toblix

Mark of the Ninja

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This game was published on XBLA today, and I only found it because I knew it was out – there was no sign of it anywhere other than in the «new games» subcategory. It's the latest game from the Castle Crashers people (a game I haven't played), so it has a lot of smooth animation and flair, and it's a stealth platformer with some strategy and challenges.

There's a story about ninjas or whatever, and you sneak, climb, hide and jump your way back and forth through pretty, multi-pathed 2D levels, avoiding, distracting, killing and hiding guards. There's this Gish-like vision system, where the game traces player and NPC vision, along with light sources, so you can see where you'll be seen, and what others will be able to see. Anything outside your field of vision is indicated by «last seen» indicators, like in Splinter Cell. Sound, which is important, is visualised pretty neatly and clearly, so you can make informed decisions about whether some crazy stunt will get you got. Also, there's the obligatory time-freeze ability that lets you line up actions and then perform them ninja-fast.

As you move around each level, there are collectible challenges, like collecting scrolls and other artefacts, and other challenges like never sounding alarms, etc.

I've only played the first level, but so far I'm impressed by the level of polish and potential for collectibles-obsession.

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Certis on Gamers With Jobs was extolling the virtues in their most recent episode, and while he really piqued my interest I'm reluctant to buy space bucks at this point. I'd love to hear more of you impressions to help tip the scales one way or the other. :)

I don't pay _that_ close attention to industry stuff -- did the guys from The Behemoth (Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers) really move over to Klei Entertainment (Shank, Shank 2, Mark Of The Ninja)?

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Between this and Dust, I might have to drop down cash for some space bucks myself. Looks very cool. And yeah, where'd you get the info that the Behemoth guys worked on this? Pretty sure Behemoth is working on http://www.battleblocktheater.com/ which I feel like I've been waiting a million years for (but for which I'll gladly wait a million more as Behemoth are 2d gaming gods in my book).

In other news, you should really play castle crashers. Couch coop style if possible.

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Between this and Dust, I might have to drop down cash for some space bucks myself.

Well if you mean Dust 514, that is currently considered a PS3 exclusive I believe. Meanwhile Mark of the Ninja is published by Microsoft and will therefore not appear on the PS3. Therefore there are no space bucks you could buy that would allow you to own both games, sadly.

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A big-ish "Dust" release that would require space bucks (can't believe we've used "space bucks" in 4 consecutive posts now) is the furry-friendly Elysian Tale. Another good reason to cash in to Microsoft's system in my opinion.

I just feel so liberated having recently built my first ever gaming-centric PC that I don't want to go back to the consoles just yet. If I'm patient I won't have to though - looks like they're working to get MotN onto PC. :D

EDIT - Pertinent quote from the Forbes article: "Mark of the Ninja launches today on Xbox Live Arcade. The team is currently working toward getting the game on Steam, though a hard date for the PC release has not been made."

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I was so confused last year and through this one when podcasts like Giant Bombcast would either mention Dust: An Elysian Tail, Dust 514 or From Dust.

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I heard of this game on Idle Thumbs and a few other podcasts. They all seemed way too excited so I was, of course, expecting to be underwhelmed. However, I was not. I played the trial and quickly made the impulse buy. It was totally worth it. Very fun and very smooth stealth gameplay, many ways to approach situations, and unlocks that drive progression and make different play styles more appealing. Mark of the Ninja is a great 2D stealth game that does everything right. It also left me wanting a great 3D stealth game to play.

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Note it's by Klei, the developers of Shank, not the Behemoth, the developers of Castle Crashers. They're not related.

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Yes, it's Klei Entertainment. And it's a great game. Makes you feel like a boss!

Though, sometimes I wish the cutscenes just weren't there. Kudos to them for trying, and the animation is great, but the stories just feel too cliché and overserious. They ruin the game's great atmoshpere for me, at times.

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Oh shit, I meant to redact my statement about it being the Castle Crashers people, but forgot. I meant Shank.

Apparently everyone is loving this, which means I'm in for ONE HELL OF A RIDE when I get back to it. Currently too busy with Sleeping Dogs, which keeps impressing me with how quickly it gets me from the desktop to Hong Kong.

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Apparently everyone is loving this, which means I'm in for ONE HELL OF A RIDE when I get back to it. Currently too busy with Sleeping Dogs, which keeps impressing me with how quickly it gets me from the desktop to Hong Kong.

Actually right there with you on that. I took a break from Sleeping Dogs for a couple weeks due to being busy and Guild Wars 2 coming out, but it is a surprisingly easy game to just jump back into and be doing something fun within a couple minutes of clicking the icon.

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I hear people goin nuts over this game, but it totally seems like a hundred other games to me.

I love the stealth in Metal Gear Solid, where everything feels really natural and human- so you can knock on walls and hide under desks and throw distrations n stuff. I think the best thing about the whole stealth genre is when it's a sandbox, and you have to roll around behind people and frantically dive around corners playing hide n seek.

Putting vision cones on guys, and sound-circles, and making it all feel like puzzles makes it totally robotic and stale to me.

