If you want to know if there's a guard in the next room, you have to lean up against the door and look through the keyhole (and be sure to dart away if he's about to open that door). Mark of the Ninja is utterly defined by the lack of information it gives players in key situations. But Klei Entertainment's Mark of the Ninja is notable particularly for the way it takes this kind of perfect knowledge away from the player, using a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle visual cues to represent the characters' limited knowledge of their surroundings to build one of the best implementations of stealth gameplay I've seen in 2D or 3D. That kind of extra knowledge often has the subtle, almost unnoticed effect of making you and your character feel almost superheroically powerful, which probably explains a lot of the inherent appeal of the 2D perspective in gaming. But since you, the player, have a complete view of the immediate area surrounding your character, you're able to give that character the seemingly preternatural ability to anticipate events that, logically, they shouldn't know about.

You control a character that (usually) doesn't have the innate ability to see through walls or intuit the position of distant, unseen enemies. Games played from a third-person, 2D perspective are kind of weird when you think about it. Platform: Xbox 360 (Live Arcade download)

Game Details Developer: Klei Entertainment

Mark of the ninja platforms download