Sly Cooper is a series that full stop will
never get the respect it deserves. When it released, it was treated to decent
sales but sort of held at arm's length, a third wheel to its spiritual older brothers
Jak and Ratchet…despite actually coming out before Ratchet. It was predominantly in hindsight that fans
and media began lumping it into this “Holy Trinity” of PlayStation 2 platformers, but
it still sat in the back seat. And yet, the Cooper Gang pound for pound might
just have the strongest PS2 trilogy of the three. It’s a series that brought real stakes to
each game and built those stakes not just from the serialized episodic chapters of each
Sly game, but also from game to game - rewarding players that kept coming back by building
a world far grander than all of the larger-than-life characters and the open world hub areas combined. And it’s a franchise whose DNA is oh so
clearly weaved into every Sucker Punch project since and really, into the DNA of the studio
itself. Sly Cooper is also the very first game I reviewed
on this channel back in 2016, in fact I redid that first video and covered the entire franchise
already a few years ago, back when I still gave review scores. And although the series currently lays dormant,
with constant questionable rumors of a new game and a movie-turned-cartoon that’s supposedly
finished and still somehow missed its October 2019 release date by over two years now…thanks
to some freshly unearthed info, there is a bit more that I can add to the legacy of Sly
Cooper. So, I’ve remastered these videos with that
new insight in this director’s supercut, the ultimate video covering the entire series. P-well…probably not, but it sounds nice,
please subscribe. Without further ado, this is the Sly Cooper
franchise. Although the first Sly game released in 2002,
our raccoon hero’s journey properly begins back in 1997. Sucker Punch Productions was first founded
by a group of friends that left Microsoft to pursue a career in game development, wanting
to work in a smaller, tightly-knit crew rather than one of the biggest companies in the world. Despite having almost zero collective game
development experience, Sucker Punch decided on making a cute 3D platformer for the N64,
citing the limited competition since the N64 only had a handful of games coming out per
year. Released as Rocket: Robot on Wheels in 1999,
this gem of a game is not only commonly cited as the first console game to use a proper
physics engine - a game, remember, made by non-developers - it also featured an evil
raccoon villain that served as an early inspiration for the studio’s next protagonist. Now, not knowing how to pitch a game, how
to get a development kit from Nintendo to begin with, just having no clue how the industry
worked, the team bankrolled most of the game’s production themselves, and started pitching
an almost finished game in 1998 to every publisher that’d listen, including Sony. Yes, they pitched a Nintendo 64 game to the
PlayStation folks - hey, it wasn’t unheard of, there’s a Wipeout game on N64 developed
by a Sony-owned studio. PlayStation execs did like the project, but
politely turned them down. I’ll talk more about that game some other
time because it’s a really cool one; the important thing for now is that Sucker Punch
learned the ropes with Rocket’s development, learned to partner up with a publisher right
away - which they did with Sony shortly thereafter - and learned exactly what they wanted to
make. So they narrowed down and focused on a more
linear game idea, and they followed the idea of a raccoon thief as the hero…just because
they liked the idea of a raccoon putting on a mask over his little mask face. How can you not love these folks already? This of course is 2002’s Sly Cooper and
the Thievius Raccoonus. Sly Cooper is the latest child born into a
long line of master thieves. The Cooper clan was renowned for pulling some
of history’s greatest heists, mainly stealing from those who abused their wealth. Each Cooper journaled his or her skills into
a book for future generations to learn from and improve upon: The Thievious Racoonus. However, millennia of stealing from high profile
thieves made the Cooper clan a target. Not sure how, raccoons are adorable. Look at that, can you hate that face? Well apparently, a gang known as the Fiendish
Five found a way, because they REALLY hated the Coopers. Led by the mysterious gigantic owl, Clockwerk,
this group broke into the Cooper home, and stole the Thievius Raccoonus. Wait, how did they even get through the door? Clockwerk’s got a wingspan of like 50 feet. Well, however they did it, they killed Sly’s
parents once inside, leaving the young Cooper cowering in a closet. With no family left to care for him, Sly was
sent to an orphanage, where he met his best friends, Bentley and Murray. Together, the trio began a long journey to
reclaim the book and save the Cooper family’s history. This is where Sly 1 begins. The Cooper Gang starts off in Paris, where
they’re stealing Sly’s case file from the office of Carmelita Fox, one of Interpol’s
finest. After making off with the file, they find
that the Fiendish Five split the book up amongst themselves and spread across the world. With that, the Gang travels to all the corners
of the world, defeats each of the Fiendish Five, retrieves the section of the Thievius
Raccoonus, and gets out JUST before Carmelita crashes the joint. There’s Raleigh, the genius frog engineer;
Muggshot, the roided-up mobster bulldog; Mz. Ruby, the voodoo savant alligator; the revenge-hungry
demolitions expert, the Panda King; and finally, Clockwerk. What’s interesting about these villains
is that after stealing the book, they all went on their separate paths; there was no
overarching goal at hand here except to kill off the Cooper lineage. I find this sort of marriage of convenience
uniquely intriguing for a group of antagonists, especially for a kid’s game. That alone just adds to the experience in
my eyes. As we’ll see going forward with this series,
Sly’s never afraid to get a little dark, and a little real. After working their way across the world and
through the first four members, Sly and the gang find Clockwerk’s lair in Russia. They head in, fighting past multiple security
measures [THAT’S NO MOUNTAIN/THAT’s NO MOON], with Sly even saving a trapped Carmelita. The two form a temporary alliance to take
down Clockwerk once and for all. Before taking the owl down, Sly learns his
foe’s backstory: Clockwerk was at one point, thousands of years ago, slighted by one of
the Coopers, and has held a grudge against the Clan ever since. He’s gone as far as to replace his entire
body with mechanical parts to become immortal, living entirely on his hatred. He founded the Fiendish Five in order to execute
his master plan, stealing the Thievious Racoonus to prove that he was the world’s greatest
thief. He even kept Sly alive to show that without
the book, the Coopers were nothing. It’s actually a brilliant plan, and explains
why they split the book up in the first place. Of course, that’s the only part of his brilliant
plan, because then he just flaps around for a bit as Sly shoots him. Didn’t...didn’t think that one all the
way through, did you buddy. He’s probably still concussed from hitting
his head on the doorframe all those years ago. Either way, Sly takes Clockwerk down, at which
point Carmelita ends their alliance, giving Sly a 10 second headstart to escape. The gang runs off with the now-complete Thievius
Raccoonus. Overall, I love the story in this game. Within each hub, almost every mission builds
the story more and more, talks up the villains, and makes the world feel more genuine. Sly lives up to his name, always being calm
and collected in the field. Not to mention he’s always especially suave
around Carmelita. Bentley is neurotic and constantly warning
Sly about possible dangers, but he always finds a way to help his buddy with intel. Murray...well, I’ll be honest, I’m really
not a fan of how they treat Murray in this game. All he is is a big, stupid teddy bear. Everything involving Murray shows that he’s
dumb and that his love for food gets him into trouble. He just feels flat in Sly 1, a characteristic
I’m glad they fix in the sequels. That’s really the only significant gripe
I have here, though. Sly 1, like the rest of the series, feels
like a thoughtfully executed plot that never particularly drags, jumping from episode to
episode as if it were an actual cartoon. Shut up, I don’t wanna talk about it yet. Sly’s story absolutely earns a Golden Bolt
here. The way I often like to describe the first
Sly game is that it’s the logical next step in the Crash Bandicoot franchise, with added
stealth mechanics. Like Crash, it’s a level-based 3D platformer
with relatively linear level design. Like Crash, Sly has very limited health here,
and uses charms as extra hits. Some of the setpieces just come off in a very
similar style, too. Maybe it’s just me, but the more I look
at it, the more I see our raccoon hero as a PS2 update of everybody’s favorite bandicoot. Not everything is 1:1, of course. For example, in addition to the basic X to
jump and square to attack that Crash and Sly share, Triangle is used for special thief
moves that Sly acquires throughout the game. Circle, meanwhile, is the “do everything”
button. Seriously, if you’re ever not sure about
how to do something in Sly, just jump and press the circle button. I promise. Additionally, whereas Crash always felt weighty,
Sly is actually pretty floaty, in order to give the players and the game time to breathe
with the contextual circle button moves. This floatiness works in the game’s favor,
as Sly controls incredibly well. His motions are fluid, especially for a PS2
game, his attacks feel powerful, and despite risking the entire game on an action button,
Sucker Punch made sure that the platforming rarely messes up on you. The big fork where Sly splits off from our
orange buddy is like I mentioned earlier, a focus on stealth. Sneaking around is always optional, though,
so advanced players can just cheese past most obstacles. These advanced players are even rewarded in
the postgame, when every level gets a time trial challenge. However, even the most experienced players
have gotta be careful, because one hit and you’re dead. If you collect enough coins throughout the
levels, you’ll obtain a lucky horseshoe to give you an extra hit, and it even stacks
for up to two freebie hits. Not that it really matters; lives are plentiful
and there’s no real punishment if you game over. Even if you do die on a level more than two
or three times the game pities you with a gimme horseshoe. On paper, this all sounds simple, and maybe
even a bit weak - this might have cut it on the PS1, but we’re in the next generation
now, things need to be bigger and better. Well, thankfully Sly thrives on its level
design. Missions are incredibly varied and always
add something new to the formula, be it a level where you sneak by in a barrel, to many
showdowns with Carmelita. Without interesting levels and setpieces to
challenge the player, the formula of Sly Cooper would fall apart immediately. Thankfully Sucker Punch realized this and
iterates constantly. Moreover, to add even more depth to the experience,
in every level, there are a set number of hidden clue bottles. Collect all of them, and you get a code for
that level’s safe, which holds a page of the Thievious Racoonus. These powerups are entirely supplementary,
such as a dive-roll or this mid-air slow motion power. Later on, there ARE some really useful ones,
such as total invisibility, but they’re really just cool incentives to search each
level. Like I said, this game absolutely shines as
a platformer. The key problem with Sly 1 is that doesn’t
want to be a platformer a lot of the time. Of the 40 levels in the game, about a third
are non-Sly levels. Those levels consist of either Murray racing
because he wants food, Murray being defended by Sly as he runs towards a key, or some other
random mission like killing crabs to defend your treasure. And these missions as a whole just suuuck. They, almost without fail, need to be played
at least three times before you get past. Not because of any genuine difficulty, it’s
mostly about brute memorization of the level layout, spending a few tries getting a grip
on controls that are about as tight as a broken rubber band, or just plain luck. I’ve beaten this game so many times, and
every time these missions cause trouble for me. It’s a shame, because these missions kill
the pace of the game. Raleigh’s stage is a fantastic tutorial
for the game, teaching the player mechanics consistently from level to level. From Muggshot onward, two or three of the
stage’s seven missions are gimmicks. Pretty much the entire final world is just
one gimmick after another, and even Mz. Ruby’s fight is just friggin’ DDR, except
the timing on the button presses is slightly off. Pro-tip: Just mash the buttons, there’s
no penalty for doing so. Credit to the game, sometimes it has a funny
reason for these filler missions, like in this mission where we have to hack into Clockwerk’s
death ray. We have to run over exactly 60 computers,
but these lava slugs like to eat computers. Why do we have to race, you might be asking,
are there only 119 of them? Yes. [THERE ARE ONLY 119 LINE]. When the game does something right, MAN does
it do it right. There are levels that get my blood pumping,
levels that make me feel like I myself am a master thief, but there are also levels
that make question what I’m doing with my time. Not that I’m wasting a ton of time, the
game can be beaten pretty handily in a couple hours. Sly 1 lives and dies on the Sly sections - it
didn’t want to commit to being just a platformer, even though it would have been a FANTASTIC
platformer. Instead, it’s a good platformer held back
by the developer’s desire for variety. I’m gonna give the gameplay a Bronze Bolt. While Sly 1 often falters in its substance,
it makes up for that with LOADS of style. Upon starting the game, we’re treated to
a cutscene of Sly preparing to break into Carmelita’s office. The game overlays the main menu on top of
real-time footage of Sly trotting around on the roof of the Interpol station. If you’re starting a new file, you jump
into the action right here. They ham it up right away, too, showing text
on the screen to highlight the “stars” of the game as you proceed through this intro. Again, Sly has always had that Saturday morning
cartoon vibe to it. Like a weekend cartoon, the voice acting can
get a little rough at times - Carmelita isn’t exactly a showstopping performance, and I’m
sure you’ll hear that again before we’re through with this marathon. Overall it’s fairly solid, especially for
2002. Kevin Miller’s delivery as Sly always a
highlight in my eyes, he’s honestly the heart of the series for me. There’s good humor in the dialogue and the
game never takes itself too seriously. Yeah, I might hate the janky vehicle controls,
but Murray accidentally winning a race because he saw a food stand nearby? That’s funny enough to make me give it a
pass sometimes .
