R4 Reviews | Mark of the Ninja Remastered

____________

This post is sponsored by the NSA Creators.

You know the drill. Click this to know more, and if you find what we do to be interesting and you meet the requirements, consider ing.

~~~

Different types of games appeal to different types of players, but one genre that only a special group of people manage to truly enjoy are stealth games. They require a certain amount of tenacity, clever planning, and careful observation of each area in each level—some people just don't have the patience and qualities to enjoy something like that. But if you're reading this right now, and you don't particularly like the genre or haven't tried a stealth game yet, I recommend that you move on forward and read the rest of this review. Mark Of The Ninja and its remastered version are experiences that I very much enjoyed. And I know that if you give it a shot and let yourself get used to the slower pace, you'll find yourself to be enjoying one of the best, and most underrated Indies out there.

A game as amazing as this getting swept under the carpet is criminal, and I'm here today to share my thoughts on it and what I think of this masterpiece. I really think this game deserves more attention, and I'd appreciate it if you take some time out of your day to know a little bit more about it. So, with that said and done, let's get right on with the review.

Table Of Contents

Basic Information

Graphics

Sound

Gameplay

Replay Value

Final Verdict

And yes, to avoid spoilers, I won't be talking about the story. But I will talk about what I think of it.

The story is great, and by the time the credits started rolling, there were a lot of unanswered questions that I felt like are the perfect setup for a future prequel, sequel, etc. Questions like "Who is the protagonist?" may be better left unanswered to keep some mystery, but even just a little more context about what happened prior to the game's events would be nice. There's even an extra level packed in this version of Mark Of The Ninja. It gives us some backstory on one of the characters, Dosan, and explains what sort of impact he left on the game's plot and why he is one of the most important of the Hisomu clan. Although it is short, it is certainly sweet. Come on, Klei. I need more!!

Now, proceed.

~~~

____________

~~~

Basic Information

Developers: Klei Entertainment

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Release Date (Nintendo Switch Ver.): October 9, 2018

Genres: Action-Adventure, Platformer, and Stealth

Mode(s): Single-player

Price: $19.99

