Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racconus Review

                                    Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus
                             A Journalistic Review by DefiantParrot

Yet another old friend

                                                Originally Written: 12/27/2019
                                    *Spoilers May Be Ahead*
                                     

Developer: Sucker Punch Productions

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Platform: PlayStation 

Genre: Platformer                                                                        

Release: September 23, 2002

         

Now to round out the trilogy. I've mentioned before that the PlayStation 2 is the console I mostly associate with my childhood. It's just the console that I played the most as a kid and it's through it that I truly fell in love with video games. 

And as I've also stated before there were three series' that I played the absolute hell out of growing up and we've covered two of them before. Jak & Daxter had their time to shine, Ratchet & Clank also impressed, well today it's the Cooper Gangs turn, this is Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.

So the game begins with eighteen year old raccoon Sly Cooper breaking into Interpol to steal a file from Inspector Carmelita Fox. With the aid of Bentley techno-genius turtle and the getaway driver Murray the hippo.

Sly Cooper part time douche. full time dick

This first level is a great prologue to the game it gives you a chance to test out the controls which are fantastic. Sly is just floaty enough with his jumps and movements that I feel I have complete control of him whether he is in the air or on the ground. It gives the tutorial of the blue auras, places where Sly can sneak by holding the circle button.

And of course gives us a quick look at our main characters, but back to the story real quick.

The file Sly and the gang are after holds information on a group of Bastards known as the Fiendish Five. See Sly comes from a long line of master thieves in his family and the titular Thievius Racconus was the book that they chronicled all their knowledge into.

On the night little 8 year old Sly was going to inherit the book The Fiendish Five showed up and murdered Sly's family to get the book. Jesus Christ that escalated quickly!!

After this no doubt truly traumatizing experience Sly met his pals at the orphanage and they grew up vowing revenge.

Housekeeping?

The story here is a simple one of revenge and we don't ever deviate from it. Each level is taking us one step closer to each member of the Fiendish Five and to get back the Thievius Racconus. I like it, as I said it's simple but the story is all it needs to be. Especially for a new IP.

I absolutely love these characters. My favorite of course being Sly voiced expertly by Kevin Miller. This raccoon is determined, brave and sometimes overconfident. Sly points out that his family only steals from criminals because it's more fun and proves their skill.

But let's not mince words here, while Sly is by no means an awful person, he is on this mission purely for vengeance. No he doesn't attempt to murder The Fiendish Five and his honor does show itself particularly while facing The Panda King, but here Sly mostly has a one track mind. Revenge, steal back what's his and take the Five down.

Real men rock bowties

Bentley will be the voice you hear the most in this game. Voiced by the glorious Matt Olsen, he is Sly's tech support. His voice while initially grating I got used to after a while and the banter between him and Sly can be downright hilarious at times.

And then there's Murray and I don't wish to be mean but for this game at least Murray is kinda just here. Don't get me wrong I don't dislike him and Chris Murphy does a good job voicing him but ehhh.

Carmelita is an odd one, she's been hunting the Cooper Gang for a while now apparently and the sexual tension between her and Sly is so thick you could spread it on toast. I really like the character and while she's voiced by Roxana Ortega pretty well here, her best moments definitely come later in the series.

Now while I just praised the voice acting I do have to admit that during in-level cutscenes the lip synching is atrocious. I know it's a PS2 game but everybody looks like a shivering muppet. Honestly it's got some charm in it for me, but figured I'd mention it.

The music here is pretty atmospheric and can be toe tapping at times but I gotta admit I can't really remember a tune when I'm not playing the game. Personally if I'm going to compare it to Jak and Ratchet at least in this aspect, it's got the worst music out of the three. But again I must stress it's not bad, just forgettable.

The game also looks really good. I dig the cel shaded artstyle to make the game come across as more of a cartoon and that certainly makes it work since all the characters are anthropomorphic animals.

This game oozes style and charm and is truly a sight to behold

I mentioned I loved how Sly controlled earlier and he really is alot of fun to play as but that wouldn't mean anything if the levels weren't fun. 

But thankfully they are, every level is a joy to play through and each level mixes it up a bit to keep it interesting. One level has you traversing a gunboat graveyard while another has you jumping across blackjack boards in a casino I can't think of a single level where I platform as Sly that I actively dislike... Does that sound like a loaded statement to you?

Well that's because for some reason this game has quite a number of gimmick levels that mix up the controls and gameplay styles. Now a couple of these I like and let's do those first.

There's two portable turret like levels where it controls much like a twin stick shooter and you blast enemies away as you make your way through the level. This works just fine but just like most of these they aren't nearly as much fun as playing as Sly normally.

Best. Level. Ever.

The other one I really like are levels where Carmelita shows up and chases you through the levels and you have to focus on platforming, collecting items and defeating enemies while avoiding Carmelitas shock pistol shots. These are really fun and the first one Two to Tango is my favorite level in the entire game.