Visually, the game is a beauty. Each chapter is bookended with comic-style
cutscenes that give some backstory on the boss, and forward the plot. Sucker Punch does a superb job of building
the world in a short time with these scenes. When it comes to the in-game models, the animation
is always fluid, and hitting enemies has the most satisfying thump to it. Sly always feels like a thief with his low
center of gravity, and with the lightness of his movement. Hell, according to Sucker Punch’s Nate Fox,
the very code used for Sly’s tail animations is still repurposed to simulate fabrics waving
in the wind to this day. Levels rarely seem to repeat themselves visually,
too - everything is always clearly laid out, and the world looks bright even though the
colors themselves are dark. You might run into a couple graphical quirks
here or there, but they never take away from the experience. Whether you play it on PS2 or PS3 it’s genuinely
a looker. Completing the package, it sounds great too. When Sly slowly crawls up behind an enemy,
a little Tom and Jerry sort of bass flourish plays to match his footsteps. Most tracks have a jazzy groove to them to
make you feel like a thief, and make you feel vulnerable as a young, inexperienced thief. Let’s take Prowling the Grounds for example:
It’s one of the first tracks you hear and it sets the tone so well. The track hides several layers behind the
groove, trying to make the player feel nervous and weak at any given point. The background constantly has white noise
playing to simulate the rain from Raleigh’s weather machine. The sound of water dripping frequently throughout,
which keeps the player wondering if that sound might just be somebody turning to discover
them. Foliage seems to crackle as if there’s something
waiting to strike. It’s so impressive to me that such a wonderful
atmosphere is built up here without a single word. These layers to each song come with the downside
that the soundtrack functions more as background music than anything else. The levels in Muggshot’s Mesa City casino
make you feel like you’re gambling, and you feel uneasy when trekking through Haiti’s
swamp because of the deep, booming undertones, but it’s hard to throw too many of these
tracks on without context and enjoy them. That said, this is the kind of game where
the soundtrack could very easily blend together under a lesser composer, but each area sounds
unique and that helps each area feel unique. That’s all you can ask with a soundtrack
like this. I think the coolest thing in terms of presentation
though comes after you do everything else. In an addition almost entirely unique to this
game, after 100%ing the game each level has a developer commentary that optionally plays. In these, members of the team discuss design
choices in the level, things cut during the development of said level, or even something
entirely different. As someone who actually uses audio commentary
on some DVDs for movies and TV shows, this feature is incredibly cool and adds to the
experience for those who want to know every little secret about the game. It might not be the best completion bonus
in some peoples’ eyes, but it sort of helps show that the developers saw this game as
a work of art, not JUST a video game. All in all, Sucker Punch does a great job
with the aesthetics of the game, and the dialogue as well. The weakest aspect is the music, but I can’t
fault the game too much for using the soundtrack as an assistance rather than a focus. And some of that is also me just being spoiled
by some absolutely stellar soundtrack work in Sly’s sequels. SLY 1 POST-RELEASE When Sony picked up the pitch for Sly 1, the
team at Sucker Punch had two goals, according to co-founder Brian Fleming: Sell half a million
copies, and make a sequel. Thankfully, both of those goals came to pass,
and you’d think with how much Sly’s been talked about and coveted over the years that
the series was full of runaway hits. However, the thing is, there’s actually
a bit of common confusion by fans regarding Sly, in that the games were never exactly
flying off shelves. This goes back to Sly being put on the pedestal
next to Jak and Ratchet, and indeed the comparisons that Sucker Punch gets to Naughty Dog and
Insomniac - we all assume that they all sold well because we love them today, but the truth
is that sales-wise, Sly’s always been in the shadows. According to internal data, inFamous Second
Son, the really rushed kinda bad one, outsold the entire Sly Cooper franchise. The numbers can differ a bit depending on
which source you look at - some third parties have listed Sly 1 as eventually racking up
2 million worldwide sales, internal data provided by Sanzaru during Sly 4’s original pitch
indicated about 1.5 million sales, either way they’re great numbers…that don’t
tell the full story at the time. A year after Sly 1 released, it entered the
Greatest Hits lineup in North America, so obviously it’s gotta be a hit. Except I hope you already know this, it’s
kind of just marketing - the requirements for a PS2 Greatest Hit were that the game
was 12 months old and had shipped, not sold, 400,000 units in the US. The games would then be republished with the
red label usually at a $19.99 price point to encourage further sales and in turn hopefully
encourage earlier and higher-priced sales of, say, a sequel. And make no mistake, Sly 2 entered production
pretty much immediately after the first game shipped - Sucker Punch may have had a sales
benchmark, but Sony saw enough already to know that they wanted more and they knew just
how to try and bolster those sales numbers. It’s a good strategy, especially when you’re
the one that has a significant hand in deciding how many copies of a game get produced and
thus get to decide what consumers consider best sellers, and although this helps make
it pretty clear that most of Sly 1’s sales came from the bargain bin…this far out,
who the hell cares, that’s more folks that got to try the game for cheap and fell in
love; it’s job security and more experience for the team at Sucker Punch who are now consistently
outselling their earlier series and dropping game of the year contenders, it’s a win. I just find a lot of this to be important
context as to why Sly’s passionate fanbase seems to go ignored. As far as I’ve found, no Sly game ever received
Europe’s Platinum Hits designation despite sales actually improving in the region game
after game, and despite performing well in Korea, Sly 1 and 2 underperformed in Japan
to such a degree that the third game never received a Japanese version until the HD Collection
on PS3. And yet, again despite this, Sony kept pushing
its support in Sucker Punch, a small fledgling studio they had no stake in yet. Sly received numerous marketing pushes in
other games, via Toonami ads on Cartoon Network, this first game received awards for being
one of 2002’s best and most underrated titles; and this developer continued to, pardon the
pun, punch above its weight limit. That’s in my opinion why Sony greenlit a
sequel - sometimes it’s not just about sales, it’s what you see, and what you see in Sucker
Punch time and again is drive. Two years after the events of Sly 1, the gang’s
adventure this time begins at the Cairo Museum of Natural History, where the newest exhibit
is a fully reconstructed Clockwerk. Knowing first-hand the danger that Clockwerk’s
metal body could bring, Sly, Bentley, and Murray attempt to steal Clockwerk’s parts
before somebody else can. However, when Sly gets to the exhibition room,
he finds out they’re late to the party: The parts had already been taken, and Carmelita
had set a trap, hoping the thief would return to the scene of the crime. After Carmelita accuses Sly of the Clockwerk
heist, her new understudy, Neyla, lets slip that the Klaww gang could be the ones that
made off with the parts. Naturally, the Cooper gang escapes the ensuing
chase, and starts studying up on the Klaww gang. If they’ve got the parts, they’re definitely
not using them for good. Sadly, it turns out that assumption is correct:
the Klaww gang ain’t no Fiendish Five, they don’t just sit on their victory after their
heist is complete. Instead, each member pushes forward in several
highly illegal endeavors, using the Clockwerk parts to expedite the process. For example, Dimitri uses the Clockwerk tail
feathers to print counterfeit money at a breakneck pace, driving himself to fortune; Jean Bison
uses the Clockwerk talons to deforest thousands of trees for his logging venture; and Rajan
uses the Clockwerk heart to make illegal psychedelic drugs. I’m not even exaggerating, his spice ring
is quite literally just a drug ring with a slightly more PG name. Sly 2 isn’t messing around. Don’t forget, this game was rated E. The Cooper gang isn’t messing around, either,
and with the occasional help and tips provided by Constable Neyla, piece by piece they take
back the Clockwerk parts, step by step they take down each member of the Klaww gang, and
bit by bit they uncover the secret behind the entire Klaww gang’s operation. One thing I love about Sly 2 is that these
heists aren’t always successful for Sly and the crew. More often than not, the game’s episodes
end without a decisive boss fight, and that member of the Klaww gang escapes to fight
another day. This makes them feel so much more formidable
than the one-and-done Fiendish Five of the original game. By the time you get to that boss fight, you’ve
been dealing with a single villain for two or more hours, you’ve seen them develop,
you’ve heard their strategies change, they become full-fledged characters rather than
just obstacles. When it’s not guaranteed that the Cooper
gang wins, and you actually see them lose a couple times, it makes those victories feel
that much more satisfying. On the subject of satisfying, it’s time
for a quick spoiler warning. Click ahead to this point in the video if
you wish to avoid spoilers for Sly 2, but again do keep in mind that Sly 3 is going
to deal directly with spoilers from this game. After taking down Dimitri and right near the
end of their second attempt to take down Rajan, Neyla betrays Sly, leading to him and Murray
being captured by Interpol. She also frames Carmelita of helping the Cooper
gang. Despite having to fight off his fears and
go solo to save his friends, Bentley learns that the Contessa, Carmelita’s boss, is
actually a member of the Klaww gang, and is working to brainwash Carmelita so that she
takes the fall for the entire operation. After saving her and putting the Contessa
behind bars, the gang continues taking down the Klaww gang, until they sneak their way
onto the airship of the gang’s leader, Arpeggio, where Clockwerk has been fully reassembled. This is where it all comes together masterfully:
We find out that this small bird had planned to place himself into Clockwerk’s body to
become immortal, but was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: Hate. As we know, Clockwerk had survived for millennia
on pure hatred, and that’s why the parts were able to sustain themselves even after
the owl himself was dead. So, Arpeggio and his protege, Neyla, created
the Klaww gang in order to generate that hate. Rajan’s spice opened the minds of its users
to hypnotism at the hand of the Contessa. All the Contessa needed was a huge amount
of flashing light to aid in the process, so Jean Bison had been chosen to siphon the light
out of the Northern Lights. With all these pieces in place, Arpeggio planned
to fly the airship to Paris, where thousands had consumed massive quantities Rajan’s
spice at Dimitri’s club. After they would be hypnotized, the Parisians
would then go insane with enough hatred to fuel Clockwerk’s frame. And if you thought it ended there, you’d
be wrong: At the start of the game, Neyla specifically tipped Sly off to the Klaww gang’s
existence to get the ball rolling. Sly, Bentley, and Murray stole back every
single Clockwerk part one by one, leaving them a sitting duck...er, owl, for Neyla and
Arpeggio to steal all at once. The entirety of the game up to this point
builds to this moment, this reveal that everything the Cooper gang had done was itself a setup,
and god, this is just masterful...until Neyla double-crosses Arpeggio and enters Clockwerk’s
body herself, becoming...Clock-la. I kid you not, she calls herself Clock-la. It makes sense that after all this, she’d
be our final boss, but man, after hearing that Arpeggio had set this entire plan in
motion just to live in a stronger body, it feels weak to just write him off in an instant
like that. Neyla’s lack of motivation here is the sole
weak point in an otherwise fantastic narrative. Obviously, Sly takes Clock-la down, yet again
defeating the owl with the help of Carmelita. Upon crashing in Paris, Murray opens Clockwerk’s
mouth so that Bentley can grab and destroy the hate chip once and for all, but Murray’s
not strong enough, and Bentley;s spine is crushed under the weight of Clockwerk’s
beak. (KISS ME, K-KISS ME) No, seriously, he’s
