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Review : Sly Cooper for Playstation2
Lately I have been playing Sly Cooper for PS2. I was given this game by my girlfriend's cats for Christmas. This is one of the Playstation 2 Greatest Hits Collection and you can pick it up for a mere twenty bucks brand new. This is quite fortunate because Sly Cooper is one of the best 3d platformer action games on any game system. It was developed by a local Washington state game developer Suckerpunch. They just finished announcing the development of Sly Cooper 2 : Band of Thieves but that will not be out until fall 2004.
Sly Cooper is a cartoon raccoon cat-burglar who is trying to recover a book written by his raccoon burglar ancestors from the lair of other cartoon animal bad guys. The entire world of Sly Cooper is inhabited by animal people like many American Saturday morning cartoons of yore. It would be a furry's delight.
The design and colors of the graphics are pure cartoon animation with a very slight cel-look rendering on the characters. The animation is quite fluid and well done. The colors are a rich pastel tone to them and it looks like a good classic American cartoon.
There is a very nice cartoon physics engine to the game and the environments react to weight and movement. The levels are pretty much a 3d platformer on rails with a linear gameplay following a set path. The environments are really well designed and react to the gameplay quite excellent. They require a great deal of climbing, crawling, swinging and hiding to navigate.
There is a great deal of hiding and sneaking as you have to break into the lair of the bad guys and thwack with your cane when they are not looking. You can think of it as sort of a "Metal Gear Tom and Jerry" game. The difficulty of the game play is just about the right amount. It can be frustrating and hard at times but they can be solved after a couple tries. One thing that I have to complain about is that Sly can not swim to save his life and some of the levels involve lots of jumping and falling to your death when you miss. I just freaking hate when you fall to your death repeatedly in video games.
This is a real family game. It would be instantly loved by kids and the gameplay and graphics delivers all that one would desire from an 3d platformer action game. It is a nice deal at twenty bucks and would go nicely with a game library next to a copy of Crash and Spyro.
Jake at May 18, 2004 
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Comments
Sly Cooper is by far one of *the* greatest unplayed games of PS2.
My g/f is a huge platform style fan, and she picked this up at blockbuster one night.. immedately after we returned it we purchased a copy.
Talk about a solid and unique game! I can't wait till Sly Cooper 2 is out ;) It's in development right now =D
Posted by: Sean at May 18, 2004 5:39 PM
Sly Raccoon is one of the best games on the PS2. The sequel will arrive soon - so be sure to check it out.
I don't agree with your opinion: it's _not_ a family game. The insider-jokes are aimed at a mature audience and some references in the game are just great.
Only bad thing about SuckerPunch's Sly Raccoon is the sloppy marketing job from the publisher. Gamers! Check it out, it's really great.
Posted by: Jim at May 20, 2004 12:41 PM
I noticed that the opening sequence started at 4:20 AM but I don't think that little kids are going to get the joke.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at May 20, 2004 1:20 PM
Hey! I worked on this game! I modeled Carmalita Fox, Muggshot, and Miss Ruby. I also modeled a bunch of the levels. Glad you guys liked it. =)
Posted by: Ianexplusalpha at May 21, 2004 1:14 PM
I remember that you interviewed with them but I did not know that you worked at Suckerpunch. That must have been super cool.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at May 21, 2004 1:17 PM
It was! It kinda sucked when they trimmed down the team for R&D on the next game. Too bad the didn't call me back when they needed more people again. I had thought I made a good impression. I called them more recently and they made it sound like I'd have to go through their insanely long interview process again. That kinda detered me. =( They're a good company, but a they're also little weird.
Posted by: Ianexplusalpha at May 23, 2004 4:40 PM
