So these last few
months have been a decidedly weird malaise for me. I feel like the medium of
video games as a whole is failing to provide me with any kind of satisfaction.
The big blockbuster disc releases are too mindless and unintelligent for my
cerebral cortex, but the smaller arthouse games are too intelligent and complex
for my mushy skull. I need some kind of middle ground. Intelligent murder games,
maybe? Unintelligent adventure games? A new Kirby game? I don’t know. Thus, I’ve
spent the last little while catching up on odd bits and pieces that have
slipped past my notice from the years of intelligent murder games and
unintelligent adventure games in my wake.
I never played a
Sly Cooper game before on account if it being the bottom rung of Sony’s
marketing strategy of “take what’s popular and make it three times over.”
Realizing that a whole lot of people really liked Super Mario 64, armies of
programmers were commanded to do-things-like-Mario-and-do-lots-of-them, leading
to a trio of Jaks, a quartet of Ratchets and a flock of Slys. And I had
collected too many coloured stars, eggs, lums, bolts, jingos and otherwise in
other games to be particularly excited about yet another fetch quest
platformer. But now that some time has passed and Sony has redirected its
cloning efforts from recreating Mario to recreating Halo, this felt like the
time to fill in the missing Easter Egg in my collection of Easter Egg Hunt
action games.
The Sly Cooper franchise
is built around a raccoon master thief, his Milhouse turtle friend and their opposite-of-Milhouse
hippo brute friend. Except these games are rated E for Everyone, so these are
thieves that only steal from bad people, of course. There’s somewhat of a
connecting thread between all three games, sometimes involving Sly’s ancestry
of master thieves, just enough that you may as well play through all three of
these games in such a format as, perhaps, the Sly Cooper HD anthology for the
Playstation 3 Entertainment Netflix Housing system. This HD set features such
improvements as widescreen visuals, Playstation Move-supported shooting gallery
mini-games, and Sly’s hat occasionally glitching out of existence in cutscenes.
Your tour of the
history of mammal robbery begins with Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonus.
Here, you primarily play as Sly Cooper, a raccoon platform mascot pretending to
be a master thief. Despite allusions to being a criminal from a dynasty of
thieves, you never really do anything thief-worthy. Sometimes you’ll dodge
lasers , sometimes you’ll dodge spotlights, thus meaning the game has as many
stealth elements as The Wind Waker. No, this game is more Crash Bandicoot than Splinter
Cell.
You mostly play
through linear stages of platforming sequences. Sometimes you’ll whack enemies
with your hook cane. Sometimes you’ll climb and shimmy objects. I stress the
“sometimes” part; Sly, disgracing his raccoon genetics, often has a hard time
gripping on to the climbable surfaces you intend him to. Even simple platform
jumping can be tricky when you’re not sure what platforms are considered flat
surfaces to Sly, and what platforms are too curved for his weak paws. Toronto’s
many garbage-can-excavating raccoons would scurry circles around this Sly
Cooper’s immobile ass.
You also deal
with occasional mini-games, like a basic shooting gallery or a basic racing
game, or basically throwing your controller to the ground because the checkpointing
during boss fights is awful. Or basically giving up on the story, because the
narrative exists solely to explain each of the game’s contrived scenarios. Why do
you need to collect yet another pair of identical keys to open more identical
locks? Are master thieves not master lockpickers?
Don’t mistake my
above two paragraphs of ranting to think I despise Sly 1. It’s just that Sly 1
exists in a post-Meat Boy world, where a slab of flesh raised platforming
standards with perfect controls, perfect checkpointing, perfect parodies of NES
games and perfect fecal humour. Times have changed since people thought
watching DVDs on Playstation Twos was revolutionary tech, and Thievieus
Raccoonus has aged the worst of the games in this set. At the least, playing
through Sly 1 will give you a fond admiration for the games to come in this HD
set.
Sly 2: Band of
Thieves is the first Sly Cooper game that establishes what a Sly Cooper game
should be. Gone are the linear platforming sequences, in favour of a series of
missions within various colourful overworlds. There are a myriad of mini-games
too, and the quality of mini-games is solid enough to keep things feeling fresh.
Imagine Grand Theft Auto without the autos, the mass murder, and in favour of
more Grand Theft. Besides being better in tune with his rodent roots in regards
to climbing, jumping and other platforming, Sly has the added, series-defining
ability to pick pickets. Slink behind an enemy, and press Triangle to use your
cane to empty their oversized coiffeurs. It’s a simple, easy and satisfying
mechanic that leads to me being distracted from any given mission because I see
the warming glow of a golden watch sticking out of some security guard’s
pocket.
There
is more confidence in the game’s own cartoonish narrative. The game is
comfortable with making its villains the most absolute of ridiculous
stereotypes. Be it a lizard with Andy
Warhol-like qualities or a Northern moose that made me come to the horrible
realization of what a “Canadian accent” is, the game is delightful in its
insensitivity. Most importantly, Sly 2 succeeds at putting the player through
the paces of a criminal mastermind, or at least an E for Everyone-criminal
mastermind. Each mission is positioned as a thread in a greater scheme, setting
Sly and his crew in the direction of an all-too-elaborate Ocean’s Eleven-style
heist.
It’s
not an entirely perfect experience; the game handles waypointing by making a
giant blue/green/purple arrow near your next objective; an arrow that isn’t
visible if your character is surrounded by towering skyscrapers. And to an
anthropomorphic rodent, two-storey houses are considered skyscrapers. Also,
you’re not only playing as Sly.
Sometimes you have to play as cowardly turtle-genius Bentley or pro wrestling mark
of marks Murray. Their missions tend to be amusing mini-games, but the process
of getting to said missions can be tricky for animals that can’t scurry or
climb the way blue raccoons are capable of.
Small
sacrifices that one makes in the name of an entertaining criminal platformerish
experience, a fun way to spend 14 hours of your life. Not to mention an ideal
set-up for Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.
Sly
3 is the wiser, smarter, maturely-more-immature version of Sly 2. The structure
and concept of going into an overworld and performing a myriad of conniving
sub-missions is the same. There are some wise tweaks; waypoints are easier to
find thanks to the incorporation of sonar hearing in Sly’s genetics. Traversal
upgrades are made available sooner as to make getting through the land as
either Sly, Bentley or Murray less menial of a task.
Most
importantly, Bentley and Murray are now also capable of pickpocketing.
The
Ocean’s Eleven vibe of performing mini-tasks in service of a master heist has
been slightly compromised. Instead, the game’s plot involves Sly’s crew
attempting to recruit good guys by way of doing bad things to bad people. But
even with that in mind, the writing in Sly 3 is the very best. The game is rich
in sharp dialogue and humour that doesn’t just pander to the youngest possible
audience.
I
guess you could buy these games a la carte on the PSN store, and I can sit here
and say that just buying Sly 3 by itself isn’t the worst idea in the world if
you’re strapped for time. But hey; I paid thirty dollars for little over thirty
hours of entertainment from this package and came away very satisfied. Ergo, I
consider this a strong purchase for people craving a charming, pocket-lightening
value proposition.
4
stars
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