The objectives to each level are pretty simple: using the myriad of ninja-y skills and tools at your disposal, get from point A to point B and complete some optional tasks along the way. In Mark of the Ninja you play - you guessed it - a ninja. That is, Mark of the Ninja allows you to tailor your gameplay to how you like it without letting you drop any of the three core components - waiting, sneaking and acting - thereby circumventing the game’s challenge or turning into an action game. The game is charming and fun, if not very deep, and is worthy of praise for the sublime example it sets for the stealth genre. No game in recent memory has struck so perfect a balance of these three elements as Mark of the Ninja, the side-scrolling stealth game from Vancouver developer Klei Entertainment.

Assassin’s Creed, on the other hand, makes a headlong free-running dash for its action sequences and includes waiting or sneaking only as a faint, weak homage to its conceptual “stealth” origins. Getting the equilibrium between the three can be difficult, and it varies from game to game: the Hitman series emphasizes the waiting aspect, and most of one’s time is spent gathering information and artfully setting traps (although one can choose to forego these elements and play instead a mediocre shooter). Any proper stealth game has to balance its genre’s three core gameplay concepts: waiting, sneaking and acting. Stealth-centered games are difficult to execute well, and it isn’t difficult to understand why. The stealth genre is one that game developers ought to approach with caution.

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