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The Sly Trilogy

The Sly Trilogy

The first three games of the Sly Cooper series have been shrunk down to fit the PS Vita screen.

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We're fans of Sly Cooper. Back in the day on PlayStation 2, we spent hours upon hours with the witty, thievous raccoon and his merry gang. It was full of character and featured inspired cartoon visuals, a narrative modelled after detective stories, and solid mechanics that blew us away. Not just once, but three times. Jump forward in time and Sly's adventures have gotten a sequel (Thieves in Time) and the original trilogy has seen an HD release on PlayStation 3. Now it's time for the trilogy to come to PS Vita.

It's a welcome reunion and one that evokes a lot of positive memories from our youth. It's part of several collections of HD remakes that have hit PS3 and PS Vita lately. And the question we're left it is how well these game have aged and how well they fit the platform.

The Sly TrilogyThe Sly Trilogy

Sly Cooper 1, 2 and 3 are pure platform experiences. You collect coins, open safes, plan heists and fight evil master criminals from a third person perspective. The idea is to re-establish the Cooper clan as the most well liked and best thieves in history. Each Sly Cooper game is divided into a set or worlds, that each consist of a set of missions both in open environments and linear levels. Sly and his friends, Bentley and Murray, have to plan and execute a heist in each of the worlds. Pulling them off results in a grand finale and a boss fight.

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But naturally you can't execute a major heist with some special abilities, and there are lots of them. Sly is quite the acrobat, balancing, jumping, griping and fending off guards, while trying to avoid unwanted attention. The worls of each of the three games are rather unique and well executed. It's stylised caricatures of real-world locations like Paris, the American South, and museums in Cairo... and they all come across as something special. It's always delightful to see where the gang is heading next. You also use a lot of time studying the environments, as items are hidden all over the place - these collectibles can offer new tricks if you manage to find them all. A clever way of extending the experience, while adding new mechanics.

The Sly Trilogy

The first Sly Cooper game is an experience where you simply play as the smart little raccoon, but later on in Sly 2 and Sly 3 the playable gallery of characters expands with Bentley, Murray and a bunch of other characters, providing a more nuanced gaming experience. This results in a mix of different mission types - that both hit mark and misses it. Bentley's hacking missions have a tendency to frustrate, but Murray's wrestling missions are a welcome break from all the sneaking. It's somewhat uneven, but for the most part all three Sly Cooper games are pure bliss.

Much of the credit for our enjoyment is down to the art direction of the franchise. The characters are animals, each with their own distinctive characteristics, the music and the narrative reminds us of an old French noir thriller with its dramatic horn music, and the cartoony cutscenes are both entertaining and well put together. All of these qualities makes The Sly Trilogy into a unique experience, that everyone with a love for platformers need to take in.

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When we reviewed Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, it scored a solid 8, but it was clear that the game felt more at home on the crisp little screen of the PS Vita than it's big brother PlayStation 3. Now that the original trilogy has been brought over, the same is true. While the framerate of the Vita version fluctuates at times, the cartoon graphics appear sharper and more alive, while the simple mechanics fit perfectly for brief portable gaming sessions.

The Sly TrilogyThe Sly Trilogy

In fact, the Vita version comes across as the ultimate Sly Cooper experience, and belongs with the best entries in the PS Vita catalog. And that takes some doing. It's three extremely entertaining platform games full of character and well executed ideas. When Jonas Mäki reviewed the original HD Collection on PS3 and gave it a seven, he felt it simply hadn't aged well. As this reviewer plays the PS Vita edition it's easy to see we don't arrive at the same conclusion. This is timeless entertainment.

The Sly TrilogyThe Sly TrilogyThe Sly TrilogyThe Sly Trilogy
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The Sly Trilogy
09 Gamereactor UK
9 / 10
+
Fantastic atmosphere, Solid mechanics, Great variation of settings, Definite growth between the games.
-
At times uneven mission design.
overall score
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