Mark of the Ninja: Remastered (Switch) review "Mark of the Ninja Remastered is the prettiest version yet of a stealth game made for people who don't like them."

I feel like playing the typical stealth-oriented game must qualify as some sort of torture, and I've never made a secret out of it. But I played Mark of the Ninja Remastered when it released on Nintendo Switch recently, and I surprised myself by having a genuinely great time. The title let me enjoy the satisfying parts of being a ruthless assassin without frustrating me with the unpleasant stuff. I definitely recommend it.

Mark of the Ninja Remastered is, as the title suggests, a remastered take on an earlier game. The original version debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in September of 2012, and eventually expanded to Mac and PC. Before then, developer Klei Entertainment was known for its work on the Shank titles, which I gather are quite good. Since 2012, though, the studio mostly seems to get recognized for Mark of the Ninja even though it also has produced modest hits such as Invisible, Inc. and Don't Starve. There's a reason for that: ninjas kick butt, and here you get to be one.



Most of the stealth games I've played in the past, even some of the ones that irritated me the least, have been three-dimensional excursions. Mark of the Ninja gets the job done with only two. Action is viewed from the side, with the camera pulled back far enough that you can often see a lot of what's going on around you and plan accordingly. You're not omniscient, though, and enemies might still surprise you when they emerge from shelter. For instance, they might come strolling through a door that was closed, and there's no real way your character would have known they were there unless he got close enough to produce audible footfalls.. which is certainly taken into account. Foes can hear you if you run around and make noise, and dogs can sniff you out even when you find shelter behind a potted plant and the guys with flashlights don't notice. So there's a bit of realism there, and it makes environments feel like places that might genuinely exist (as much as impregnable fortresses in a ninja action sequence ever can).

Your adventure through those environments begins as you wake to find your village of ninja warriors being invaded by armored soldiers with automatic weapons. They're indiscriminately shooting anything that lurks in the shadows, which will include you if you're not careful. Certainly, their targets include the guy who bravely rings the bell to sound the alarm. He gets gunned down immediately. You don't want to share his fate, so you follow your newfound friend, a helpful ninja named Ora. She points you to powerful equipment and offers the sort of general advice a tutorial might, but without getting annoying like a Hylian fairy.



Throughout the campaign's remainder, you spend more time alone than you do with a tour guide. You seldom have to worry about peaceful solitude, though, because your goal is to venture deep within heavily populated enemy territory. You are, after all, the last hope of your clan. Your body has been infused with ink that grants you power so tremendous that eventually it could consume your very mind. Before that happens, though, you mean to save your people from a danger that threatens to end them. So you sneak through the shadows and you chop up a lot of adversaries who clearly had it coming. You satisfy objectives and grab scrolls and always you move closer to the final moments of a story you know isn't likely to end happily.

Mark of the Ninja features a variety of ways to solve most problems, which is one of the things I like most about it. I also appreciate that the available approaches are about equally viable. If you want, you can fell goon after goon, leaving a bloody trail in your wake (or just hiding the bodies in dumpsters and the like when evidence becomes inconvenient). A more passive method is also fine. Vents aren't just a good place to hide bodies; they also let you sneak past sentries and security lasers. At the end of each stage, your score will be tallied and there's clearly not a lot of room for error, but you can squeak across the end line whether you exercised restraint or went after everything with a pulse like an angry chef with a Ginsu knife chopping up a cucumber. If you get spotted during your adventure and successfully fight your way to safety--which is totally doable in a lot of cases--you just have to settle for a lower score and maybe try again. Or you can try again from the last checkpoint instead, if that pleases you more. This is my idea of quality game design, because you're never punished unnecessarily for a mistake.



Besides taking advantage of the architecture in the sprawling environments, you'll rely on a growing assortment of tools and skills. As you gain points by clearing stages, you can invest in superior stealth moves and more lethal and creative kills. For instance, it becomes possible to grab a corpse, toss it to a grapple point and then let it hang there to serve as a ghoulish distraction for any men still patrolling the area. Or you can equip spike traps and deploy one near the base of a slope, knock out a spotlight by tossing a throwing star at it, then watch as a guard comes to investigate and stumbles across your lethal surprise. Warning: Mark of the Ninja Remastered is rated "M" for "Mature."

Although the game features its share of sterile and fairly standard environments, now rendered with higher resolution and detail than they were a half-dozen years ago, there also are moments of sheer beauty. I suppose there's something to be said about sneaking up behind a guy and running a sword clear through him while blood sprays everywhere, but I'm talking more about moments like the one when I perched in the limbs of a skeletal tree silhouetted against a backdrop of steel skyscrapers rising from foliage. I let myself pause to enjoy the vista. Then I dropped down and slaughtered the two guards who were too busy being evil minions to properly appreciate the splendor around them.



Not every moment in the game comes down to violence, though that's certainly the trend. When you want to obtain scrolls and enjoy the proverbs they contain, you often have to seek out a special hidden room and shrine where you will be rewarded for exercising a little more restraint. As you approach the shrine, you face a challenge that typically requires you to think outside the box instead of just swinging a sword around. You might have to move crates or manipulate lasers, for instance. Or you might have to descend a vertical shaft, dangling from precarious perches so you can toss stars and disable fuse boxes. Then again, you might have to drag corpses around and pile them in a heap at the base of some high ledges. Nobody's perfect.

Mark of the Ninja Remastered features the visually enhanced entirety of the original Mark of the Ninja, which was already a fairly lengthy adventure, and it bundles that meaty campaign with that an additional stage that originally was available only as DLC. There's also some developer commentary, if that's your thing, which was apparently prepared for the original Special Edition. The added bells and whistles are all well and good. They ensure you're getting the total ninja package, but they doesn't impress me as much as the fact Klei Entertainment managed to put together a satisfying stealth game that doesn't constantly make me wish I were playing something else instead. Even if you share my typical aversion to sneaky-sneak, I suggest you give this one a try sooner rather than later. As long as you're 17 or older, I mean. If you're under that age, forget everything I just wrote.

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Staff review by Jason Venter (January 06, 2019) Jason Venter has been playing games for 30 years, since discovering the Apple IIe version of Mario Bros. in his elementary school days. Now he writes about them, here at HonestGamers and also at other sites that agree to pay him for his words.