Okay now for the bad, there's a Submarine level near the beginning of the game called Treasure in the Depths where you have to shoot crabs before they take treasure chests away. It functions similarly to the turret levels in that it's also a twin stick shooter but it's easy to get stuck and screwed out of a chest and forced to restart the level.

There are also two races in the game where you play as Murray driving the team van to win a prize and let me be clear here, these control like utter shit. It's easy to get flipped over for no reason, easy to lose control, it's floaty as all hell and more damning it's just not fun. I've played this game so many times that I can do this no problem but that wasn't me getting used to different controls it was getting beaten into submission with bad controls. Big difference.

For god's sake you suck in this game Murray

There's a down home cooking level where you whack chickens before being blown up by bomb toting roosters. I'm not going into deeper detail here this sucks.

There's a swamp skiff level where you have to light tiki torches by running over terrified piranha. Fuck and PETA thought Mario was bad.

But the most egregious HAS to go to the final boss in that similar to a certain Bandicoot it's fought with a jetpack. A completely different control scheme to the rest of the game that you've been playing up to this point and that's not cool Sly, not cool at all.

These gimmicks are the death knell to this game, they had a really solid gameplay style here it was fun and I enjoyed all of it so why did they feel the need to shove these in here? Especially since this is the start of a new series.

Okay let's go back to things I enjoyed, throughout the normal levels there are clue bottles that can be collected. Collecting all of these will open a vault also in that same level. 

These are always satisfying to crack

These usually hold pages from the Thievius Racconus and contain new moves that Sly can perform such as a dive attack, immunity to drowning, a hat bomb, a decoy and slowing down time what the fuck he's a Time Lord?! Theres a crossover I'd love to see.

*Ahem* anyway I said usually they contained moves for Sly, other times they'll have blueprints which makes it easier to find other clues throughout the stages and at one point it gives details on guards when viewing them through the Binoc-U-Com. Which aside from a small bit of flavor text is fucking worthless.

I liked experimenting with these moves as a kid and I've played this game so many times that I've found ways to utilize some of these in unique ways, but they aren't ever needed. You don't need to collect a new move and then go unlock another part of the level to get more stuff. Which does cut back on backtracking somewhat but it would've added an emphasis to these moves that I think are desperately needed.

The final challenge you can partake in these stages are time trials. Oh sorry Master Thief Sprints or something like that but essentially they're the time trials from Crash Bandicoot, and the gist of these is complete the level in a small period of time. I remember beating these when I was a kid and I honestly have no idea how.

Run Cooper Run!

These can be brutal and I didn't do it for this review folks sorry, completing it does get you developer commentary on each level which is admittedly kinda interesting.

Okay last thing to talk about, it's the boss fights. As you could probably guess there's only five one for each member of the Fiendish Five and you battle them once you've completed each level leading up to them.

The first is Sir Raleigh the frog and his fight is pitifully easy. He just tries to squash you and you whack him when you have an opening. I do remember his tongue attack killing me once but that was like the first time I ever fought him.

The Second is Muggshot a big brutish bulldog who skipped leg day and his fight is even worse than Raleighs in that it sucks AND makes no sense! You dodge his attacks while whacking mirrors that reflect into the room and burn him and destroys his guns... HOW? WHY?!

I always hated Geometry

The third is Mz. Ruby's and I have a soft spot for this fight here, it's mainly a quick-time event, she'll blast you with magic and you hit the corresponding buttons to dodge. I think this was my first ever experience with a QTE and I remember getting stuck here as a kid.

Is it good? No it really isn't I give other games shit for this so I can't really justify it here. Although I do love the music.

The fourth is The Panda King and this fight is really good, you have to dodge his Flame Fu attacks and work your way up to him and just beat the fuck out out of him and whittle his health down with your cane. This can catch you off guard once or twice and it's alot of fun platforming around as you close in on him.

And finally Clockwerk I already mentioned the jetpack and don't get me wrong that is still terrible, but I fucking love this boss. Not the fight, just the character himself because he scared the living shit out of me as a kid. He's chillingly voiced by Ross Douglas and every time I hear him speak my blood runs cold and I get... well scared. 

I remember thinking that this right here is what true hatred and true evil sounded like.

Never trust an owl

Whoo well that was alot to get through, but all in all I did really
enjoy revisiting this game.

For when you're the third best mascot

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus receives my Bronze Seal of Acceptance

Listen I love this game. I really, really do but I refuse to go easy on this here. It's those different gameplay styles that kill this game and makes it so hard to recommend, and then there's little annoyances I didn't mention like the camera being a pain a few times that just makes this game fall short.

This truly breaks what's left of my shriveled black heart to not give this game a higher score, but that's how it's going to have to be.