crippled now. I told you, this game isn’t messing around. Murray is able to pry Clockwerk open and grab
the motionless Bentley, and Carmelita destroys the hate chip. Suddenly, all of the Clockwerk parts wilt,
as if the years caught up to them in an instant, and Carmelita naturally moves to arrest the
Cooper gang. Sly bargains with her to let Bentley and Murray
go, offering himself up for capture. Murray carries the limp Bentley away, and
Sly shortly afterwards escapes the interpol helicopter. This is where Sly 2 comes to a close. Band of Thieves takes a massive leap after
the success of Sly 1, moving to tell a deeper, more detailed, and clearly darker story, as
you can tell if you hung around for the spoilers. We see the Cooper gang pushed to its limit
several times, we see villains outrun and even outsmart our heroes; there is so much
to unpack here, and even if I unpacked it all, I don’t know that I’d do it justice. The villains are even better than those from
the first game, with Dimitri being a standout. His mannerisms, such as his dialogue being
almost exclusively misinterpreted catch phrases and slang, led to him becoming a fan favorite
that’d make an appearance in every following Sly game. The heroes are fleshed out significantly as
well, with Bentley at points totally shining, and Murray actually getting a character. Instead of just eating and being dumb, now
his strength is played up, and he acts like a superhero named The Murray. It’s fantastic. This whole story is fantastic. Yes, it sort of limps a little bit near the
end, due to that twist, but it’s redeemed by the ending. Besides that one tripping point, Sly 2 tells
a powerful tale from start to finish. I’m still shocked sometimes that this kind
of story is told in a game made at least partly for children. It approaches mature subjects and treats them
and the audience with respect, trusting that kids could handle it. It’s designed in such a way that it’s
perfect for all players, no matter their age. I could keep gushing, but it probably goes
without saying, we’re looking at a Golden Bolt for Sly 2’s story. Get ready for some more gushing. Sly 2 is about as good a second outing as
you can ever have. It’s far grander in scale, it’s far deeper
mechanically, it’s - y’know what, let me start from the beginning. Take everything from the first game and throw
it out the window. It’s no longer a stealthy, linear, Crash
Bandicoot style of gameplay we’re working with, we’ve gone open world baby, and it’s
not just Sly in those open worlds, for the first time, Bentley and Murray are full-on
field agents. It is called Band of Thieves, after all. I’ll get into those two in a bit. While Sly 1 was a tight platformer with light
stealth elements to make the platforming more unique, 2 moves much deeper into that stealth
mindset, while keeping the platforming and even adding beat-em-up action gameplay. Instead of being a one hit KO, Sly and the
gang have a health bar, to encourage you to fight if you get caught. You can much more easily sneak up behind enemies,
hell, Sly can even pickpocket them with his cane. Pickpocketing will always earn you more coins
than if you killed the enemies in combat, and some enemies even have loot in their pockets
that are worth even more money. On top of this, missions are more likely to
require stealth, because unlike Sly 1, the missions in Band of Thieves are all interconnected. See, the 8 different overworlds of Sly 2 are
each just as much of a character as the Cooper gang or their Klaww gang target. Despite being relatively small, they’re
densely packed with content. Guards are prowling the grounds and the rooftops,
ready for a chase or a fight. Each locale has one or multiple setpieces
so that you always have your bearings. Throughout the levels there are even expensive
treasures that the gang can grab and run back to the safe house. Getting hit will break them though, so you
have to be careful. Some of these are booby-trapped, too, so you’ve
gotta get them back so Bentley can disarm them before you explode! Almost every inch is used at some point before
you move onto the next area. And then, of course, there’s the main goodies
we already know and love: The Clue Bottles. Rather than having multiple sets of bottles
every mission, the overworlds each have 30 bottles, and they generally provide a much
more useful ability when gathered. Sly 1’s power-ups were nice, but often they
were tied to specific playstyles. In Band of Thieves, there are still a few
situational powers, but you’re probably gonna find yourself using a bunch of them. Namely, because Sly 2 allows you to hotkey
up to three gadgets on the L1, L2, and R2 buttons per character, no more clumsily rotating
through abilities on the fly. Having a combat dodge to easily slide by attacks
when you’re swarmed by enemies is insanely useful, or a smoke bomb to make a hasty escape,
or throwing an alarm clock to distract enemies so you can sneak by without getting into an
altercation entirely, it’s all wonderful. There’s also a couple secret gadgets only
unlocked via cheat code, like this one that lets you throw a miniature Tom from Toonami
to draw the attention of enemies. Come on, that’s just cool. Bentley and Murray also have their own sets
of gadgets, which I’ll get to in a little while. My favorite though, is the stealth slide. I don’t know why, I just love sliding through
the levels, without making a peep, it’s so much more satisfying than sprinting by
pressing R1 and drawing their attention. Now, you might be asking where all these powers
are going to come from, if there are only 8 sets of bottles compared to the dozens in
the first game. That brings me back to that loot, those treasures,
and those coins. Sly 2 introduces the Thief Net, an online
black market where the gang can sell their stolen goods and buy new gadgets. Yet again, many of these are optional, but
you’ll find yourself hooked regardless, pickpocketing whenever you can, smashing everything
around you for extra coins, scouring the overworlds for treasure. All the while, you’re learning the world
more, attaching yourself to the locales, and creating moments that’ll come back to you
whenever you replay the game. So, so many games have a lifeless open world,
and it’s one of the biggest sins in gaming when it happens. Sly 2 absolutely never has that problem for
me. Part of that is because many of the missions
take place in the overworld, rather than each being its own level. You’ll follow the Klaww gang members around
their respective hub worlds for varying reasons, you’ll track guard patterns, you’ll plant
a bug in their base to hear their communications. Sometimes it’s even an actual bug! There are also many interior missions, that
have their own layouts. You’ll ransack the inside of Rajan’s guest
house putting together a suit for Sly to wear, for example. With a few exceptions, all of the game’s
missions are incredibly fun, the exterior ones do a great job at further helping these
worlds stick out in your mind. The interiors are wonderful for breaking up
the pace. No matter what, they often show that Sucker
Punch was really ahead of their time on this one. Many people have said it before, but Sly 2
can be seen as a predecessor to the Assassin’s Creed games, except for kids. Although if you know how the game ends, I
don’t know if it’s ENTIRELY for kids... On top of this, there are a series of high-octane
missions on a moving train that predated Uncharted 2’s big train setpiece by half a decade. I’m not saying Sly directly inspired either
of those two things, of course, it’s just interesting to note. Althooough, Sly and Nathan Drake are rivals
in PlayStation All-Stars, maybe it’s about who can destroy more trains. The missions play another key part in this
whole equation, too. And this is where I get to bring in Bentley
and Murray Each member of the Cooper gang will have his
own task during each heist, and each of these missions plays into the characters’ strengths
mechanically. Sly, obviously, is going to be sneaking around,
stealing things, and climbing things. Bentley and Murray are too weak and too big
and clumsy, respectively, to be doing any sort of stuff like that. Instead, Bentley acts as the demolitions expert
and field hacker, strategically taking down the enemy infrastructure, be it physical or
digital. When in his binocucom he can fire darts with
his crossbow that put enemies to sleep. He can drop or throw bombs at will, too, and
in some missions he’ll even take control of his trusty RC chopper to do the bombing
for him. Later he’ll unlock an array of crossbow
shots and bombs that can shrink enemies or turn them into health, among other things. Murray, meanwhile, does the heavy lifting
of the group...literally. When he’s not fighting off waves of enemies,
he’s carrying stuff that his buddies can’t haul around, like a giant priceless gem or
an actual bear. Murray’s a total tank in combat, punching,
throwing, and thunder flopping onto his foes - by buying stuff on ThiefNet, he can unlock
abilities to scare everybody away just by screaming, or just lighting his fists on fire
and instantly disintegrating anything he punches. While players still control Sly for about
60% of the game, these two play a vital part to each Episode. See, while Sly 1 focused on individual missions
that would lead to the eventual showdown, 2 really drives home the idea that the missions
are the setup for a greater job. We’re not just earning keys that we need
in order to progress, essentially every mission in 2 is one piece of the puzzle, no matter
how crazy it may sound. If Bentley says this water tower is a giant
robot, you better trust him. And these Episodes all culminate in a big
attempted heist, with the entire gang coming together and executing their own tasks. Swapping between Sly, Bentley, and Murray
and seeing the synergy feels so satisfying in these levels. The payoff for the past hour or two of work
is more than worth it when you know that every single bit that you did had an impact. It was a risk expanding the scale by this
much this quickly, but it was absolutely worth it. The Episode structure does have some repeated
concepts, of course: You’re going to do recon in every chapter, you’re likely going
to follow and/or bug your target, and you’re going to follow Neyla around a handful of
times too, usually for her to show you an important secret that’ll help you in the heist. However, despite having some greatest hits
mission tropes that pop back up both here and in the sequels, Sly 2’s mission design
never starts to slack. If it’s an old concept, you’ll be doing
it in a novel way, and often these missions are practically brand new even if they do
fall into the categories of steal stuff of break stuff. The only missions I don’t really care for
tend to be the turret missions, because they’re on the easy side and the controls are kind
of stiff. That, like my other gripes with the game,
is a very minor nitpick. While we’re talking about them, let’s
get those out of the way, because they go hand-in-hand: When you select the Abandon
Job option during a mission, it boots you back to the Safehouse - the main reason I
want to Abandon a Job is that I just started it and found a treasure sitting around that
I want to return, so loading me back to the Safehouse is just tedious. You can’t actually return treasure to the
Safehouse during a mission at all, as in order to deliver treasure, you have to enter the
Safehouse, which also abandons the job by default. When you’re IN the safehouse, there’s
no indicator of which member of the gang has active missions, so you sometimes have to
exit with a character just to find out, only to re-enter and change characters again. And lastly, Bentley and Murray infrequently
feel like the overworlds aren’t designed well enough for them. It’s very rare, really only once or twice
each, but sometimes you need to go out of your way with one of these characters to reach
an elevated area, since they can’t climb like Sly can. Later on, this issue is mitigated by Murray’s
turnbuckle jump and Bentley’s hack-uh...hoverpack, but Bentley’s in particular comes pretty
late in the game so it’s a bit moot by then. The same goes for their inability to pickpocket,
that sort of leaves Sly as the only one who can get loot and reliably farm for coins. Do these all kind of suck? Yeah, in my opinion they do. Do they take away from the game’s magic? Absolutely not. I don’t hesitate one bit to call Band of
Thieves a masterclass in design. The mission progression is spot-on; the gadget-progression
is paced nearly perfectly, with only a little bit of loot grinding at the very end if you
decide you want every power; each character feels unique, while also feeling like a member
of a team, hell not just a team, a family. Each member has at least one boss fight, several
moments to shine, THIS is what I really wanted out of the series. Yet again, one or two small stumbles don’t
