Steal back an important piece of history from a long line of thieves in this fun platformer.

User Rating: 8 | Sly Raccoon PS2
By horrorboy | Review Date:
The story for Sly Cooper is pretty straightforward. You play as Sly Cooper, a master thief that's a raccoon. A book that's been in his long running family's possession, the Thievius Raccoonus, has been stolen by the Fiendish Five. The book contains secrets and tips from Sly's ancestors and such. Each person of the Fiendish Five has a piece of the book, and Sly, along with the help of his 2 friends, makes an elaborate plan to get each piece back and hide away the secrets of a master thief. The story is interesting, but doesn't have heists or big robberies you would come to expect since Sly is a master thief, and instead the only thing you steal here is treasure keys to get through doors, or your next objective, etc. It just doesn't feel right, but is still decent enough. It's also to rush through the main story in about 5 hours, which doesn't seem a lot, but feels right, and more hours can be added on with the extra collectibles.

The gameplay is great, and it feels like some of the areas are obstacle courses, since Sly can climb up poles, swing on hooks, etc. and to get to each key hidden in each level, Sly has to do just that, and it seems that you're running on a long obstacle course, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it is fun at times. The only major flaw I had with this, and what keeps this from getting a higher score, is that Sly always dies in one hit, from anything, unless he acquires 'Lucky Charms', which add in another hit or two, and dying so much and having to return to a last checkpoint a ways away, can just become tedious after awhile.

Also at his disposal, Sly has his cane, which he can use to take down enemies. After acquiring certain pages from safes scattered throughout the world, Sly can also learn new techniques from his ancestors like becoming invisible, and a slow motion jump, which are both interesting and unique, and there are dozens of others as well. Besides finding hints and upgrades, there isn't much really to do, except for time trials on some levels, to see if you can beat the time given. There is some decent replay value here.

The graphics are actually really impressive for an '02 release, and can even be compared to some of the modern day releases for the PS2. The only problem was that the frame rate can just be simply horrible at times, even with one enemy on the screen, and everything starts to look grainy and lag a bit, but it's easy to get used to.

The sound is decent, from footsteps, fire, water splashing, it's all pretty good. The music is also good and fits some of the boss battles, or areas you'll encounter or face.

The A.I. is pretty good, and some of the foes will gang up to go against you and try to take you down. Sly's 2 friends are also added to the game, Bentley and Murray. They mostly feel like just add-ons to get the story going, since you don't actually control any of them, except for a race or two, and a hacking game, and most of their missions were bland, and not as fun as Sly's.

Overall, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a good game, but suffers from a few flaws like the one hit kill formula, a bad framerate, and some tacked on characters. Besides those, it's a great and fun platformer that shouldn't be missed due to some unique gameplay styles. An 8 out of 10.
-horrorboy

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