Your ninja senses then tell you what the room contains. Sneak up to a closed door and push against it and the room that you are in, including the graphics of your character, will fade and blur to focus only on the next room, which was blurred out before you put your ear to the door. Sound and line-of-sight play major roles and Mark of the Ninja reacts to these elements with amazing intuition. You also gain extra credit for remaining undetected by guards (usually by hiding right in front of them in a pot plant), hiding bodies (the animations for this are highly comical), performing stealth kills, finding hidden collectibles or completing the entire level with no kills. Each level has a list of optional objectives that net you bonus points. Your score for each level updates as you play, with severe penalties if you are detected, to the point where you’ll often want to restart the entire level just to maintain your shadow-stalking profile. Mark of the Ninja has its competitive carrot always dangling in front. Earlier levels, when you were hampered by the lack of certain skills – such as the ability to pull guards down through floor grating and murder them silently – become much more competitive to traverse after you have unlocked parts of the skill-tree. The Dead Space analogy relates to the way in which Mark of the Ninja improves in enjoyment as you experience it via New Game+, playing with upgraded ninja skills and approaching situations as a far more powerful stalker. This sets up various ways to either murder guards or avoid them entirely. The first three influences are easy to see, given the broad and complicated design of each level, which allows multiple paths through areas. Mark of the Ninja is, in form, a 2D stealth title, but it’s more than that – it is Shadow Complex meets Deus Ex meets Thief meets Dead Space. In fact, there are times when you hardly see your on-screen character. Mark of the Ninja is a sticky game, both in the sense that it had me whipping out my credit card quicker than a thrown ninja star, and because in the game you stick to the walls like a human gecko, slinking up them with practiced, muscled ease. XBLA’s option to try before you buy often creates a cycle of demo downloads before anything actually sticks and forces you to add some points to your account. First impressions are becoming increasingly important.