Medium: Video Game
System: PS3 as part of The Sly Collection
Reason for backlog: None. I beat it as a kid, but never got 100% like I wanted.
As a kid, I loved platformers. The PSX era was filled with the likes of Crash, Spyro, and others. My first PS2 game was Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, which I played through 100%. I collected all the stars in Super Mario 64 by this point (I think). Yeah, I loved games like this. So when I saw the commercial for this game, I instantly wanted it.
Years later, my interest waned. I still haven’t touch Thieves in Time (but it’s on my list). Still, when GameStop was having a labor day sell, The Sly Collection ended up in my shopping bag, and I thought, “Hey, maybe I can beat the Master Thief Sprints now!” So, I decided to replay this after all these years. Does it hold up? ...Sort of.
The story is this: Sly is descended from a long line of thieves who kept all their thieving secrets in a book known as the Thievius Raccoonus. On the night Sly was to inherit the book, a group known as the Fiendish Five attacked them, killing Sly’s father and stealing the book, splitting it into parts and fleeing all over the globe. Now, years later, Sly is determined to defeat the Fiendish Five and reclaim his legacy. On his side, he has tech genius Bentley and driver Murray. Against him is Inspector Carmelita Fox, who is determined to arrest Sly one and for all.
The story and tone all seem like your basic saturday morning cartoon, which always gets a thumbs up from me. The cutscenes are vibrant stills (although apparently Japan got fully animated cutscenes... seriously, what's up with that?) that add to the lighthearted feel. It’s clear it’s more focused on just being fun than being deep, and I like that. That might be what brought me in, given my love for animation. The graphics are cel-shaded, which means they quite easily survive the upgrade to HD.
The game is split into five chapters, one for each member of the Fiendish Five. Each chapter has seven stages, plus a hub. These stages fall into two categories: thieving and gimmick.
Thieving is where this game shines. It’s Sly running, jumping, dodging security, and generally having excellent platforming action. I seemed to remember this not making very good use of the stealth aspects. Playing now, I think it was better than that. This game often encourages stealth. You need to dodge searchlights and lasers, guards and obstacles. While the alarms work on a two hit system, if a flashlight hits you you better take the guard out fast. Sly only has three hits maximum, and the later two have to be earned, so careful sneaking is the way to go.
Still, the whole time I was wishing the difficulty was higher. There was some potential for a truly challenging game here, but it’s bogged down by its desire to appeal to everyone. The only world that really gave me trouble was the last one, and not for the right reasons. Oh well.
In thieving levels, there’s three objectives. First, you must obtain a treasure key, which essentially means getting the key. Next, you must open each level’s safe. Scattered across the stage are clues, green bottles with notes in them. Collect them all, and Bentley will give you the combination for that world’s safe. These clues were not hard to find. Any I missed were usually obvious on a second playthrough. Inside each safe is either a page of the Thievius Raccoonus giving you a new move, or the villain’s notes, giving you enemy layout and the like. The latter you might find useful, but the former ends up amounting to nothing. Okay, the roll was good for reasons I’ll cover in a moment, and not taking damage from falls or water I appreciate, but both the mine and the decoys take too long to set up. The one time I tried, I was gunned down.
The final challenge is the Master Thief Sprint, and here’s where the challenge comes in. After you unlock a level’s safe, an hourglass will appear at the start of the level. Once you hit it, you’ll be forced to go through and complete the level in a tight time limit. This means you’ll really have to run, jump, and sneak with absolute efficiency, because the margin for error is surprisingly small. I think this was Sucker Punch’s way of having their cake and eating it too. They made an easy game for kids and added in this harder minigame for more experienced players. I remember it being tear-your-hair-out frustrating as a kid. Now, it was still clinch-worthy, but not to the degree I remembered.
Minor beef, but in the original PS2 game, you got level commentary for beating the sprints. They remove this from this version, even though Bentley still tells you you can get them. I had to listen to them on YouTube.
That aside, there are also gimmick levels, and here’s where the game suffers. These are mini games, and while some weren’t as bad as I remembered, they were still pretty lame. Shooting treasure chests in Raleigh's chapter annoyed me, and killing chickens in Mz. Ruby’s swamp annoyed me even more. And what’s worse, they actually increase as the game goes on. The final stage, which should be the part where you really put your skills to the test, is mostly minigames, with only two thieving segments. Even the final boss ends up being a tedious jetpack ride rather than a super cool, skill testing fight. At least, until the final segment, which was one that gave me trouble, though I think it's just because I'm out of practice with platformers.
The boss fights... they waiver. Muggshot was the only one who was hard for the right reasons. Mz. Ruby was hard, but she was mostly a rhythm mini-game. The others are easy, even the final boss until the thieving segment.
On a final note, the trophies in this game are ridiculously easy. I got four in the prologue. There wasn't even any for the Master Thief Sprints. Oh well...
I was thinking of doing an LP for this game, but going through my footage to get the pics for this review... man, I was bad at the beginning. I'm really out of practice with what was my favorite genre. That depresses me. I need some Mario in my life.
I enjoyed playing this game, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it unless you’re feeling nostalgic. Still, I have two more games in the collection... after I finish one of the JRPGs that I’ve been putting off.
Final Score: 7/10
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