Mark of the Ninja is a game where you become a Ninja to pull off sick moves while remaining undetected.

The best thing about this game is how it visualises so much of its audio. Every sound you and the enemy make are visualised to such an extent that it is entirely possible to play this game on mute, and you still wouldn't miss anything.

The game has a great, Saturday morning-cartoon artstyle. The presentation looks slick and drips with atmosphere. The way this artstyle makes use of light and dark colours is also great. When you are not within a light, you look like the ninja version of Batman. When you are within a light, the colours on your costume are visible. This also helps the gameplay to a great extent.

The animations on your character are impressively smooth. When you get a hang of the move-set, the game can make you feel incredibly badass.

The ways you hide from the enemies are fairly standard. You have certain hiding spots in the environment where the enemy can literally walk past you and not see you. You have a grappling hook which you can use to get to certain platforms, much like the gargoyles in the Batman Arkham games.

The enemies have short vision cones ( which are also visualised ), but they also have long flashlights, which have a fairly wider range. This forces you to either stay far away from them, or hide in the certain spots provided by the environment.

The enemy variety is decent. You have your normal baseline enemies, with the flashlights, who can be easily assassinated. Then you have shield guys, who are fairly the same. Then you have the big guys, who have to be stunned before they can be killed. Then you have dogs, who can sniff you out from hiding spots. Then you have super-soldier ninjas. These are the hardest enemies in the game. They are incredibly perceptive and you can't get anywhere close to them without getting caught. So you have to make use of the environment to take them down.

The basic way to assassinate someone is to either get behind or above them. But you don't just press a button after that. You hold the kill button, and then move the mouse/joystick in the direction the game tells you to. This does not make the assassinations too hard, but it ensures that you don't get too complacent.

There are multiple other ways to take enemies down. You can use mines, which have spikes. You have smoke bombs, which disable enemies, allowing you to move in for the kill. You have darts, with which you can make certain environmental objects fall on enemies. There are so many more tools, allowing for plenty of experimentation.

The game has 13 levels in total. Due to branching paths and and an insane set of tools, these levels are endlessly replayable.

The game also has a story. The story was fine, it was there, but it didn't really manage to make me care. Still, it has presentation reminiscent of Samurai Jack, which makes the cutscenes feel great to look at. Even the protagonist seems to have stemmed from the idea of, ''What if Samurai Jack was a Ninja?''. The voice acting is also mostly great. There is also a choice at the end which leads to two endings, both of which were pretty cool in their own right.

After the end, the game has a New Game+ mode where you can play the game using other ''paths''. These paths provide certain self-imposed challenges. For example, the path of silence gives you the ability to run without making noise, but also removes your ability to assassinate enemies. The path of might, on the other hand, incentivizes assassinations by making them restore your health. There are many other modes, which mean I will be playing this game for a long time.

The movement can get finnicky at times. Some puzzles get extremely repetitive, and it is possible to break the A.I..

Despite, these minor issues, Mark of the Ninja is easily one of the best stealth experiences out there.