detract from one of the best PlayStation 2 games of all time. Band of Thieves earns another Golden Bolt. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
The Sly series does a fantastic job of feeling like a playable cartoon. Everything, from the episodic nature of the
story to the short missions that keep your attention without dragging on for too long,
matches this goal, and makes sure that kids remember the Cooper gang long after they’re
done with the game. Sly 2 takes this a step further, turning the
pause screen into a “we’ll be right back” screen, allowing the player to decide when
the commercials are in this adventure. The comic-style intros and outros are back
and better than ever, too, this time complemented by more in-game cutscenes as well as Bentley’s
slideshow scenes. Both of these set different tones and allow
the game to convey a far wider range of emotions than the first game. Sly chatting with Carmelita before a ballroom
dance brings back that will-they-won’t-they romance while also keeping the player a bit
on edge - what happens if Sly blows his cover, or if Murray drops the Clockwerk wings during
the dance? It’s great stuff. (“COOPER” LINE) Oh...yeah, okay it’s
not ALL great. Carmelita has a new voice actress and she
is...uh, not good. She just sounds so forced, I’d argue it’s
somehow a step down from Sly 1. What’s even worse is the same voice actress
performs as Neyla in this very game, and it’s miles ahead of her Carmelita. Thankfully, the rest of the voice cast returns
for the main characters, and the new villains fit right in with them. Actually, each of the Cooper gang improves
immensely from the first outing as well - Sly comes off as more experienced; Bentley starts
off super jumpy as it’s his first time in the field, but over time really comes out
of his shell; and Murray’s new persona as The Murray is exactly what he needed. Another wonderful touch is that in these short
two years since Sly 1, we see the gang age thanks to some improved character models. In the first game, Sly in particular had these
more pronounced, childish features and these huge eyes. They fit his character, of course. Since Sly 2 moves into a deeper direction,
so does our hero himself, with a much more subtle facial structure. This is most apparent in the Binocucom scenes,
and once you see each character’s new model, it’s a tiny bit jarring to go back. Likewise, so much of the rest of the game
takes that leap forward visually as well. Enemies look more menacing, and there are
more of them. Each Klaww gang member has at least three
different types of henchmen, each of which has its own feel, both in and out of combat. Hell, Rajan has actual elephants roaming around,
which raises the question, why are there regular animals in a world dominated by anthropomorphic
animals? That gets even darker when you see the moose
head in Jean Bison’s cabin - is that a regular moose or is that one a guard that said the
wrong thing in front of the boss? That’s giving me the creeps I’m out of
he-Whoa wait a sec, Mr. Resetti? I saved my game, don’t punish me. Oh you did not just do that, now it’s on! “Bentley’s palms are sweaty, shell’s
weak, crossbow is ready Getting into fights with Mr. Resetti, mom's
spaghetti He's nervous, but on the surface he looks
calm and ready to drop bombs, But he keeps fighting resetti” Of course, the attempt at going for a grander
scale does come with some setbacks. There’s a decent amount of pop-in on certain
pieces of level terrain, for example. Generally, the game’s also a bit buggier
than Sly 1 as you saw with...uh, yeah, that. They’re usually very small bugs that don’t
affect the game in the slightest, but they’re noteworthy regardless. My favorite is when enemies are instantly
killed by a high fall...despite the fall being only like ten feet. Be warned, there IS one specific mission where
the game really likes to crash. I’ve had two separate crashes in this bear
cave on PS3, several years apart, and I very vaguely remember the same crash happening
to me once on PS2. Thankfully, Sly 2’s very good about its
autosave, but having to reset your system entirely is a bit a minus, I would say. The last thing I’ll touch on here is the
soundtrack, which is again a massive step up from Sly 1. Each overworld and most of the interiors have
their own themes, and rather than settling as background music, these become another
character in themselves. Sly 2 introduces the Sly Cooper theme, a piece
so iconic that I actually played it in the Sly 1 review and most of you probably didn’t
notice, because it goes THAT hand in hand with the series. Essentially every overworld theme in the entire
franchise from here-on out adds a reference to the Sly theme. This keeps firmly planted in your mind, no
matter what you’re doing, that you’re playing a Sly game. It might sound like it’d get annoying, but
it never does because each theme still does an excellent job of differentiating itself,
while still coming home for a few seconds at some point. Sly 2 almost completes the trifecta, the story
is superb, the gameplay is top notch, and the presentation is right up there too. However, there are a lot of those little bugs
and quirks that do add up, even if individually they’re not harming the game. Those plus that big crash and Carmelita’s
amateur-hour performance mean that I have to lop at least something off of the score
here. Band of Thieves for its presentation will
earn a Silver Bolt. Now stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
After the release of its wildly improved PS2 mascot platformer sequel, and with the PlayStation
3 looming, this growing developer continued firing on all cylinders, working on a title
to cap off the trilogy - a third game that was greenlit before the second had finished
production - and they only had 11 months to do it. Now the difference here is that Sucker Punch
has always prided itself on being a smaller team, a one-project studio that ensured everybody
on staff can go all-in and take their time. It’s why later when Sucker Punch pitched
its first PS3 title inFamous to Sony, the studio management requested a budget that
would usually amount to two years of production costs, while making clear that it was going
to work on a three year production cycle - choosing instead not to ramp up with temporary or new
staff hires and deal with crunch. And inFamous is important here, because Sucker
Punch came into Sly 3’s development knowing that with the new console right around the
corner, they wanted to experiment. This meant that Sly 3 was going to be Sucker
Punch’s last Sly game, and despite cutting off a full year from their usual production
schedule, they wanted to end the trilogy with a bang. But did they succeed, or did Sly 3 try to
do too much, too quickly? Unlike the previous games in the series, Sly
3’s narrative actually begins at the end of the game. The Cooper Gang is working a new heist, attempting
to break into the Cooper Vault. This previously unknown vault had been home
to the priceless loot of all of Sly’s ancestors, and it was time for the gang to claim Sly’s
birthright. It’s not just the Cooper Gang as we know
it from 2, though - for this job, the gang has added several more members, apparently
Sly, Bentley, and Murray needed some help. The mysterious Doctor M had already set up
shop on the island, spending decades attempting to get into the vault, and in doing so had
turned the remote island into a fortress. After the heist goes awry and a brief confrontation
with Doctor M, one of M’s mutant creature...things grabs Sly and starts squeezing the life out
of him. This is the frame for our story, Sly’s life
flashes before his eyes, particularly the last few months of setup for this job. And with that, we go through those past few
months, traveling across the globe yet again as Sly and the gang, with a slightly different
goal than in the first two games. Rather than taking something back bit by bit,
Sly 3 focuses around building up the gang bit by bit, in order to take that something,
in this case, the Vault, back all at once, all the while running from Carmelita, of course. There is no enemy group like the Fiendish
Five or the Klaww Gang that connects each episode together, these are independent stories. For what it’s worth, I like that concept,
I don’t know that they could’ve outdone the weaving with Sly 2’s story so to move
in a totally different direction works for me. Plus, it lets each episode breathe a bit,
as well as each episode’s big bad. In order to recruit each new member of the
Cooper Gang, we need to earn their trust, or help them complete their own goals first. For example, in the very first episode, Sly
and Bentley find Murray in Venice and have to convince him to rejoin the gang. After Bentley was paralyzed at the end of
Sly 2, Murray blamed himself, and left the gang to find his inner peace. His spiritual mentor, the Guru, ordered him
to clean the water of Venice, which had been polluted by the mob boss Don Octavio’s tar
dumping. Murray absolutely won’t join the group until
this is fixed, so it’s on Sly and Bentley to help their old friend if they want him
back After that, the gang returns to the outback so Murray can report his success to the Guru,
who also joins up after they rid his home of miners. I have to reveal the rest of the gang for
the sake of the review, so expect very minor spoilers throughout the rest of the video. I’ll warn you when the big spoiler stuff
comes. In addition to the Guru, the gang adds three
new members: Penelope, a remote control vehicle expert and Bentley’s new love interest;
the returning Dimitri, their frogman for underwater jobs; and the Panda King. You know, the guy who killed Sly’s dad right
in front of him? Yeah, him. I wasn’t really a big fan of this plot point
for a long time - both Sly and the Panda King are at each other’s throat initially, but
almost immediately after that they’re working together without much issue. During this most recent playthrough, it actually
did grow on me quite a bit - we see the Panda King fight with his past demons, and fight
the urge to kill the raccoon that ruined him. We see that the old Panda King is, for the
most part, gone, and that right now all he cares about is saving his daughter. While they still do patch up a bit too quickly
for my taste, I started seeing a bit more underlying tension between the two that slowly
fades away as they work towards their shared goals. It’s a bit sloppily done, but now I kind
of like this. I also enjoy how smart the villains are in
Sly 3. Well...some of them. Throughout the game’s five main chapters,
we meet some of the strongest villains in the franchise, as well as some of the weakest. Don Octavio is another sort of Dimitri - a
villain that’s quickly thwarted, but whose character is entertaining enough that people
love him to this day. General Tsao and Captain LeFwee each outsmart
the Cooper Gang on more than one occasion, subverting the player’s expectations. Something as simple as Tsao finding the bug
that was placed in his base completely throws a wrench in the entire heist structure that
Sly 2 introduced, and it’s great. LeFwee outsmarts and outstrategizes the gang
on several occasions, even during their big end-of-episode heist, proving to be one of
the smartest foes that the gang ever encounters. And then there are the villains of episode
2 and 3. Episode 2’s big bad is just an evil mask. On one hand, it’s hilarious fighting a mask,
but on the other, this leans a bit too much into the surreal for my taste. Episode 3’s villain, the black baron is...well,
it’s Penelope. She dressed up because as a child she was
denied entry into an illegal aerial dogfighting league. The Black Baron was let in without a problem,
though, and Penelope was so dominant that she created her own competition that she’d
win by cheating. Naturally, despite cheating herself, as the
Black Baron she bans cheating from any other entrant. But then as Penelope she helps the Cooper
gang who are breaking the rules by being out of their hotel at night by defending their
hangar from an attack from another cheating team. It’s...I like this chapter a lot, but this
is pretty weak storytelling when you really think about it. But hey, at least Penelope won’t dress up
as a mysterious male villain again, right? Alright, time for the endgame spoilers. Skip to this point in the video if you want
to avoid the ending of Sly 3. It’s time to return to the present, where
Sly finishes his reminiscing by realizing that all of these jobs didn’t matter to
him as much as he thought. Right now, having seen Bentley and Penelope
together, all he wanted was to be with Carmelita. Oh, hey, good timing. With Sly out cold with a bad concussion from
the fight against Doctor M’s beast, the rest of the gang comes together and stages
an impromptu assault to take back Sly’s cane before M can get into the vault. When Sly comes to, against Bentley’s concerns,
he jumps back into the action. It was his cane and his family’s vault after
all, he couldn’t sit on the sidelines in his eyes After getting into a dogfight with