~~~

____________

~~~

Graphics

One thing that absolutely stands out when you start playing Mark Of The Ninja is its gorgeous visuals. Every single cutscene in this game looks fantastic, all of them catching my attention with their beautiful cartoonish style and slick movement. The cutscenes in Mark Of The Ninja manage to make you feel like you're not playing the game anymore, and instead transport you to a different world where every second feels like you're watching the best cartoon ever that is hidden within one of the best Indies ever.

And even when there isn't a cutscene playing, the game still looks impressive. Whether you are walking, climbing, distracting, or killing, the game looks and feels like an interactive cartoon where every little frame of movement is brought to life with its unique visual style and smooth animation. Whenever I was playing Mark Of The Ninja, there was never a moment where the the game looked and/or felt bad. Every single action that is performed by you or by the enemies all feel so great to watch, and every single piece of the game's levels all feel amazing to just look at. To sum it all up: the remaster takes an already great looking game, and makes a ton of improvements that make the world feel more like it is made out of moving ink. And Mark Of The Ninja is one of the many games that manage to do just that.

There are two neat things that Mark Of The Ninja uses that I haven't seen in any other game yet, and those two are unique ideas and work very well in the type of game that Mark Of The Ninja is. The first one that I would like to discuss allows you to easily identify when you're visible, or invisible to the enemy. For example, the costumes that you wear in the game have a lot of different colors that Klei decided to go with to make each costume feel different from the last. You can only see all the colors on each suit when you are visible to the enemy, i.e. when you are under a working lightbulb, lit up by an enemy's flashlight and so on, whilst you are black and red in darkness. It is pure genius, and it easily lets the player know when they can attack, and when they should reposition themselves to stay hidden. The other neat little feature Mark Of The Ninja has lets you know and predict when enemies will move, and where they'll be moving to. It is beyond useful, and has its uses besides predicting enemies.

Noise that is made by the player, enemy, or any other thing that can make noise in the game, can be identified by rapidly expanding circles/rings. Example: when the Ninja sprints, every step that he takes will create one of these circles, and when enemies are within the range of the circle, they will immediatley hear you, and either investigate or start attacking. In other Stealth games, you are left to assume if a thing that you will do, such as throwing a bottle, will catch the attention of an enemy. But here, that's not the case. The feature allows you to mess up less, and allows you to focus more on executing your deathtrap instead of worrying if it will actually work.

But there's one thing I would like to point out here. And that thing, is the game's frame rate. From what I've seen in other videos and reviews about the Switch version of Mark Of The Ninja Remastered, some people have absolutley no problem with how the game runs, and say that the game runs as smooth as ice. Some people on the other hand, say that the frame rate constantly fluctuates and hinders the game's potential to be great on the Switch. For me personally, I have had no issues with it. It feels steady, and it makes the world all the more cartoony thanks to how smooth it is. I don't know what causes the issue or how to fix it, but I assure you that if you want a great game and have $20 to spare, I suggest that you go for it. Like I said before, I do not have this problem, and I hope that if you decide to buy the game, I hope that you don't too. But it is rather disappointing to see the game at a locked 30 frames per second while in handheld mode, while the Xbox 360 version of the original Mark Of The Ninja runs at 60 frames per second. I personally don't have much issue with lower frame rate, just as long as the game is playable. And for the Switch version of Mark Of The Ninja Remastered, that is the case. I have bad eyesight, and the lower number of pixels and lower frame rates on some Switch versions of games is something that I don't have much of a problem with, and is near-invisible to me. But just because I don't see the issue doesn't mean that others won't. I felt like bringing it up so that I could

make this blog longer.

inform everyone who was wondering about how the game actually runs on Switch and things like that.

To end off the section on a high-note, the game, by visuals and presentation alone, sells the feeling of being a ninja and the thrill of executing missions at night. The game's environments look and feel dark, and I suggest that you turn off the lights and lower the in-game brightness to really sell that excitement of being a real ninja. The game presents itself well with dark environments, gorgeous visuals, slick and smooth animation, and has its own ideas that set itself apart from other Stealth games on the market. This has to be one of the best looking games I have layed my eyes on, and it looks absolutely fantastic considering that it is a remaster of a game that was released 7-8 years ago.

~~~

____________

~~~

Sound

The key to a good stealth game is having clear communication between the game and the player. The graphics need to be clean, enemies and objects should be easily distinguishable from the background, and maybe the most important of them all: solid sound design—Mark Of The Ninja Remastered has all of that.

Most times, we don't listen to how a game sounds, because making a game sound great isn't something that is hard to do. Nearly every modern and retro game are easy to hear, so sometimes we overlook it.

In games like Mark Of The Ninja, sound plays a key role. In a Stealth game, being able to predict the enemy's movement in another room can be tricky. But, if you can clearly hear the enemy's footsteps without having to go into the room, you can plan out when you can strike. Then again, Mark Of The Ninja is a 2D Stealth game. And in most 2D games, you can see everything that is in front, behind, and around you. Mark Of The Ninja byes that by limiting how much you see in the 2D space, with you needing to press your ear against the door, peek your head through vents, and so on to grasp and see what's beyond the unknown. But even before you do that, you can get a feel for what's inside that room thanks to the rapidly expanding rings that I mentioned earlier. It is such s cool mechanic, it is used geniusly and I hope that future 2D Stealth games make use of it. In a way, it makes sound a visual element.

And like most games, there are certain sound cues for moments when you die, get heard by an enemy, etc. All of which are easy to hear and identify from each other. Some of the tunes, like the ones that play when you are detected by an enemy, are absolute gold. They are all memorable, and each one lets you know how you should react when you hear them. The few songs in the game are all very enjoyable to listen to, and give moments of excitement and fear in the middle of all the silence that you normally experience while sneaking around the game's levels.

The voice acting in Mark Of The Ninja is great, every line of dialogue is delivered well and each of them carry emotion to further make the cutscenes feel alive. And again, even when the game isn't playing a cutscene, the voice acting is still great. All in all, the game has good sound design. Mark Of The Ninja Remastered is easy to hear, the sound cues are easy to differentiate, the handful of songs are amazing, the rapidly expanding rings are genius, and the voice acting is superb.

