Game Review: Mark of the Ninja

I'll admit at the outset, it's pretty easy to win my approval if a game lets you play a sneaky ninja. That's pretty much the second character type I'll play in any game that allows character customization, either after I play my go-to character--an elf wizard of some kind--or initially if it's a game that has neither elves nor wizards. A sneaky sniper in Fallout 3, a sneaky archer in Skyrim, a thief in the Quest for Glory games, that kind of thing. So Mark of the Ninja didn't have a particularly long row to hoe.

Even with my initial bias toward it, I was surprised at just how much I liked the game. You start it up and the story is conveyed in a few seconds: you're a ninja, your clan is under attack by bad dudes, you better get on that, son. And within a few moments, you're hiding in the shadows and sneaking past guards and climbing on walls and ceilings and, once you get your weapon, flipping out and killing people. If you're into that sort of thing, anyway--the game is theoretically completable non-violently, though the tools you get to wreak mayhem are so much fun that I abandoned that approach after the first level.

I am their worst nightmare.

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