| Presentation In Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racconus you assume the role of Sly Cooper, a raccoon born into a family of master thieves. A family of thieves that each have a thieving technique unique to that member. Each member then writes that technique into the thievius raccoonius and passes it down to the newest member. A group calling themselves the fiendish five, have stolen the book, and split it amongst themselves. It's Slys job to get the book back together. Helping Sly out are his childhood friends, Murray and Bentley. But opposing him, in addition to the fiendish five, is a female police officer Carmelita Fox. She's been tracking Sly for quite some time, in hopes of putting him behind bars. Graphics Cel-shaded games seem to be the current trend on the gaming world, and while I've already grown sick of the look, Sly Cooper managed to grab and hold my attention. While the levels aren't as big as many of the current platformers, they are very well designed. The worlds are well organized, animated very well, carefully colored and different from one world to the next. There is something always in motion in the background, though the framerate does occasionally drop. The camera is never a problem, becuase with a simple push of the right analog stick, you can fully rotate it. Sound Things are kept to a minimum here. But it's perfect for the style of the game. The sound effects sound as if they were directly lifted from a cartoon...but then again the game is basically a cartoon. The voice actors do a great job. Sly Cooper speaks during cutscenes and his voice is perfect for the character. Though, Bentley and Murray steal the show. Bentley is the stuffy nosed geek, whos voice can be a little eccentric at time, but I'm sure it was done on purpose. Murray is a big clumsy character, but it's hard to resist his strong will, and strong heart. Gameplay At it's core Sly Cooper is a platformer. But Sucker Punch relaized that straight platformers can get boring (Read: Super Mario Sunshine) so they decided to throw a few different types of gameplay into the mix. Each world is an area that one of the fiendish five has claimed as his or her territory. Within each world there are several levels in which upon completition earns you a key. Most of the levels are basic, run jump, and swing to the goal, but others have you controlling a cannon shooting down enemies while your teammate runs for the key, or a couple involve racing your van for a few laps. The only problem is the game is extremely short. You could just blaze your way through the levels in a few hours. But you would miss out on a few powerups. Hidden in each level are bottles with clues in them. Collect all the clues and you can open a safe that contains various powerups. These powerups include the ability to roll into a ball and attack enemies(which later can be powered up again and turn into an electric ball) or other powerups allow you to speed up or slowdown time, and use your hat as an explosive landmine. While most of these powerups have limited use, a few of them are quite useful. Particularly the immunity and when you get blue prints to each world. With the blueprints you can look through your binoculars and see where all the breakable items, and clues are. Control Things are pretty smooth here, with one minor problem. Early in the game, everything is fine, but once you start earning your powerups, you'll find you have to cycle through all of them using the R button. It gets to be a hassle cycling through all the pretty useless ones, just to get to the one you want. It would have nice to be able to program a certain powerup to another button that isn't being used, or even just to arrange them so you could put the ones you use right up in front. But other then that everything is typical fare for a platformer. Overall This is one of, if not, the best platformer I have played. I just wish the expierence lasted a little longer. I highly suggest at least a rental to get through it once, and if you want buy the game and replay it, to get all the bonuses. It's a great platformer, that has definately been a sleeper hit. |