Doctor M’s windfish monster...this guy is...weird...Sly gets his cane back, and Doctor M reveals that
he was the third member of the original Cooper gang, acting as the Bentley to Sly’s dad. He claimed that Sly’s father took all the
glory, all the fame, and all the credit for his team’s accomplishments, when none of
it would be possible without his intelligence. He was attempting to take back the treasure
he felt was HIS right just as much as the Cooper family’s. After Sly escapes with his cane, and with
his two friends by his side, he opens the Cooper Vault and enters. They don’t get far before Sly has to continue
alone, though. Shortly afterwards, Doctor M enters the vault
behind them, revealing that he’d placed a tracking device on the cane so that the
Cooper Gang could lead him right to the money. Bentley and Murray hold M’s goons off to
give Sly some time, but M plants the seed in Bentley’s head that HE should be the
leader of the gang, not the much less intelligent Sly. And then immediately Murray snaps Bentley
out of it. This is a super interesting wrinkle, to have
Bentley potentially grow disdain for Sly in the same way that M did for Sly’s father,
but it’s introduced far too late. There are little teases of Bentley being jealous
of Sly throughout the game, particularly when Penelope has a small crush on everybody’s
favorite raccoon, but it’s never really brought together in a meaningful way. As soon as M mentions he was in the old Cooper
gang, that’s the first we get of Bentley reconsidering his friendship, and almost immediately
it’s dropped. Anyway, after an awesome platforming section
that features Sly running through each ancestor’s section of the vault, Sly gets to the inner
sanctum, with Doctor M not long behind. The two battle, and Sly wins out. As the whole vault is falling apart from the
fight, Carmelita comes in to bust both Sly and Doctor M. It wouldn’t be a Sly game
if Carmelita didn’t jump in during the final boss, after all! M fires a final shot at Carmelita in an attempt
to have the last laugh, but Sly takes the bullet, and Carmelita takes down M. That concussion
catches up to Sly, and he has no memory of who he is due to M’s shot. Carmelita lies and says he’s her partner,
Detective Cooper, and the two escape, leaving M to be crushed in the vault he fought for
so long to enter. Bentley and the gang search for any trace
of Sly afterwards, soon realizing that Sly doesn’t want to be found. He left his cane and his gear behind, holding
up a small entrance to the vault. With essentially infinite riches, the gang
splits up and goes about life without Sly. As a tease, Bentley later realizes that Sly
is faking his amnesia to be with Carmelita, and Bentley also reveals that he and Penelope
are working on a time machine, teasing the eventual Sly 4 that Sucker Punch later admitted
they explicitly planned to never make. That’s where the Sly trilogy would cap off
for eight long years. If there’s one word I could use to describe
how I feel about Honor Among Thieves, it’s...conflicted. I enjoy the story they tell here, but the
execution pretty consistently feels rushed. The team only had a year to make Honor Among
Thieves after Sly 2 was finished, and it shows here and elsewhere. After a game like Sly 2, the stakes feel far
lower here. Without Clockwerk looming overhead, the story
lost a bit of its direction and urgency, and Sucker Punch went all over the place trying
to add new wrinkles to the plot before thinking about how to make those wrinkles matter. I still love the villains for the most part,
the dialogue is better than ever for the most part, and they continue in that darker direction
that 2 started us on for the most part, but notice that I keep saying “for the most
part. Sly 3 is a constant give and take, and it
leaves me feeling like that it factor that kept Sly 2 and even Sly 1 feeling so powerful
is for the most part missing. It’s still not bad, but it leaves a lot
to be desired. I’ll give the story of Honor Among Thieves
a Silver Bolt. “Conflicted” is going to be a theme here. For the most part Sly 3 doubles down on Sly
2’s changes to the formula, while also making tweaks to optimize it for our three main characters,
and fixing almost every minor issue I had with Band of Thieves. You can actually see in the safehouse who
has an active job, thank you! No longer do the worlds feel more made for
Sly, because Bentley and Murray both have mobility options from the get-go. Bentley’s wheelchair is tricked out with
rocket boosters, eventually letting him perform a triple jump, and Murray can curl up into
a ball and bounce higher than anybody else in the game. Both characters can pickpocket now, too, and
as an added bonus, the loot you pickpocket is instantly sold and added to your coin counter. You’ll still spend those coins on Thief-Net
to buy new gadgets and powers, although almost every gadget is a repeat from the previous
games. The main new ones are Murray’s aboriginal
ball form, Bentley’s Grapple Cam, and Sly’s rocket boost. Remember how I loved the stealth slide in
Sly 2? The Rocket boost is that, but faster, while
still being silent. Instead of relying on gravity to do the work,
you can slide wherever you want, even uphill, although it costs a bit more energy to use
now. Still, I love it. Sly also gains several outfits, which will
be used in certain levels to blend in with guards, provided Sly can give those guards
the correct passwords. These passwords are stupid and fun, especially
in Venice with Sly’s now-infamously terrible Italian accent. He definitely doesn’t fit in with Octavio’s
mob. Actually, Sly, what’s your favorite mob
show? SOPRANO While there aren’t many new gadgets, Sly
does have a series of combo abilities that you can buy to spice up the game’s combat. There are three powers, each with three levels
for you to purchase, and they are almost all absolutely useless. You can press triangle once to charge a level
1, twice for level 2, and thrice for level 3, before pressing x, square, or circle to
do a different kind of attack. I tested it out, and the level 2 push attack
does the most damage with the least cooldown - keep in mind, most of these special attacks
will take down regular grunts instantly anyway, so they’re only particularly useful on bosses. Also keep in mind there are only six real
bosses, and you only fight three of them as Sly. The level 3s are mostly redundant and take
too much time to execute to be worth it comparatively. Considering they’re each worth up to a thousand
coins, and the best loot you can pickpocket is only worth 150 coins, this is a crime. And if you’re thinking “well, just collect
the treasure like you did in Sly 2…” let’s talk. Honor Among Thieves removed treasure entirely. They also removed Clue Bottles entirely. Two of the things that made these open worlds
as engrossing as they were are gone, replaced with some mostly useless traps that are thrown
around the levels. There’s no purpose to exploring anymore
- many episodes have whole chunks of land that you don’t even need outside of one
specific mission. You might NOW be thinking “well just run
around and pickpocket to get some money while you explore.” That’d be great, except that the loot scales
in value based the episode you’re in. Pickpocketing starts out only earning you
20 to 30 coins. By the time I got to the final world in the
game, I decided to grind out 3000 coins’ worth of pickpocketing. After spending it all on upgrades, I still
had about 15 THOUSAND coins worth of upgrades left in the shop. For reference, the total cost of the gadgets
in Sly 3 nearly identical to that of Sly 2, only around 24,000 coins. By the final level of the game I had barely
gotten a third of the purchasable upgrades. Even after lowering the prices of the returning
items, with how overpriced everything is relative to the coins that Sly 3 gives out, the economy
here is pretty much broken; you’ll spend most of the game just catching up to where
you were at the end of Sly 2. With the background stuff out of the way,
how does the core gameplay of the game hold up? For the most part, really well. The episodes aren’t nearly as formulaic
as they were in 2 - instead most missions feel totally different from one another, arguably
to a fault. Honor Among Thieves drops quite a bit of the
“stealth” pretense that the other games had, instead moving more fully into beat-em-up
action territory, and this is a change I’m not super fond of. There are a few new stealth additions, like
these combination locks that take the place of the vaults that aren’t in the game. In general, though, less and less often you
find the Cooper gang actually sneaking around, and far more often the game focuses on setpieces,
moments, and combat. This is most noticeable with the inclusion
of the four new Cooper gang members, and this is where Sly 3 sort of falls into some Sonic
Adventure syndrome for me. All in all, there are no fewer than fifteen
different gameplay styles in Sly 3, and almost none of them get even close to a respectable
amount of the spotlight. It gets really cramped when there are only
eight or nine missions in each level and you need to split that among seven characters,
the Cooper gang becomes a full house here. Actually, Sly, who’s your favorite character
in Full House? TENOR. Piling onto that, these characters don’t
necessarily feel like these expert members of the team that they’re chocked up to be. Panda King is a demolitions expert, but all
he does is slowly pack his backpack full of fireworks. We’ve seen Bentley do some really impressive
stuff with explosives in the past, why can’t he just do some more? Plus, we don’t even get Panda King’s flame-fu,
only a single sluggish chop! Dimitri is added to the team so late that
he’s only used twice for underwater missions, and both times he has a slightly different
control scheme. The Guru is used mainly to mind control enemies
and guide them into running into something so that it blows up. Guru, what are you doing? NOOOO. And Penelope is a supposed remote control
expert, but her remote control chopper is worse than Bentley’s. You mean to tell me this guy, who made his
own robotic wheelchair with moving arms, a spring mechanism, and a jetpack, can’t make
an RC car? I don’t buy that. These characters were designed to forward
the story, and not much else. That’s why they’re not even selectable
in the safehouse - even Sucker Punch knew there wasn’t enough here to justify letting
you take the Guru or Panda King out for a stroll. What ends up happening is that in order to
accommodate everybody, we have halves of mission thrown together with different characters. You might play as Murray for a bit, and then
the Guru for the second bit, for example. This allows for a tighter gang narratively,
but again, it comes at the cost of the gameplay, and the narrative isn’t really good enough
to justify sacrificing gameplay. You always find yourself doing something new
in Honor Among Thieves, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing when done in moderation. However, Sly 3 doesn’t really have much
moderation. It dives into so many pools without checking
to make sure that any of them are deep enough, and ends up hitting its head on the shallow
pool floor so many times that it gets concussed and forgets who it’s supposed to be. I always find myself enjoying the variety
at the start of the game, but by the time I’m nearing the end of the game, I’m just
tired of it all. And that’s when they introduce the gimmick
to end all gimmicks, the pirate ship. Yet again, Sly did it years before Assassin’s
Creed. The reason the economy is so backloaded in
Sly 3 is because the final section of the pirate level puts you in control of an entire
ship for naval battles, treasure hunting, and...well, that’s it. You’ll earn more coins in ten minutes of
naval battles than you ever did pickpocketing, and that’s going to sour you on all that
pickpocketing you did because you felt like you were behind on powers. At the very least, I enjoy this section for
what it is. It’s nothing special, but as a kid I loved
it, and it has more content than Sea of Thieves! If not for me grinding through the pirate
section just to max out all of my abilities, Sly 3 would end up clocking in a bit shorter
than Band of Thieves, but still longer than Sly 1. If you really want to extend your game time,
replacing the collectibles are the Master Thief Challenges, which are mostly just time
trials, do the same mission without getting hit, and a treasure hunt for each overworld. They’re not really worth your time, but
at least they used the treasure hunt more than once. Oh, and there’s multiplayer, I guess. It’s not very good, you’ll play it exactly
once and probably never again. I hate that I have to be as negative as I
am about Sly 3’s gameplay. For every fix brought to the table, there’s
at least one shortcoming due to the rushed development cycle. Often, there are multiple, and most of them
