The Taconic Tribune

Sly Game Review

Friday, November 13, 2009 By Carlos V.

In the current day and age it’s pretty difficult to find a decent, good game series that doesn’t regurgitate the same garbage back up to its players at every turn. If one were to peer into the past, it becomes much easier to find such a thing, with series such as Mario, Donkey Kong, and Sonic New elements of game play are continuously added to keep the experience fresh in your mouth. There’s nothing more enchanting and tantalizing than a nice warm wash of brand new material. The game being focused on in this review is the Sly Cooper series, a series focusing on the thievery of a raccoon on reclaiming his family’s pride and honor. The first game, “Sly Cooper and The Thievious Raccoonus,” introduces you to the story. Sly is set out to regain The Thievious Raccoonus, the book of his ancestors that detailed certain abilities and other neat tricks his family could do in their thieving jobs. It starts out telling of Sly’s beginning. He was an orphan due to his family being murdered by a gang of five ruthless killers, called “The Fiendish Five.” After killing Sly’s family they ransacked the house until they found the book of lore, and split it into five parts for each of them to keep. Sly, upon reaching adulthood, swears to avenge his parents and to obtain all five pieces of his family’s secrets. Overall it’s a very good game; the storyline is very, very creative and very deep to the point where even a cynic like me I became immersed in it, and named a few screenames Sly Cooper, or “Clockwerk,” the leader of the Fiendish Five. However, the graphics of the game are rather poor, but good for a game that came out in 2002. Sly 2: Band of Thieves came out two years later in 2004. The graphics have improved quite a bit, and Sly no longer has the feeling of a terrible looking dog, he looks more of a Raccoon. The mechanics that tear him through the landscape had also improved; it seems I was manipulating an extremely agile Raccoon. The Gravity physics had also been enhanced to a more realistic sense, and the up drafty feeling as the characters jumped about was no more. The story line continued to get even deeper and deeper. At some parts, especially the end, I became emotionally harmed by the negative outcome of some of the characters, and even angered at some of the ‘baddies.’ By and by the outrageously random mini-games thrown throughout (Dancing, for an example,) the game still seemed to inch closer and closer to the terrible clichés of the world, as well as seeming more and more like the terrible trilogy most games become. ****left off here*** Sly 3: “Honor Among Thieves” came out one year later in 2005. The long anticipated ending to the story line of Sly and his gang had finally come, and it had come in full force. The graphics had been upped to the maximum, incorporating Cell-Shading to a finite detail in this final issue of the story. The story line was absolutely full of innuendos, taking a more mature approach on the story, but the childish humor still remained. The storyline was absolutely brilliant; despite being such a clichéd ending it seemed to come straight out of an adult romance book so much that I vomited in my mouth ever-so-slightly. The story line of each character entering the game this time was so in-depth, that not a single question could be thought of that wasn’t already answered. The controls for all total seven playable characters are so expertly engineered that manipulating them is easy and beautiful. I’m personally yet to 100% complete Sly2 and Sly3 since it’s so time consuming to get every single item possible. Still, playing them is nice on a rainy day, as they rarely get boring. Overall the Sly series does just absolutely fantastic as a trilogy. The mechanics improved as the years went by, and the graphics and story along with it. The only thing that could’ve been further improved was the ending to the entire series, to avoid that terribly predictable moment. I would definitely recommend any person who has the money to go out and buy these three games to do so, especially if you get into story lines very easily.