Just finished the second stage of this. It's a 720p side-scrolling action game with an emphasis on stealth and a ton of goddamn moves, and it's a lot of fun. The main problem, however, is the utterly abysmal artwork. The backgrounds are lush, with excellent parallax scrolling, but all the illustration work in the game, including spritework (which is however technically competent...) is terrible. Think the cutscenes in Mirror's Edge x10 terrible. Or think anything by The Behemoth. I mean behold for fuck's sakes:
That was a 1920x1200 wallpaper, by the way. They actually think people would want to stare at that on their desktop. More aesthetic monstrosities here:
http://www.markoftheninja.com/mark-of-t ... ollection/
Don't know if I want to keep playing. The mechanics are for the most part awesome, but if the first two stages are any indication, stage designs seem repetitive. And there are other issues too I might go into if I ever write a full review. Nevertheless, I'd probably end up giving it 3/5. And of course it's getting 10/10s and 9/10s from everywhere. Still, it IS one of XBLA's highlights, so it will stay on my XBLA list.