have to do with the game being spread too thin for its own good. If you’re a fan of the Sonic Adventure style
of game design , where in my critical opinion, the quantity of gameplay styles often trumps
the quality and prevalence of each individual style, odds are you’ll actually love Sly
3. I get that side, I really do. For me, as a reviewer, and as a big fan of
the games, Sly 3 is a regression, not just from Sly 2, but in many ways even from Sly
1, so much so that when I was younger I developed phantom memories of collecting Clue Bottles
in Venice simply because I expected them out of a Sly game. Sly 3’s certainly not a bad game mechanically,
but it’s to me the weakest Sly game so far. I’ll give the gameplay a Bronze Bolt. I’m keeping this short. If you liked Sly 2’s presentation, you’ll
love Sly 3’s. The voice acting, with the occasional exception
of Sly himself, is top notch, more often than not surpassing the previous games. Carmelita, surprise, has a new voice actress,
but this time that’s a good thing! This new one brings more fire, and that’s
more than welcome after “COOOPER.” The dialogue the voice actors delivering is
also an improvement; with no urgent mission at hand, the gang has time for some wittier
and often funnier dialogue. Some people pay good money for that, pal. The addition of these dialogue choice sequences
helps with that - the player can’t fail by picking the wrong answers, and the responses
to the bad choices are just great. I recommend you go out of your way to get
the wrong answers, they’re a treat. There are a couple of audio mixing issues,
where the music blasts over the voiceover. It’s never a big deal since the subtitles
in the Sly games are mandatory, but it’s a thing that happens. I don’t mind, though, because the music
in this game is another step up from Sly 2. While I love 2’s soundtrack, some of the
tracks are more atmospheric affairs - Sly 3 throws the music in your face, and does
so confidently. It knows its music is good, and it wants to
make sure you know it too. Oddly enough, the game’s weakest facet when
it comes to presentation are the visuals. Everything’s been improved, the animations,
the lighting, it’s all top notch. Each level has a full introduction cutscene
where you’ll see the gang making their way across the level to enter the safehouse, which
I absolutely love. Every episode takes place over multiple days
and at different times, which is even better! Hell, in the original PS2 version of the game,
some missions allowed you to put on the complementary red and blue goggles so that you could play
as the blue bandit in 3D! Huh, blue bandit...blue bomber. Hey Sly, what’s your favorite Mega Man game? BASS All of this comes at a price, and that price
is paid in frames. After all, you sure as shit ain’t earning
coins in Sly 3. The framerate falls apart constantly, especially
with the HD Collection. Your mileage may vary, but these framerates
often dipped in similar spots on PS2. The pirate section in particular is horrendous,
and the 3D goggles levels in Australia look pretty rough. Not a gamebreaker by any means, but it especially
sucks to see a game that looks this good have this many issues. Let’s make it a threefer, Honor Among Thieves
will receive a Silver Bolt for its Presentation. Although on our side as players, eight long
years passed between Sly 3 and the next Sly Cooper game, behind the scenes frankly things
were fascinating. For a long time, the story as we understood
it went something like this: Independent developer Sanzaru Games while working with Sony to develop
a PlayStation 2 port of Secret Agent Clank pitched a Sly 4 by producing an in-engine
recreation of Sly 2’s Paris hub. Sony approved the project, first trusting
Sanzaru with an HD Collection of the original Sly trilogy on PS3 so that a fourth game would
generate more interest. And also presumably because Sanzaru only had
one original game under its belt. However, in the summer of 2021, a member of
the Sly Cooper modding community, which yes is a thing that exists, obtained what might
be the original pitch for a fourth Sly game, and it wasn’t meant for PS3, it was intended
for the Vita, or the Next Generation Portable as it was known back in 2009. This pitch seems to have been first drafted
at the end of 2008, and tweaked for the subsequent year, and features a whole slew of darts being
thrown at the wall. The presentation showcased a project called
Sly Cooper Thiefnet, which would feature a combination of the Sly gameplay fans had grown
to love with social gameplay features such as a customizable hideout that other players
could attempt to break into, loot to steal from one another, potential co-op gameplay,
touchpad and gyro support - essentially everything you’d expect from an early 2011 Vita launch
game and ambitious pitches for DLC opportunities to try and sweeten the pot for the publisher. And frankly a lot of this sounds cool, Sanzaru’s
ideology to target handhelds where platformers traditionally were performing better is a
smart one, there’s a budget breakdown, it’s a neat peek behind the veil that we don’t
often get to see. Later in the same document, it suggests the
existence of a Sly trilogy PS3 up-res, while showing screenshots and even early but close
to fully-featured gameplay of Sly 4’s Japan hubworld, which at least to me implies that
Sanzaru and Sony had several such pitch meetings or that Sly 4 had already been approved in
some capacity prior to this presentation for Sly Vita. You can see so much of Sly 4’s DNA coming
out in these prototype clips, such as its love of motion gimmicks. They felt super out of place when the game
released in 2013 as a console-first sort of game, but when you consider that it was supposed
to make the Vita’s planned 2011 launch date, that changes quite a bit. It’s possible that even this early on Sony
suggested Sly 4 as a cross-buy game for both the PS3 and Vita, even though Cross-Buy didn’t
end up getting publicly revealed until well after the Vita had released and already died. Whatever the case, we have two different stories
of Sly 4 pitches, and I think they actually overlap. I find it totally believable that Sanzaru
first created a Paris engine test in 2008 and was greenlit to produce the HD Collection,
with talks and ideas ongoing about Sly 4. It’s also totally possible that the ThiefNet
idea was a companion product independent of Sanzaru’s original Sly 4 desires, and that
the two projects got lumped together and whittled down. We know that Sly 4 underwent several major
and controversial writing changes and production hurdles due to time or more likely budget
issues earlier in production, issues that carried through the game’s entire lifespan,
well after it was too late to make major structural adjustments. Even after a delay from Fall 2012 to February
2013 to avoid getting drowned out in a crowded market, it’s clear the game released in
a mildly unfinished state. Then thanks to middling sales because Sly
Cooper was never a big earner and because late-era Sony management loved to cut losses
and leave studios hanging, Sony dropped plans for the DLC chapter that would finish the
unfinished story. Funnily enough, going by the original budget
projections for this Sly 4 pitch, its sales today would indicate that it more than earned
a profit. I’m sure that budget ballooned a bit though,
once it was also an HD game on PS3 and not just a handheld. As we’ll get into in a second, I think Sly
4 gets a bit of a bad rap - fans to this day vehemently trash talk Sanzaru, the folks that
so excitedly pitched and pushed to keep the series alive. It’s so easy to get angry, call the developers
talentless hacks, and seethe online for ten years saying the game sucks whenever somebody
dares utter its Voldemort name, but as we’ve discussed in many of my retrospectives, it’s
always more complicated than that. The game’s still got more than its fair
share of issues, but like so many of Sony’s middle-tier games in the late PS3 era, it’s
more a casualty of cold-footed management, poor timing, and a lack of general interest
in the series. That’s a bit of a downer to end this transition,
so lemme whiplash you by saying I like this game a lot more than most, it had a better
upside than Sly 3 at least. Yeah I said it. 8 years after the events of Sly 3, we pick
back up right where we left off, with Sly still feigning amnesia, Bentley and Penelope
working on a time machine, and Murray causing havoc as a champion demolition derby driver. Penelope has recently disappeared, however,
and while searching for her, Bentley discovered that the writings in the Thievius Raccoonus
were bit by bit vanishing. Somebody had beaten him to the punch and developed
their own time machine, clearly somebody with far more sinister intentions. Bentley decides it’s finally time to get
the gang back together, and repurposes Murray’s van, Back to the Future style. The one thing the gang needed was an artifact
from the era to which they were traveling, in this case, a samurai sword from Feudal
Japan. So, you know the drill, the gang steals the
sword from the museum in Paris, and escapes. Well, not before Carmelita finds Sly and,
brokenhearted that he’d lied to her, tries to zap him into the NEXT century with her
trusty shock pistol. From there, the gang travels through five
different eras, freeing Sly’s ancestors and even working with them to set history
right. Each time period has its own big bad from
the present, all of whom report to a mastermind that we’ll talk about later. No matter who’s running the show though,
it’s clear that each one has a specific focus: Destroying the Cooper family history. The villains in Sly 4 are okay, I’d probably
as a whole put them as the weakest in the series. None of them ever pose a huge threat in my
eyes, and in a few cases they’re redundant. El Jefe feels like a weak combination of Rajan
from Sly 2 and General Tsao from 3, the Black Knight and the Black Baron are both mysterious
figures with a strong grasp on technology *coughs* excuse me, the Grizz is for most
of his level a diet Dimitri, and Miss Decibel is just one of Rajan’s elephants. Okay jokes aside, why are some elephants fully
sentient and others just regular animals in this universe? Every villain in 4 in some way represents
an homage to the original trilogy, and while I respect that, it weakens each of them when
I get a feeling of “been there, done that.” That’s not a lasting issue, though, as the
weaker villains are made up in a couple ways: First off, a more minor addition - the guards
in this game have a ton of personality. They’re caught talking in cutscenes, and
their dialogue can be hilarious. Much more notably, you’ll probably forget
about the boss issues due to the newest, or I guess oldest, members of the gang: Sly’s
ancestors. In each episode, the gang rescues that era’s
ancestor, and after that they become fully playable characters with their own missions,
dialogue, and most importantly personalities. Seeing some of these Coopers that we’ve
built up over the course of Sly 1 and 3, such as Rioichi or the wild west bandit Tennessee
Kid, in the flesh is an amazing creative decision that blows the gang of Sly 3 out of the water. The main Cooper trio teaming up with one of
Sly’s ancestors in each episode, with Carmelita later joining the gang as well, albeit hesitantly,
makes for a fantastic spin on the group dynamic that helps cut out any concerns of the gang
starting to get stale. Not to mention it’s great to see them interact
with the gang and hear Bentley try to explain modern technology to them. On that note, it’s time for the spoiler
warning. Skip to this point in the video if you’d
like to avoid spoilers for Thieves in Time. By the game’s fourth episode, with Carmelita
and Sly at least somewhat reunited, Bentley’s really missing Penelope. Yeah, remember how I mentioned Penelope once
and then forgot about her for a little while? So did Sly 4, oops. After working to learn more about the Black
Knight, Bentley eventually trails him into one of his facilities, where the Knight suit
opens to reveal…*sigh* Penelope. She had betrayed Bentley and joined Le Paradox
in wiping out the Cooper line because she had grown tired of Bentley’s moral compass
interfering with their combined intellect. As arguably the two smartest people on earth,
they could have made a killing if Bentley wasn’t in her eyes “infected” by Sly’s
do-good attitude. By removing Sly, and thus his influence, from
the equation entirely, she and Bentley could rule the world. This is the most controversial part of the
entire game, and ruined Thieves in Time for many a Sly fan. However, if you really think about it...her
logic isn’t TOTALLY flawed. It skips over some very important context,
like how Le Paradox is absolutely going to double-cross her at some point, but after
eight years of living together between Sly 3 and 4, and eight years of Bentley sticking
to the good side of the fight even after everybody had moved on, I can sort of see how Penelope
snapped. That said, it’s still an awful plot point
