You make your way from your small room across the grounds, past many armed guards, to get to and save your masters life. Luckily, Ora, a female ninja is there to guide you she helps you find your bearings and introduces you to the different items and controls available to you. The game begins with a short cutscene showing mercenaries getting killed before you awaken from a dream covered in tattoos. The game is based around staying in the shadows and avoiding combat at any cost you can partake in combat but only to a minimal extent as you can be quite easily killed.

Review: Giana Sisters - Twisted Dreams - Owltimate.Mark of the Ninja is a 2D side scrolling Stealth-em-up developed by Klei Entertainment and published by Microsoft for XBLA.

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In handheld mode some of the smaller details can be tougher to make out but performance on the go remains solid and look great, though I found I needed to adjust my gamma levels pretty significantly to see well. All of this would fall apart if it werenвЂ™t for the spot-on controls, which respond well and help make you feel powerful when you use them effectively.

If youвЂ™re really up to the challenge and plan your route carefully youвЂ™ll even be capable of playing things as a pacifist, sparing guards instead of dispatching them, but that would rob you of the pretty satisfying animations of you taking them down in a bloody fashion.

Fortunately youвЂ™re very nimble and able to climb walls, grapple to new spots, and even move along the ceiling in places so youвЂ™ve got the tools to avoid detection, the trick is in using them correctly. Fortunately their attention spans are extraordinarily short and within a short time everyone will resume their normal patterns but since only a few bullets will take you down keeping things quiet and yourself out of the light are always a priority.ДЄs you progress youвЂ™ll accumulate new gear that will help you out, whether by taking out lights, distracting the guards with noise, or making use of some other ninja skills. Once youвЂ™re up close on your adversary youвЂ™ll need to quickly watch for the direction to press while hitting Y, failing to execute this properly will end up allowing the guard to make some noise and potentially alert others to your presence. You may be lethal with your sword at close range but youвЂ™re not bulletproof so stealthy killing will be your key to successвЂ¦ and then being sure to try to hide the body somewhere to help avoid being detected. Against well-armed personnel your job will be to infiltrate various strongholds and get things done while relying on the shadows for protection. While the story itself may stray a little towards silly, with its mystic tats that give you power but will slowly corrupt your body and mind, thereвЂ™s never any doubt that its gameplay is all business. While some improvements to the resolution were in order to ensure it would look crisp as possible its animated visuals were never much of a concern, what makes it a stand-out is that even after so many years the stealthy gameplay it offers is still among the best ever and it will absolutely go toe to toe with any current title without flinching. In the case of Mark of the Ninja Remastered, itвЂ™s in a class that stands apart.

While obviously every game getting this treatment will come out the other side graphically updated and sounding as good as ever there are simply games that immediately show their age, through either tone deaf story beats and dialogue or through their gameplay or controls simply not standing up well to the test of time. ThereвЂ™s something about the trend towards remasters, especially with the Switch, thatвЂ™s fascinating to watch.

Mark of the ninja switch review