WELP!- that's me on stealth games.

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Agreed, smell; teh feature lists reads like every other stealth game and I don't find the art or subject all the cool... but I guess it must handle amazingly well to make people go ape over it.

I don't follow this stuff, but will this potentially be on the ps3? I really dont like hooking up my xbox anymore.

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Wait, Metal Gear Solid has vision cones. (Unless you play on hard iirc) And it was mentioned this had multiple routes through levels. It just sounds like you don't want to play this because you're not into the style? Which is fine, but I don't think you can write this off as a bad implementation of stealth mechanics (especially having not played it) because it doesn't look or play like a third person stealth game.

They're working on a PC version, Murdoc. Not sure about PS3.

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Yeah I'm saying I don't like when people go in this direction with stealth games. I'm not saying it's badly made or anything.

Metal Gear had vision cones on the radar, but they could see way further than that, so it was more just to show which way the dots were facing. And that's not the same as having them stuck on the guys' faces.

The guards would look in lockers and pathfind around hallways following footprints and generally use their intuition and be unpredictable sometimes.

Laying all the information on the screen with like throwing-arcs and last-known-position n all that stuff I think takes out the tension and suprise n makes it way less fun.

I THINK the real strength of stealth games is to make everything feel like a game of natural, capable humans wandering around.

The kinda stealth game where that's all binary and you just figure out the path to get to the end? No thanks!

EDIT- Oh this week's podcast is about Mark of the Ninja!

I keep hearing how it totally feels so great and badass, but it'll be good hearing actual designers talkin about it.

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They're working on a PC version, Murdoc. Not sure about PS3.

Sweet, I'll check it out when that happens!

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I hate the art style of the characters. I hate when people use that style.

That's all I have to add.

You are the most militant motherfucker in the world. You've also been consistent about it for like 15 years, which is impressive.

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People who don't like this game are just wrong. I'm about the worst at it, and I'm still not far past the second level, even after playing for hours, and I still think it's the best.

What if something looked as awesome as Shank but was actually a game, and what if somebody made a stealth game where you actually had enough feedback on being stealthy?

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People who don't like this game are just wrong. I'm about the worst at it, and I'm still not far past the second level, even after playing for hours, and I still think it's the best.

What if something looked as awesome as Shank but was actually a game, and what if somebody made a stealth game where you actually had enough feedback on being stealthy?

1) I fully agree on why this game is sweet. I can't wait to play more.

2) When your opening is "anyone who disagrees is wrong," you relinquish your right to be surprised if an Internet argument ensues in its wake.

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2) When your opening is "anyone who disagrees is wrong," you relinquish your right to be surprised if an Internet argument ensues in its wake.

When you post something on the internet, you relinquish your right to be surprised if an argument ensues in its wake.

And anyway, what else am I going to do if not argue (with wrong people) on the internet?

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Yeah I'm saying I don't like when people go in this direction with stealth games. I'm not saying it's badly made or anything.

Metal Gear had vision cones on the radar, but they could see way further than that, so it was more just to show which way the dots were facing. And that's not the same as having them stuck on the guys' faces.

The guards would look in lockers and pathfind around hallways following footprints and generally use their intuition and be unpredictable sometimes.

Laying all the information on the screen with like throwing-arcs and last-known-position n all that stuff I think takes out the tension and suprise n makes it way less fun.

I THINK the real strength of stealth games is to make everything feel like a game of natural, capable humans wandering around.

The kinda stealth game where that's all binary and you just figure out the path to get to the end? No thanks!

Mark of the Ninja isn't binary, but it's most definitely puzzle-oriented. There are multiple solutions to the puzzles, sure, so it's not as this-key-fits-this-lock as an adventure game, but they're definitely going more for cleverness (and general ninja bad-assery) than immersion.

But for me, the stuff you object to is exactly what "fixes" stealth games. The most recent ones I played were Arkham City and Arkham Asylum, and they have pretty much the same problem as every other stealth game I've played -- they're trying to deliver on the sense of immersion and seamlessness that it sounds like you're talking about, but the premise is simply too artificial to support it.

It looks like it should have all the common-sense rules of gauging whether you're hidden or not, but a) you're not actually there, so it's impossible to tell for sure; and 2) the enemies still have arbitrary vision cones, even if they're not made explicit by the UI. I have yet to encounter one of those games that didn't have the same problem: it's about 80-90% realistic, but still impossible to completely avoid situations where the enemy AI or hearing/sight rules don't work like you'd expect.

For me, the exceptions end up breaking the immersion and make the entire thing seem artificial. I'd much rather have the game make everything absolutely explicit -- I know it's all based on vision cones and hearing radii, and the developer knows that, so why pretend? Not only does Mark of the Ninja make all that feedback really cool-looking, it makes it explicit what the rules of the game are, so my mind fills in all the storytelling business. Left brain is pressing B button to hide behind all-too-conveniently placed urn until the guard's hearing radius no longer intersects my dart-noise radius; right brain is saying "hell yes this is awesome I'm totally a ninja."

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