~~~

____________

~~~

Gameplay

In Mark Of The Ninja, you play as a ninja who is both overpowered and underpowered compared to the enemies. To kill enemies, you need to sneak up on them, press a button, and do a quick-time-event. Mes the QTE will result in an Imperfect Kill, which will cause the enemies to scream and alert any nearby guards to where the kill took place. The mechanic might seem annoying at first, but overtime, you get used to doing it and it starts to become second-nature. There is also a costume that removes the QTE, the Path Of The Hunter, which can be unlocked by playing and slowly completing the skill tree that the game has. With the ability to easily kill enemies just as long as you aren't seen by them makes the ninja we play as seem overpowered, but the fact that the ninja is basically useless in hand-to-hand combat makes him seem underpowered. It is realistic, as ninjas are meant to be messengers and not warriors, but it does take some getting used to.

Not being able to have a back-up plan in the moments that you get caught is a little complaint coming from me. Yes, if you are quick enough, you can just run away unscathed. Enemies have long ranged-weapons, and although you can eventually knock them down, it will most of the time end in a messy execution. And you also get detected and get some points deducted for raising alarms, which will affect your total score at the end of the level. It may not seem like much of a big deal, but when you put a score system in front of me, I just can't help but be just a little bit ticked when I mess something up.

Mark Of The Ninja demands stealth. You'll have to get used to being sneaky as the only option to go through levels. But you are rewarded handsomely with bonus points for not raising any alarms, not killing enemies, and not getting detected.

And that has a connection to my next complaint: the ease of restarting a checkpoint. In a Stealth game, a seemingly perfect plan can go wrong by just one little mistake, and Mark Of The Ninja is no different. When you mess up, get detected, and get a chunk of your score depleted, it is very easy to just restart a checkpoint. I'm not saying that the game should contain permadeath or anything like that, it's just the fact that when you see even one little thing go unexpectedly wrong, you can immediatley restart from the last checkpoint with absolutely no consenquence. And the respawns are quick too, and while that is a good thing, it gives the player more of a reason to restart checkpoints over and over again until everything in their plan eventually works. It insteads forces the player to think that restarting from the last checkpoint is better than progressing through even after something goes wrong. And I'd like to add that from my experience, the checkpoints feel like they're everywhere. For some, this may be a good thing. A lot of games have checkpoints, but I don't know why it stands out more in Mark Of The Ninja. Maybe thanks to the score system of the game, you are constantly pressured to being perfect, and when something goes wrong, you are instead pushed to restart from a checkpoint so that you can have the highest score possible, but that's just my theory. Or maybe games that have score systeme and grade you on your performance after each level are starting to drive me insane.

Like I've mentioned before, Mark Of The Ninja is a Stealth game. And one of the many cool things about Stealth games are the freedom they offer to players.

In Mark Of The Ninja, the levels are your playground. The game gives the player a lot of room for experimentation, and with the amount of toys that the game throws at you, that is a very good thing. The level design is intricate, with many branching paths that allow you to tackle levels in a ton of different ways. The different costumes, distraction items, and attack items allow you to make your ninja to be suited perfectly to the type of player you are. Finding the perfect setup for you and using it efficiently is the key to success.

Take me, for example. I like using the outfit Path Of Nightmares alongside the Spike Mine because thanks to the suit, when enemies discover bodies, they will get terrified which can result to Friendly Fire. It can go on and on with new guards alerting other guards, and then the other guards getting terrified, and them shooting and alerting other guards, and so on. It is a seemingly never-ending cycle of death and carnage, and traumatizing the enemies never felt old. It made me feel evil and badass, which is all I need.

s e n d    h e l p .

It made me use deceased bodies of enemies in a new way, with me often times dragging them, hanging them, and sometimes just straight up throwing them in front of enemies. But not everyone will like my playstyle, maybe you want to sneak around more efficiently with the Path Of Silence, or maybe you want to be granted the ability to teleport with the Path Of The Mark, I don't know!

There are even skill points you get for completing optional tasks, reaching certain scores, and finding Scrolls scattered across the level. Those skill points can be used to get new skills and items that can be utilized in the levels. Like one where you can lower yourself above an enemy, and hang them, and one where you can hide in a box to fill that Metal Gear Solid-shaped hole in our hearts.

I recommend this video for a more in-depth explanation and stuff.

Thanks to its well-designed levels, whichever vent or door you decide to go through will always lead to something worth-while. The map has collectibles, known as Artifacts and Scrolls. Both give the player more points that add up to their total score, but only Scrolls offer up little bits of lore. There are three of these two types of collectibles in each level, and they are very easy to find.. The Scrolls are very interesting, as although each one of them are short, all of them expand further upon the game's world, and gives us some deeper insight on the game's narrative.

Movement in the game feels fantastic. The simple motions like running up walls, grappling, jumping, and so on, feel great to witness and execute.

In short, it makes you FEEL like a ninja.

The character feels great to command thanks to the tight and responsive controls the game has. Even it you take away all the Stealth, combat, and puzzles, and only leave in some platforming, the ninja will feel nothing short of enjoyable to play as.

Mark Of The Ninja has a lot of rulee that it sets up to be followed by the player. And those rules are all simple and consistent. In a stage, a flash of lightning can give guards a chance to spot you if you are in front of them or somewhere where they can see you. Wherever stage you are, that rule will always remain simple and consistent. They will always stay as they are, and they won't change. Pretty much everything in Mark Of The Ninja is simple, and consistent whether it would happen to be the game's rules or artstyle. If you take a look at the game's regulations and think that you can do this or that, chances are, you probably can. And that simplicity and consistency is what makes the gameplay, and every other aspect of Mark Of The Ninja so great.