because of how poorly it’s set up and revealed. After being mentioned no more than a tiny
handful of times before episode 4, her name’s thrown back in your face early and often before
the reveal, which makes it feel both out of nowhere AND rushed. Anyway, you’re probably wondering who that
Le Paradox I mentioned a moment ago is. This little skunk is teased throughout the
game, but barely seen until near the end. It’s only after he’s retrieved all of
Sly’s ancestors’ canes, or at least the five we saw, kidnapping Carmelita, and a trip
to the present that we find out his motivation. It turns out that Le Paradox was also from
a long line of thieves, albeit not very good ones, since you could smell them coming a
mile away. Le Paradox’s father had planned to frame
Sly’s father for stealing the largest diamond in the world, but the old Cooper gang beat
him to the punch and daddy Paradox was locked up. Le Paradox vowed revenge on the Cooper family,
and planned to wipe their name from history. Sly, as recklessly as always, ran ahead to
free Carmelita, knowing he was running into a trap. Hey, deja vu. Bentley this time didn’t need his hacking
skills to save Sly, though, as he had gone back and brought all five Cooper ancestors
with him to retrieve their canes. After doing so and restoring the correct flow
of time, the gang saves Sly and Carmelita. Le Paradox, because he’s bad at everything,
then accidentally smashes the time machine and opened a rip in spacetime, setting the
stage for a final battle with Sly as the gang escaped. And...oh god, this is awful. The final battle of this game is a quick time
event. I know the Sly games have always struggled
with final boss battles, but this is by far the worst. Le Paradox tricks Sly into saving him, steals
his paraglider, and then gets hit by a plane, leaving Sly to get warped out of the present
with no way of his friends finding him. Bentley, Murray, and Carmelita continued to
search wherever and whenever they could, but they turned nothing up. Sly was just...gone. If you get the game’s Platinum trophy, you’ll
find in a little end-credits scene that Sly is stuck in ancient Egypt, a tease for the
Sly 5 that as of right now, we’ve never gotten. I’ll admit went into this review pretty
skeptical, because I remember having many MANY issues during my first playthrough five
years ago, but I came out pleasantly surprised. I think Thieves in Time’s plot holds up
much better than Sly 3’s did for me. It doesn’t come close to Band of Thieves
in terms of writing, but despite some missteps, I really enjoyed this game’s story. I’ll touch on this more in a bit, but it
felt like this was a labor of love - the dialogue is funny, with references all over the place
to previous games and just pop culture in general. Despite being stuck with the time travel gimmick
thanks to Sucker Punch’s tease ending to the third game, Sanzaru mostly nailed a time-based
story. The only real paradox is in the villain’s
name. As a result, the plot’s stumblings are entirely
on Sanzaru, I can’t give them a pass for the stuff I mentioned in the spoiler section. Plus, there’s a whole subplot about Murray
feeling unimportant within the gang that’s just a total retread of previous games. Despite knocking a rough gimmick out of the
park, they somehow tripped on the way to home base. I still enjoyed what we got, and I appreciate
a lot of the moment to moment storytelling more than the overall plot lets on, but I
can’t give the story anything more than a Silver Bolt. I’m happy to say that despite those narrative
stumblings, Thieves in Time mechanically is an absolute return to form for the series. And I don’t just mean they picked up where
Sly 3 left off, oh no no, they did one better. They picked up where Sly 2 left off Clue bottles
are back, treasure is back, the open worlds mean something again. And they topped that too by modernizing the
open worlds with the addition of a minimap radar and a full map that you can open at
any time by pressing the select button. This is something I didn’t know I wanted
until I was replaying Sly 2 and 3 for their reviews - even as great as Sly 2’s world
design is, with all the setpieces and landmarks, I couldn’t help but feel sometimes that
a map would help when searching for missing clue bottles or treasure. But they didn’t stop at just fixing up Sly
2, the costumes from Sly 3 return and now serve a functional gameplay purpose. Each one has a distinct gimmick that alters
Sly’s moveset, from the fireproof Samurai armor to firing arrows with a robin-hoodesque
costume. And these, wait for it, tie into those treasures. Each world has a dozen treasures to obtain,
with five of those set aside for the five costumes. Some of them even require you to swap between
different costumes, and these especially are a load of fun. All of this makes for some great backtracking
moments if you choose to go for all the treasures and really helps the worlds feel more whole. But wait, I’m gonna blow your mind: You
don’t have to enter the safe house to deposit treasure anymore, thank you! That means you can grab the treasures mid-mission
if you’d like, there’s nothing stopping you. This was one of my bigger gripes with Sly
2, and I’m happy to say that Sanzaru thought ahead on that one. These treasures aren’t worth nearly as much
here - the most valuable one here would fit snugly into the third episode in Sly 2. That’s okay though, because Sanzaru heard
us again: the loot that you pickpocket in Sly 4 has a set value, and that value is actually
substantial here, unlike in Sly 3. Again, thank you! Like always, every world has three types of
loot, but here they’re consistently worth 100, 200, or 500 coins. So, they’ve addressed some of my biggest
issues with both Sly 2 AND 3 now, both related to the game’s economy. So how does the economy hold up in 4 with
these changes? Unsurprisingly, incredibly well. After every single job, you’re guaranteed
to find some new abilities in ThiefNet. These abilities you can buy naturally scale
up in cost over time, but are always pretty reasonably priced. There is a bit of a trade-off: Like in Sly
3, many of Thieves in Times’ abilities are iterative upgrades to previous powers, and
unlike both Sly 2 and 3, many abilities of old are mysteriously absent here. The combat dodge and even a series staple
like the knockout dive are gone, which leads me to fight far fewer enemies head-on when
I’m playing as Sly. While I do love this from a logical standpoint
- Sly was never meant to be a powerhouse in combat - it does leave me missing the cut
abilities. It feels a bit too uniform now that, instead
of having a gadget grid with multiple different powers, Sly is limited to his costumes, and
Bentley, Murray, and even Carmelita are each limited to four cookie-cutter variants to
their standard attacks. Giving Murray explosive or electrically-charged
punches is neat, but it doesn’t make up for losing the ability to incinerate enemies
instantly with a punch. There are at least a whole slew of more passive
abilities, such as Bentley being able to kick bombs around, Sly having a dive attack when
paragliding, and Murray’s elbow drops having a shockwave upgrade. Even the Clue Bottle rewards are passive here,
with powers that increase the pickup range of coins, a bottle radar, or even one that
cuts the damage you take in half. Sanzaru had a clear fondness for passive abilities,
and it works just fine, it just leaves me wanting. Now with that all said, how does the core
gameplay feel? It’s a new team and a new system, did they
get the FEEL of Sly Cooper right? Yeah, yeah they did, Sly 4 is a perfect continuation
of the gameplay of 2 and 3. Sly, Bentley, and Murray feel almost identical
to their PS2 counterparts, which makes sense since Sanzaru ported the trilogy over before
being greenlit to make this game. Hell, Carmelita more or less feels identical
to her Sly 3 gameplay, just with slightly remapped controls and arbitrarily having her
super jump locked until a late-game purchase. They didn’t have to relearn anything because
the HD Collection was their warm-up. So what about those ancestors? How do they feel? Well, in a pretty genius move, Sanzaru added
variety without adding new gameplay styles - the ancestors play like Sly without his
power-ups, but with new abilities of their own. Rioichi has a much longer Ninja Spire jump,
Salim al-Kupar can speed up vertical climbs, and Tennessee Kid just has a friggin’ gun. In one of my favorite homages in gaming, Tennessee
even has deadshot as if he’s straight out of Red Dead Redemption. Additionally, each ancestor has some unique
charge and stealth takedown attacks, which are nothing more window dressing, but it goes
a long way to make them feel unique. The two ancestors whose abilities I have a
bit of issue with are Sir Galleth and Sly’s first ancestor, the proto-raccoon “Bob.” Galleth’s ability is a much stronger wall
hook jump that crashes through any objects above him. Only in Galleth’s world does Sly get less
air on his wall hook jumps though, so it almost feels like they intentionally weakened Sly
in this level. Likewise, Bob can climb up ice walls, because
for some reason Sly can’t do that anymore like he could in 2. These two both utilize abilities that Sly
has in a way that he couldn’t anyway, don’t get me wrong, it just feels a bit weird to
see his moveset get ignored or actively weakened to highlight another Cooper. It’s a minor thing in the bigger picture,
though, and each ancestor is used incredibly well despite this nitpick. That leaves only a few things left for me
to touch on: The mission design and the overworld, and these two actually go hand in hand here. Let’s touch on the latter first - with the
jump to the PS3, the team had the opportunity to ramp up beyond the smaller, contained worlds
from the previous games, and boy did they do just that. It can be a genuine challenge to find the
clue bottles now, because these worlds get pretty huge by Sly’s standards. To help pack in the worlds a bit more, there
are also 60 collectible Sly masks hidden throughout the game. These can be spread throughout the overworlds
but also in the mission-specific areas, and for every five or ten you unlock, you’ll
unlock some little goodies that I’ll cover a bit later. However, I can’t help but feel the worlds
still do end up being a bit on the empty side. It suffers from a much different problem than
Sly 3, and that ties into the mission design. See, Thieves in Time looooves its interiors. The majority of missions take place inside,
rather than out in the overworlds. This is a welcome change of pace for me, because
it allows the game to veer back into being a platformer just as it veered back into being
more of a stealth game - it’s a superb mixture of all three of the previous Sly games, and
it’s something I didn’t know I wanted. So many areas actually bring me back to the
Sly 1 days of linear level design, where missions highlighted the mechanics in unique ways,
rather than highlighting the worlds in unique ways. Although in an odd omission, the barrel levels
are totally gone now, yet again Sanzaru brought back and combined aspects of all three PS2
Sly games but also made some questionable cuts. Either way, these interiors help the missions
feel incredibly different in each world, almost to a fault - I will say that I don’t feel
as satisfied with heists in Sly 4, because the game is so focused on individual missions
that the overarching episode goal gets a bit lost. When it comes to those individual missions,
though, one of the things I love most about Thieves in Time is that it solved Sly 3’s
problem with character representation. In this game, missions are longer than they’ve
ever been before, and in nearly every mission you’ll take control of multiple members
of the gang working in tandem. Very rarely in Sly 4 did I feel that somebody
was cut back just to highlight someone else - Carmelita is underused in Arabia, if I want
to nitpick, but that’s about it. The RC car and chopper also make somewhat
limited returns, and hacking takes a much more substantial role here. This lets Bentley sit back in the safe house,
letting other members contribute more to the physical jobs, while keeping the turtle relevant. In Sly 4, there are three different types
of hacking minigames: An updated tank minigame that we all know and love, a sidescrolling
shoot-em-up, and the most questionable: ball mazes that are exclusively controlled by the
Dualshock 3’s Sixaxis gyroscope. This came out in 2013. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
came out in 2007 with a similar Sixaxis minigame, but even back then there was the foresight
to turn that crap off. This came out the same year as The Last of
Us and is using launch-era PS3 gimmicks, it’s just strange. At the very least, they’re not too intrusive,
but if your gyroscope doesn’t work, you probably can’t get too far in Sly 4. Anyway, to get back onto the topic of mission
