Upon its North American release, Dark Secret was met with a negative response from critics. Game Rankings, a website that catalogues review scores from numerous sources to produce scoring averages, calculated an average of 40% based on the reviews available as of September 1, 2006. Common complaints from these reviews noted that Dark Secret has very little directly in common with the original console games, including the lack of the grappling hook, a non-traditional camera angle (top-down instead of from behind the back), poor graphics, and underwhelming Wi-Fi features. The UK nintendo magazine, ONM stated that the game was "A botched excuse for a stealth game who's only achievement is bringing a decent series' name into disrespute", thus giving the game 30%.