Game #1190: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

 This doesn't make me a furry, does it?

 Unlike Jak and Ratchet, I did play and finish Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus back when I was younger. I came across it after reading some rave reviews about it. I remember I loved it, so I had high expectations returning to it after so many years. Turns out the game has aged pretty well!

 This is a platformer game in which you play as a raccoon thief, and thus, it has a few very light stealth elements. I hate stealth sections in videogames, thankfully, the stealth elements are just in there for spice, as the game is a pretty straightforward platformer for the most part. 

 Playing as Sly feels very comfortable, for lack of a better word. Jumping and swiping with your cane feels very responsive and snappy, I don't think I ever felt as if the game screwed me over. To compliment these two basic abilities, you have the circle button working as a context-sensitive button, mostly to perform stealthy actions, such as using your cane as a hook when jumping, to hide behind walls, walk with your back against a wall(When allowed) or to land on top of a pointy object. Lastly, you can unlock special moves for the triangle button, such as a dive attack, rolling, slowing down time or fastening time.

 As a thief, Sly is very fragile, just one hit and he is out. You can find lucky charms on the stages, although they are fairly rare, or you get one by collecting 100 coins, and they'll take a hit for you. You can carry up to two lucky charms, for a total of three hits total. At most.

 Stages are relatively simple, get from one end of the stage to the other. Along the way you'll face plenty of thugs, some that may sound an alarm and alert other enemies nearby, these enemies have their vision highlighted by a yellow cone in front of them, so that you can approach them more carefully. Some sections will also have yellow laser lights, touch them and you'll alert enemies, as well as turn them red, which will damage you if you touch them. These lasers can eventually be pacified and turned off, permanently, by destroying the alarm nearby. Most platforming stages have a certain number of clue bottles for you find, find them all, and you can access a vault which usually hides a new move or ability.

 The clue/vault system is usually pretty good, however, sometimes you get stuff that is pretty much useless. You get a few enhancements for your binoculars that supposedly give you extra information, but I never, absolutely NEVER needed it, much less used it. Getting those always sucked. The last few levels also include 'maps' for the current section, which once again, super lame. That said, getting water and bottomless immunity was pretty neat. That said, while it's great in concept... every new move that you get is mapped to the triangle button, and you swap them with the R2 button, which is weird to say the least. Plus, the very first move you get, the Dive Attack, is SO good that every move I got afterwards just couldn't compete. The mine and the decoy feel kinda useless, why use the roll when I can use the dive attack? Not ever did I find a use for the slow-time or fast-time abilities either.

 The platforming stages in the game are fantastic, all of them. They look pretty, thanks to the cell-shaded look, but they are designed in a way that that you are always doing something exciting. Added to this is the fact that moving Sly around feels so good. That said, the game borrows a page from Crash Bandicoot 3, and they added a large amount of variety stages, and they get more prevalent in latter stages. There's about 4 turret sections, 3 in which you must protect somebody, 2 races,  two twinstick shooters.... They aren't horrible, but they were on the bland side. The only one I found challenging was the chicken mini-game, and I didn't really enjoy wasting time retrying that minigame while I could be playing the main game.

 Speaking of parts I didn't enjoy.... the bosses felt like a chore. Pretty much every boss but the Kung Fu Panda(This one came out first!) has some annoying gimmick that takes forever. I saw praise for the Ruby fight on TvTropes, but... really? the rhythm minigame takes FOREVER ,and if you die at any point it's all the way back to the start. The last boss is fought on a jetpack, and you have to avoid rings, which was such a letdown considering he is preceded by the most challenging, and most exciting, stage in the game in which you must climb a tower while lava rises below you.

 And don't even let me get started on Bentley the Turtle, he will stop you VERY frequently to force you an unskippable MGS-like codec conversation in which Bentley states the obvious in how to proceed. These conversations don't develop the characters, they can't be skipped, and they get in the way of me playing the game. And not once did he tell me something useful, just stuff I could've figured out by myself. Just being able to skip the text by pressing X would've made these more tolerable.

 While it had a few things I didn't really enjoy, the brunt of the game is excellent. I can see how these people would go on to develop inFamous, as character movement seems something they excel at, as I can't stress enough how good it feels to move around as either Sly or Cole. I think the game could've been even better than Ratchet and Clank had it focused exclusively on the platforming stage, but that aside, I still consider this first installment a PS2 classic.

 8.5