variety, while the longer missions can get a bit TOO long every now and then, I rarely
noticed because I was having a blast. Sly 4 is just fun, and having dedicated mission
areas that aren’t just in the overworld goes a huge way towards making it so fun. But, again, it’s a give and take, because
these interiors simultaneously hurt the overworld. At least Sly 3 used its overworld for missions
a bunch, in Sly 4 there are so many missions that start you in the overworld, only to have
you walk thirty feet and enter an interior for the rest of the job. This is where I get to talk about the worst
part of this game. Sly 4’s loading screens, I’m not exaggerating
one bit, are some of the worst that have ever existed on the PS3. It’s a good thing you don’t have to enter
the safe house when depositing treasure, because you’d be waiting, no joke, a full minute...one
way. That’s two minutes of loading every time
you change characters, that’s a minute of loading every time you enter an interior,
that’s 15-30 seconds of loading just to load a Bentley hacking mission. As far as I can tell, the game makes no attempt
to load in the background at all, so when you’re watching a cutscene and then have
to walk 20 feet to enter that building? Yeah, another minute. It can absolutely kill the pace when you’re
really getting into the game - when your game has worse loading times than Sonic 06, you’ve
got a problem. While we’re talking about Sonic 06 issues,
the loading screens, and framerate for that matter, are even worse on the Vita version. I understand it running at 30fps on handheld,
that’s fine enough, but it’s not a stable 30. Even on PS3, the framerate isn’t close to
a stable 60fps, it’s baaad - the overworlds just seem to be too big for the engine to
handle, going bigger and simultaneously using the overworlds less was a very questionable
choice. If you can get past the lower resolution and
framerate, though, Sly 4 on Vita is a viable option. I’d recommend the PS3 version over it any
day, but there are some neat bonuses to playing it on the go, including this AR mode that
lets the Vita be a second screen for the game, highlighting the collectibles you’ve missed
so that you can more easily find them on PS3. Also, fair warning, the trophy lists are separate
on PS3 and Vita, meaning if you transfer your save file from one platform to the other and
you have the Platinum like I did...uh, whoops. For all of its issues, I’d still actually
go as far to say that Thieves in Time is a near-perfect mixture of all three Sly games
that came before it. But perfectly combining three games that were
often at odds with one another doesn’t lead to a perfect game, it leads to a bit of a
perfect mess. For all of its leaps ahead, Sly 4 does, again,
trip quite a bit, so it’ll get a Silver Bolt for its Gameplay too. I used to hate the way Sly 4 looked, something
about the models seemed...off. I’m not sure what I was thinking though,
as looking at it now, it feels like the logical next-gen leap for the series. Obviously the framerate sometimes hurts that,
but Sly, Bentley, and Murray look spot-on, with Carmelita looking...okay they kind of
went a bit overboard with Carmelita, and it’s making me a little uncomfortable. Okay, you know what, I stand corrected. Somebody was paid to animate this. The locales in Sly 4, while they occasionally
feel a bit redundant with respect to the rest of the series, are all beautiful and more
importantly, they feel accurate to the time periods they’re set in. Well, except for the dinosaurs in the ice
age level, that’s...yeah that’s not even close. Something else I find super neat is that with
the exception of the returning cartoon-styled animations and the final boss fight itself,
every cutscene in the game takes place in real time - if you have the Fists of Flame
equipped, Murray’s fists will be on fire in cutscenes. This is also true for all of the Mask bonuses
I mentioned earlier - each of our four present-day heroes has an alternate costume. Murray’s got a wetsuit, Bentley’s robocop,
Carmelita is Catwoman which is fitting since her fourth new voice actor plays Catwoman
in the Arkham games; and Sly’s got a skin very similar to the caped crusader himself. There’s something fitting about sitting
on a perch and taking down baddies as Bat-Cooper under cover of night. Sly even has two cosmetic paraglider skins,
and two cane skins that have different effects: Cole’s Amp weapon from inFamous, Sucker
Punch’s follow-up to Sly, which will add shock damage and a stun effect to any enemies
you hit; and Ratchet’s wrench, which turns all coins into bolts and doubles the coin
value. You get them a bit too late in the game to
need either of them, but hey, it’s still neat! Sanzaru packed in a bunch of these sorts of
little references too, with Clank and Daxter hidden as treasures, and Clockwerk is even
hiding in each of the game worlds, stalking the Cooper ancestors just as he said he’d
done in Sly 1. Now, I mentioned a moment ago that Carmelita
has a new voice actor...again, and she’s personally my favorite of the four she’s
had. It’s not just her, though. Every character in Thieves in Time sounds
absolutely elated to be there, you can tell how much the voice crew loved and missed the
Cooper gang. With all of Sly’s jokes and everybody’s
banter, there’s something to be said about how quickly Sly 4 picks up right where 3 left
off, even after nearly a decade nobody missed a beat and arguably, every performance here
is stronger than ever. They even brought back Sly’s terrible Italian
accent! That’s dedication. Given, the characters might talk a little
too much when walking around during missions, but I don’t mind it. I wish their mouths moved in-game like they
do in the cutscenes, more than anything - one specific battle has a lot of talking and absolutely
zero lip syncing, it’s distracting. That aside, there are so many little quirks
that show how much Sanzaru truly wanted to make Thieves in Time. For one, they brought back Peter McConnell,
the composer from Sly 2 and 3, and he does a great job sliding right back into the role. Sly 4’s soundtrack catches right up to and
at many times surpasses the previous games. Rather than just incorporating that signature
Sly flourish to songs, McConnell sneaks in different sections of the Sly theme to spice
it up. Perhaps the instrument choice gets a bit too
overzealous in certain tracks, but the overworld themes especially are as strong as ever. Sanzaru really did go above and beyond with
little touches, Murray’s got a little Guru keychain in his binocucom, the treasures are
very often callbacks to previous games or pop culture in general, when you jump into
a pit or water, the game actually rewinds time, rather than cut to black, in order to
fit the time travel motif; Carmelita’s little HUD icon has her hair flowing back and forth
in the wind. They even went as far as giving alternate
Sly icons whenever Sly changes into a costume, it’s something nobody would’ve missed
if it wasn’t here, but THEY wanted to go that extra step. Now, obviously, I probably would’ve preferred
if they’d spent that time optimizing the game more, because again, ugh, that framerate. It’s very hard to appreciate the game as
much as I’d like to when I’m sitting there in silence during a loading screen, or when
it runs like total trash. It’s almost unprecedented that I’d mention
something like the framerate negatively affecting two different categories in a review, but
the framerate and loading times here genuinely are THAT bad that they hurt the game twice. Let’s make it a threefer, Sly 4 will again
receive a Silver Bolt for it’s Presentation. Yeah, I couldn’t just end there, there’s
one more Sly game left to cover. Bentley’s Hackpack released alongside Sly
4, a $3 collection of bonus hacking minigames that Sanzaru put together while sitting on
their hands, since the already-delayed Thieves in Time was finished and ready for release. It’s a harmless little addition, maybe one
last-ditch attempt by Sanzaru at showing Sony that Thieves in Time could still work with
post-launch DLC support. Of course, they were trying to convince a
company that had already internally planned for two years of DLC support for its Smash
Bros. game, only to pull out within two months after better-than-expected sales of that game
because sales in Europe weren’t good enough. Sly 4, frankly, was dead before it released
just like contemporaries such as Starhawk, the PS3’s Twisted Metal game, PlayStation
All-Stars, and so many more thanks to the PlayStation upper brass’s pathetic cut-bait
practices. The best we got out of it was a pretty solid
game that didn’t live up to fans’ nostalgic expectations, and a rock concert if you spend
$3 and do everything in Bentley’s Hackpack. Oh and a movie that was cancelled and turned
into an 11-minute children’s TV show that in all likelihood doesn’t exist to begin
with and would only further piss off a small but weird subset of 25-30 year old diehard
fans of the original games that think they’re still the target demo. So where does that leave us with Sly now? At the risk of dating myself, for now, we’ll
keep hearing swirling rumors of a reboot or a new game or the TV show, but it’s hard
for me to say that the Cooper Gang as we know them have a future unless they draw in a completely
new, young audience - the kind we were when Sucker Punch first captured us in this excellent
world. But at the same time then, that sort of game
probably won’t be for us anymore, and that’s okay too. I’ll still hold this series as one of the
PS2’s very best, pound for pound I’ll put Sly 2 up there against almost any title
on the console period. If Sly 4 had been able to release a year or
two sooner according to its original plan, even if nothing else changed I think we’d
look at the game a good bit differently - hell, I think if more folks went back to it now
that time has passed, they’d probably be a lot less negative too but that’s just
life. Regardless of wherever the future might take
it, Sly’s influence is still felt to this day in Sucker Punch’s games, features like
the mid-air autosteering and apparently even the code for Sly’s tail animations are still
used in games like inFamous and Ghost of Tsushima to this day to simulate fabric waving in the
wind. It’s thanks to Sucker Punch using the anthropomorphic
comic Usagi Yojimbo as an influence while working on Sly that the idea of a wandering
samurai game kept popping back into Nate Fox’s mind in the first place. Now, do I think Sucker Punch will come back
to the Sly series? Frankly, I doubt it, long-time employees have
expressed their love for the Cooper Gang, hell it sounds like the studio liked Sly 4
more than fans did; but the awesome thing about Sly is that its soul takes after Sucker
Punch’s just as its soul continues to influence their games. Sly and his friends, just like the studio,
pride themselves on sticking best as a small, tightly-knit team and weathering whatever
challenges come their way. That’s true for fans as well. There are teams making emulation-based New
Game+ mods with difficulty modifiers, these multi-year, multi-person projects, a level
of dedication that you just don’t see with many PS2 contemporaries. There are countless fan scripts and pitches
out there for a Sly 5, or in some cases a different Sly 4 - some folks really don’t
like that game. Sly’s audience may not be massive, it might
not be grand, but it’s loud and it’s passionate. Clearly at least somebody in Sony’s upper
brass recognizes that, because the company kept pushing forward trying to find a home
for the series after low sales time and again, with bargain bin discounts, with the movie,
with the show, with cross promotion, Toonami ads, everything. All that’s needed to break through to whatever
Sly’s next level may be, is to find a way to get Sly in front of more eyeballs at the
right time. It’s clear as day that if you give this
band of thieves a shot, they’re gonna find a way to steal your heart. Thanks so much for joining me on this revisit
through the Sly franchise - it was a fun trip down memory lane, and I’m surprised my old
voiceover wasn’t as bad as I expected it’d be. Hopefully you enjoyed watching it as much
as I enjoyed compiling everything together. I’d also like to give a shout-out to the
band Consinity for their cover of E.T. used throughout both the original Sly videos
and these versions here. Back in 2018, they told me their guitarist
was a fan of the channel and gave me free reign to use some of their tracks. Small world! Speaking of fans of the channel, if you enjoyed
what you watched, make sure you’re subscribed to The Golden Bolt so that you can catch all
these videos right when they drop. Something like 75% of the folks that tuned
in last month weren’t subscribed, if even another 10% subscribed I could probably ask
Sony to make another Sly game. And last but absolutely not least, I wanna
thank my incredible Patrons for their support. You folks are the best. Once again, thanks for tuning in, and until
next time, Stay Golden.
