story of a nameless ninja-sometimes referred to as “The Champion”-on a quest with his fellow ninja, Ora, to slay the evil Count Karajan for attacking the Hisomu clan with his private military group. It turns out that time has been extremely kind to this game Mark of the Ninja still stands as one of the best stealth games ever made, and now it looks and sounds better than ever. Now, six years later, Klei has brought Mark of the Ninja: Remastered to the Switch, promising all the content of the Special Edition along with a few other improvements. Boasting gorgeous hand-drawn visuals and tight, open-ended gameplay, this new platformer quickly developed a reputation for its quality, cementing it as a cult classic and a genre standout. In 2012, Klei Entertainment (which would later go on to produce Don’t Starve) debuted Mark of the Ninja on the Xbox Live Arcade, introducing a bold 2D take on the stealth genre.
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