The Sly series has always been a great series for me, all the games offered a great sense of variety, the music was great, the graphics were good, and most importantly it had great gameplay (you know why that's most important http://www.ign.com/blogs/superdude200ify/2013/01/27/the-most-important-part-of-a-game) With Sly Cooper thieves in time almost here I see it appropriate to write why I loved the series.
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus
The game that started it all, I had played this game at my cousins house and loved it, I was very reluctant to leave his house after playing this game. The platforming was good, but it wasn't really stealth based. The level's weren't at least and I only noticed a few times where you had to sneak past guards. The story of sly one stood out to me the most, sly's mother and father is killed by the fiendish five, a group of criminals formed to kill the cooper family, they rip out pages of the book and reside at their criminal headquarters. Sly at the age of eight vows avenge the coopers and restore the book *sounds familiar*, the plot in this series isn't exactly top notch, but it seems to take gameplay and music over story.
What I liked: I found it awesome of how different this game was from the ones I usually played, if you collected clue bottles you could get new powers. It was the game that raised the popularity of suckerpunch.
What I disliked: It was a little too short, the hub worlds were a little boring, the story was a bit generic, cheesy dialogue.
Sly 2: Band of thieves
My favorite game of the series, unlike the first game, it focuses more around the team rather than 98% sly and a few missions for Bentley and Murray. Sly 1 had a few mini games, but now there are three main ways to play, Sly the thief having to stay out of enemy eyesight, Murray the muscle, able to battle in big brawls and Bentley the brains, using gadgets and his intelligence to contribute to the team. Everything felt right to do in this game, platforming, sneaking past thugs as sly, planting bombs are Bentley, picking fights with Guards as Murray. Sly 2 made abilities seem more important to the series, with the inclusion of thief net a store where you can buy new skills and attacks, it made the game much more enjoyable. This game was just an amazing experience for me a great reason to pick up the collection, for any platform enthusiast or anyone looking to find a great series.
What I loved: Even though its called "Sly Cooper", it focuses more on the group rather than sly. The story was much better than sly 1, also there was a great characters development, Murray wasn't a coward anymore, he could actually do thing's and Bentley actually did thing's now and his field missions where pretty fun, the bosses all had interesting backstories. I was a game that was actually stealth based. (That I plated that is)
What I disliked: It ended, the clue bottles were hidden in some tough places, you could not replay missions.
Sly 3: Honor among thieves
People call this the worst sly game, which is the wrong thing to call it since they are all good. Its better than one but sly two is definitely better than this one. The game stayed true to sly two, sly is the stealthy character, Bentley is the character with the gadgets, Murray is the strength character, but It didn't come together as good. Within the game they introduced new characters like the guru, Penelope, and now former enemies panda king and Dmitri joined the group. It seemed to be interesting, but there were to many characters that you rarely played as anyone others than the main three. There was about one mission for those characters in each episode, but there were to many characters for all of them to get a good amount of gameplay. There were some cheap deaths with in the game, the hub worlds felt extremely boring being large, but not much to do in them. They removed clue bottles in this game, making the player have to collect coins to get skills for thief net. Possible hate for this game was suckerpunch used the same engine of sly two that was modified, but In the end it turned out to be a solid game.
What I liked: The minigames were better in his game, the new characters were pretty interesting.
What I disliked: It showed that the series was losing steam, to many lead characters, they removed the clue bottles.
I have been worrying about the series, there hasn't been a sly game for seven years since three and sly four is being done by sanzaru not suckerpunch. I was worried, it has happened in the past that a company hands over a franchises and it turns out to be absolute garbage.
I'm looking at you high impact games.
Watching the live stream of thieves of time playing the demo, put me to rest. The live stream showed that they didn't ruin the series like how high impact games did Jak & Daxter and it made the ancestors an even more important part of the story. I'm still a little worried, but I know that this game won't be a game that I over hyped.
Thanks for your time.