Your character tends to slink through stages at a very deliberate pace, but you’ll have the option to run if you’d like, with the disadvantage of having your footfalls give away your location to nearby enemies. While the majority of the game is focused on moving from one point on the map to the next, the way to get there can be achieved through a few different paths, making subsequent playthroughs feel fresh again. Each stage is fairly open, allowing a lot of verticality and options for the player that’ll allow you to tackle each objective placed before you in a variety of ways. The game is laid out across sixteen stages, divided across four areas. This tattoo amplifies his abilities, and is used as the character is deployed against deadly, military style forces that want to eradicate your clan. Mark of the Ninja puts you in the role of a master ninja, imbued with a deadly mark tattooed across his body. Seriously, the game more than deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as other XBLA hits like Shadow Complex and Braid, and delivers a pretty unique, 2D stealth experience that is unlike anything I’ve played on the service previously. Mark of the Ninja is absolutely fantastic, and can easily be slotted into my personal top 10 list of all-time, great XBLA releases. I’m not as familiar with developer Klei Entertainment’s previous work as I probably should be, but having played through Mark of the Ninja for this review, I’m certainly more than willing to backtrack through some of their previous releases.

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