~~~

____________

~~~

Replay Value

After I finish the main story once, will there still be anything left to do? Of course!

If you haven't done it the first time around, you can go and get all the Artifacts and Scrolls on each level. Each level also has optional quests that you can take on, such as reaching a certain point of a stage without raising any alarms, and so on. Some Scrolls even require a puzzle to be solved. And those puzzles are tough, and do test your problem-solving skills. Nearly all of them had me scratching my head, which made it better when I got that "Eureka moment".

Like I've said before, there are some extra content that is squeezed in with this version of the game. It includes an extra level, which turns 12 levels to 13 levels, and adds one more outfit, attack item, and distraction item.

The game also has a New Game+ mode, which ditches the whole rapidly expanding circles system and delivers a more traditional and difficult Stealth experience.

All of these things don't really take a lot of time to do, it'll take maybe around maybe 30-40 hours. For me personally, although I have already 100%ed the game, I still keep coming back to play around with the guards and to try to master the game's 13 levels.

While Mark Of The Ninja is rather short and doesn't offer much after you've 100%ed it, playing the levels over and over again to the point where you can pull off the perfect plans without anything going wrong is a reward in itself. The feeling of satisfaction when everything goee right in a level feels great, and is a solid reward for level mastery.

~~~

____________

~~~

Final Verdict

As for my final thoughts: this game has to be one of my favorite in my Switch library. I think it is one of the best Indies I have ever played, and if you are willing to try it out, I suggest you go for it. I'm honestly surprised that no one talked about its release on Switch, like, seriously. This game has to be one of my favorites, and in my opinion, it is up there as one of the best Stealth games, and games in general, of the decade. But despite all that it has to offer, it is seemingly looked over. Although the game is rather obscure, it doesn't stop it from being a fantastic experience. It is 2D Stealth perfected.

Now, you may be wondering, where's the number rating? I bet you probably skipped to the end just to see it. Well, I'm gonna do something different. Instead of numbers to rate a game, I'll use words that will mean a certain group of numbers. For example, if a game is I think a 6/10 or somewhere in that range, I'll use the word "Okay" to describe the game. Why am I doing this? I don't know. But I made this so that ya'll can understand what I'm saying:

And in my personal opinion, I think that Mark Of The Ninja Remastered on the Nintendo Switch is...

Amazing.

9-9.9/10

This game is very nearly a 10/10 for me, but it isn't for everybody. There are some things in this blog that I felt like I criticized maybe a bit too harshly, but I truly do adore this game. Everything from the way it looks, to the fantastic gameplay, all the way down to how it sounds, everything just scratches the right spot. And that is why I think Mark Of The Ninja Remastered is indeed Amazing.

~~~

____________