And then, the series was gone for awhile. Developer Sucker
Punch moved onto the more popular Infamous series on the Playstation 3. Imagine
my excitement when the Sly Cooper HD Collection revealed that a Sly 4 is in the
works. It was first slated for a 2012 release on Playstation 3, but that was
changed to a Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita release on February 5th, 2013. I loyally went down to the
game shop on its day of release and bought myself a copy.
The first game in the series, Sly Cooper and the Thievius
Raccoonus, was, for the most part, a standard, linear-style 3D platformer that
uniquely mixed in elements of stealth, had a quirky story, and used an
interesting visual style. The second game became less linear in its
progression, beefed up the story, vastly improved the graphics, and allowed the
player to take control of more than just Sly Cooper. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves
used the same framework as Sly 2, but threw even more gameplay concepts and
characters into the mix. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time continues the story of the
series by using the same structure of the second and third games, but scales its gameplay variety and character roster to something comparable to the
second game. The game is out on both PS3 and Vita, the PS3 version includes a
free download of the Vita version, and players with both can take advantage of
a cloud-save function used to continue progress across platforms [which works brilliantly]. It's successful in
capturing the magic of the older games in the series and is a great game in its
own right, despite hitches such as consistent technical problems and an
unsatisfying conclusion to its narrative.
The plot of Thieves in Time takes place directly after the
events of Sly 3. The Sly Cooper gang, a ragtag trio of master thieves, is split up after the climatic events of the
third game. Sly is hanging out with police officer and love interest Carmelita
Fox, whom only allowed this because she believes he has amnesia [he doesn't...
hopefully things didn't get weird behind the scenes]. Meanwhile, Bentley, the
brains of the Sly Cooper gang, successfully created a time machine with his
love interest Penelope. The premise of Thieves in Time forms when the gang
learns that Penelope is missing and there is a baddie with his own time machine
thwarting Cooper ancestors throughout history. Each chapter takes place in a
different time in history, and features a different, playable Cooper from the
past.
The story's lots of fun and mostly maintains the tone of past
games. It is a lot more comedic (Murray, the third member of the Sly Cooper
gang, is more or less completely comedic relief in this entry) and often
laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it still has a reasonable amount of smart, inventive drama that I
more than appreciate as a fan of the series. It’s ridiculous, just like past
games – the wheelchair-bound turtle Bentley doesn’t just have the rocket packs
and hydraulics from the last game, but he also has Doctor Octopus-style
mechanical arms this time around. There's a big plot twist around 80% through the
game, and it hits hard and surprises. Overall it’s great, but the conclusion is
weak and wholly unsurprising, despite the satisfying and engaging final boss
fight.
And the game is quite striking. On PS3, I can confidently
say that these graphics are some of the very best of its kind. This is very
impressive cartoonish celshading, with intricate and expressive character
animations and colorful and interesting vistas. On Vita, it looks pretty good,
but the resolution and draw distance take noticeable hits. In both versions, the 2D animated
cut-scenes are massively cut off by black bars on the television, but what’s
there looks great. Voice acting is similarly impressive, with goofy and fun
performances that fit the over-the-top characters. The original cast from past
games more or less reprises its roles, as well.
The biggest problem with the game is something on a similar
note, and that’s technical issues. The framerate on the Vita version is not awesome,
as it frequently drops throughout the whole game. On PS3 it’s mostly pretty
smooth, until the final chapter in which the framerate is just as unimpressive
as the Vita version always is. Load times on both platforms are exceedingly
bad, which may be the worst of the technical issues. I had the audio cut out
while playing on PS3 at one point, and I got stuck in objects once on each
platform, as well. These technical issues bring the overall experience down,
but never made me think twice about booting the game up to play.
And that’s because the game is lots of fun. The gameplay is
comprised mostly of sequences combing stealth and platforming. The game
introduces new concepts enough to keep things fresh, and the organic nature of
the level design makes the platforming engrossing in a way that games like
Super Mario 64 just aren’t. During gameplay, it doesn’t feel like jumping from
platform A to platform B, it actually feels like jumping from the chimney of a
roof to a cable line. Every now and then the game will throw sections of
brawling, or of dual-stick shooting, or of third-person shooting at you, and
they’re fun while they last.
The game is rife with collectibles, creating an incentive to
continue playing after the credits roll – or at least to make you play more
carefully the first time through. The game is split into five chapters, each
taking place in a secluded, [small-scale] open-world. Each has their own set of
three types of collectibles. The bottles and treasures of past games return,
the latter of which providing in-game money as well as the pride of
collectorship that the former solely provides. The game also has masks, which
are sometimes hidden within missions; all of which are replayable. I love the
idea of exploring these little worlds to find treasures and bottles, but the
prospect of replaying missions for masks seems exhausting. It’s just extra, so
it’s hard to complain too much, but this is preventing me from doing the 100%
completion I was more than happy to do with the second and third entries in the
series.
As a big fan of the series, I’m happy with Sly Cooper:
Thieves in Time. It’s unfortunate that the game didn’t get the extra time
needed to stamp out the technical quarrels, and it’s unfortunate that the end
to the story is as lame as it is, but the game succeeds as a whole. Sanzaru
Games was able to make me smile in the same way that Sucker Punch did with the
original trilogy on PS2. The story is taken in a fun direction, the goofy
comedy squeezed out some Petras laughter, the leap in generation does wonders
for the visuals, and the organic, engaging platforming is as good as it’s
always been in the series. Bring on Sly 5, Sanzaru.
