Mark of the Ninja Message Board older than one year ago

#burningquestions There's just something special about games that make you sneak. The push, the pull, the contemplative pause... and the rush of action. We've been spending the last week playing one of the most enjoyable stealth games in recent memory, and so we thought we'd take a closer look at the genre. What makes sneaking so much fun? What do we look for in a game about stealth? Is Metal Gear Solid about the sneaking, or is it about everything else? Short version: Why do we love stealth games so much? More »

Brad and his flowy cape of justice exact bloody, merciless revenge on nearsighted guards.

See exactly why this ninja master is one of the best stealth games in years.

Mission 13: A Moonlit Garden Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 12: The Return Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 11: Set to Flight Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 10: A Shattered Stronghold Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 09: A Blade at His Neck Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 8: The Inner Keep Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 6: An Ancestral Home Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 7: Above a Bottomless Chasm Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

#markoftheninja Most people might take their stealth tips from Solid Snake or Sam Fisher. Me, I'm more in tune with, uh, the Kool-Aid man. Seriously. Just burst into the room in the most reckless way possible and "problem solve" by shooting people up close in the face—that's how I do things. Patience, finesse and furtiveness aren't my thing. More »

Mission 3: The Trail of Shadow Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 5: The Fall of Hessian Tower Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 2: Breaching the Perimeter Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough. We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 4: A Change in Course Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough! We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mission 1: Ink and Dreams Welcome to IGN's Mark of the Ninja Walkthrough. We take a look at this title available only on Xbox Live Arcade where you play as a deadly ninja cursed with the "mark"- tattoos that grant you special abilities. Wield them to get revenge on those that attacked your clan.

Mark of the Ninja sneaks onto Xbox Live Marketplace today for 1200 MSP. Not that it's any good at sneaking, as Klei Entertainment just broadcasted the side-scrolling stealth game's arrival with a new trailer.

Joystiq's head ninja spoke with Klei's Nels Anderson this week, focusing on how the team want strong, flexible play while avoiding the frustration stealth games can cultivate.
"I thought the abundance of outlines threatened to make this an easy game, but my early takeaway is that your actions are easier to read, predict and eventually master. Understanding how the game and its systems work shouldn't remove the danger, just the "gotcha" of trial-and-error learning. 'Even though we try to make things very clear and very explicit,' Anderson says, 'we still want to facilitate people being able to be experimental and feel that they can safely take risks, without giant chunks of their progress being held hostage.'"

Stealth games have a creepy cousin in the survival-horror genre. The relation manifests in an oppressive environment, which isn't clearly designed or signposted to let the player succeed as easily as he would in a spectacle-driven action game. But while horror is really about conserving quantifiable resources within the claustrophobic confines of an inhospitable world, stealth games expect you to wisely expend your movements and other reckless displays of presence. When it comes to guard patrols and impenetrable installations, as you'll see in XBLA's Mark of the Ninja, your currency is quieter and more abstract.

"In a stealth game you're fundamentally undetected. The world is just kind of running and it's on the player to poke and perturb it after observing it for a bit, and you can just do a lot more interesting things there," says Nels Anderson, Technical Designer at Klei Entertainment. To think of the world as an unpredictable beast, one that might bite off your finger if you prod it in the wrong place at the wrong time, might be a good way to understand the polarized, frustrated relationship some players have with the stealth genre.

According to Anderson, "the power dynamic that almost always falls out of that, to make that work, is that interplay between strength and weakness." Having the chance to study the environment and enemies is a huge advantage, but acting on that information can lead to failure. There's an expectation of perfection - I was spotted, so I have to revisit the last save and do it right! - yet a severe punishment of practice. Anderson thinks of it as a "gulf of execution," one that he thinks Mark of the Ninja can fill.

A stealth sampling of this 2D ninja-tastic stunner.

Klei's 2D ninjas use stealth and platforming to achieve victory, but they can still totally flip out and kill people.

Summer of Arcade ends with Dust: An Elysian Tail, but cool XBLA releases continue after the promotion. Klei Entertainment's Mark of the Ninja, a unique side-scrolling stealth-action game, will launch on September 7.

Klei "really wants" to follow the XBLA release with a PC version, the developer tweeted. However, no definite announcements have been made toward that goal, so XBLA is currently the only place to hide in a vent, shoot out a spotlight with a shuriken, and then silently dispose of nearby guards. Legally, anyway.

#wordswithfoes If you've played a video game, you've probably heard a bark. And not just in Nintendogs—I'm talking about an "enemy bark," which is the term given for the adaptive lines of chatter that enemy characters utter throughout the game. More »

Mark of the Ninja, the shadowy, stealthy ninja title from Klei Entertainment, is set to launch this summer on XBLA, and the above E3 trailer shows why you should be so excited for it. Well, not too excited - at least try to keep the noise down. There's no reason to make it easy for the ninjas to find you.

Manipulate the enemy under cover of darkness to execute your plan in Mark of the Ninja.