You wake up, wounded and with amnesia, on a deserted beach on the east coast. The country remains in a state of shock following the assassination of President Sheridan. In XIII, players can also take part in fierce multi-player fights. Inspired by the eponymous graphic novel, the game features a completely reinvented and unique cel-shading design. You play as “XIII”, a man without an identity, in a solo campaign with numerous twists and turns. Lights and gongs and dogs become distractions.WHO ARE YOU, REALLY? XIII is a remake of the cult first-person action game that was initially released in 2003. Traps become weapons when tripped intentionally. The environment becomes a canvas for play. After hours of the computer lightly holding the player's hand, it lets go. The end of the game, roughly the final quarter or so, opens up its stages, allowing the player to take his own path. It's top-notch design that puts the creative onus on the player: see something, learn its meaning, and smartly or not-so-smartly use that information how you sees fit to proceed safely. There are also nice, less obvious flourishes, like when a background lightning storm lights up the cityscape, giving away the Ninja's position. They're simple, familiar visual metaphors that tell the player how the world is reacting to their decisions. Curiosity and alertness are represented by punctuation above an enemy's head. Characters are full-color cartoons in light, but in darkness they become silhouettes with thin white outlines. Eyesight and spotlights are visual cones. Sound is represented by circles that ripple outwards from running feet or squawking birds, drawing attention to those in earshot. By that, I mean the computer's senses are visualized on the screen. The player can sense what the computer senses. Despite being a two-dimensional game with a colorful look, it finds a way to do everything its 3D contemporaries do and more.īecause Mark of the Ninja does stealth so well, it feels fair. Mark of the Ninja is a stealth game through and through. It's just that skills, abilities, and specialty items-which can be bought using in-game currency awarded by completing side-objectives-tend to be more defensive, used for hiding or causing distractions. A hallucinogenic dart that causes guards to turn into homicidal maniacs before turning their weapon on themselves is a favorite. Not that there aren't cool weapons to be bought. The player occasionally loses his weapon and gains more minimalist, mystical abilities. Later chapters have smarter enemies, equipped with the heavy weapons and gear you'd expect to be rewards for the player. Each room of goons and boobytraps can be handled in a different way or skipped altogether if player uncovers the right path. While these early levels carefully guide the player from beginning to end, they gradually open up. You come in contact with an enemy, learn how to silently slay him, and later in the level have your memory and mettle tested by similar enemies in more complicated environments. The game is teaching the player, one lesson at a time. The first three quarters of the game are linear missions in which enemies, traps, and acrobatic feats are pitted against the player in increasingly difficult order. The preceding chapters, however, are paced brilliantly. It felt a bit like reading a book with two optional final pages. Side characters make rather blunt cases for their livelihood, and a binary climactic decision, while certainly something I mulled over, had no in-game ramifications. This large-scale narrative is the background to a more personal tale that teeters on the Ninja's loyalty to his brothers and his commitment to a suicidal fate.Ī heavy finale cracks slightly under its dramatic heft. Its violence has richer context, with an overarching story of a possibly misguided ninja clan finding its place in a modern world filled with weapons and technology that could extinguish it. Mark of the Ninja is also smarter than Shank. Then there's the red band tattooed around the Ninja's head - a visual nod to Shank, as if the two are one and the same, separated by alternate universes. Both Shank and Ninja zip from perch to enemy and back again, as if tugged by magnets. And though Shank and Ninja go about murder in different ways, the controls, in which every button is put to smart use, feel oddly similar. Their stories deal with revenge, betrayal, and Machiavellian father figures. They share a quirky art style -characters drawn with thick black lines and filled with strong colors, like children's cartoons shocked by disembowelment and decapitation. Shank and Mark of the Ninja have plenty in common.
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