There was a time when Sony had some truly stellar 3D platforming series on their belt, right up there with the best in the genre. The PS2 in particular had a whopping three major platforming trilogies published by Sony, not counting Ape Escape 2 & 3. I obviously have a lot of love for the Ratchet & Clank trilogy, and Jak & Daxter is good too... well, the first one is good... but out of the PS2's "big three", Sly Cooper is far and away my favorite. With a deceptively compelling story boasting a cast that's almost impossible not to love, a unique blend of stealth and 3D platforming unless anything else to this day, and the aggressive amounts of polish that's defined Sucker Punch ever since the very beginning, the Sly Cooper trilogy is truly something special.
The first entry, Sly Cooper And The Thievius Raccoonus is kinda the black sheep of the trilogy in a lot of ways. You can tell Sucker Punch didn't fully solidify their image for the series yet, but what we got is still an impeccable 3D platformer even on its own merits. Sly Cooper 1 serves as a perfect introduction to the series' world and cast. The titular Sly is a descendant of a family of thieves who has to retrieve the pages of the titular book from a group of criminals called the Fiendish Five. Accompanying him is the turtle Bentley (the brains), the hippo Murray (the brawn), and the squirrel Carmelita (a cop who is hell-bent on catching Sly but ends up having to team up with him pretty much every game). None of these characters have really been nailed yet. Sly sounds like he's whispering for the entire game, Bentley's voice sounds a tad off, and Murray's characterization would get a massive retool in the sequel. However, despite the simplicity of the story and the unrefined characterization, Sly Cooper does do a pretty great job at making you care about Sly and his team nonetheless, and the finale with Sly and Carmelita teaming up and the confrontation with the evil Clockwerk ends things on a high note.
Where Sly Cooper 1 really shines, though, is in its gameplay. This first game can best be described as Crash Bandicoot but with light stealth. You can sneak around opponents and do very basic parkour, but most of the game will have you platforming through linear stages each bringing something new to the table. Sucker Punch's first 3D platformer, Rocket: Robot On Wheels, already demonstrated that they have a knack for design. Rocket was built around a robust and impressive physics engine for the N64, and the level design packed in a ton of fun challenges, vehicles to ride, and physics puzzles. Sly Cooper 1 may be more linear than Rocket, but it has a lot of the same appeal. Each stage is fun and memorable in its own right, with the highlight for me being the excellent casino world which has you platforming through precariously placed buses, atop spinning roulette wheels, and across awnings in a borderline 2D segment. The physics system that defined Rocket feels even more polished here with tons of platformers that shift due to your weight, and even Sly's own tail having a real weight to it that makes jumping feel really satisfying. There's also a fair share of minigames and vehicle segments and while they do get a bit too much near the end, most of them are fun, polished, and not too hard or tedious.
Sly Cooper 1 also probably has the most compelling 100% of the bunch. Each stage has around 30 hidden Clue Bottles to find which encourage you to check in every nook and cranny, which I always love in my linear platformers. Getting the clue bottles also feels worth it because it nets you an extra ability you can learn, accompanied with some fun dialogue between Sly and Bentley. The other big piece of side content are the Master Thief Challenges, basically time trials for all the main levels. Sly Cooper 1 is by far the hardest game in the series, and this added speedrunning aspect only heightens the skill ceiling even further. And once again, doing these challenges is more than worth it as they'll unlock unique bits of developer commentary for each level. The developer commentary in Sly Cooper is up there with the Insomniac Museum as one of my favorite unlockables in all of gaming, I'm always a sucker for rewards that give you insight into game development. Each piece of commentary interviews a different person at Sucker Punch going over pretty much everything from lighting to level design fundamentals to how things came together, and it's just so fascinating to listen to. It's stuff like that which really shows how passionate Sucker Punch is about this IP, and this passion would only grow in the next game.
Sly 2: Band Of Thieves is the game that pretty much defined Sly Cooper. It's almost unanimously regarded as the best game in the series, but even getting into the series decades down the line, I was still stunned at how good it is. Sly 2 changes the series' structure from a linear platformer with minor stealth elements, to an open zone stealth game with light plaforming. Each of the game's eight chapters tosses you into a decently-sized open area and tasks you with doing a bunch of disparate missions to set up for a big heist that caps off the chapter. Some missions take place in one-off linear gauntlets more like the first game, but many take place right out there in the open world. The stealth mechanics are more refined too, dropping the one-hit deaths from Sly 1 in favor of health, proper detection systems, and even the ability to pickpocket enemies for money or important items. As I said above, Sly 2 is a game unlike anything else I've ever played. It's such a fresh and unique take on the 3D platforming genre but it all just clicks together. The blend of stealth and platforming works perfectly in an open world setting, the different tasks you get to do in each world amps up the variety even further, and the way each mission culminates in a grand finale always feels satisfying, like an actual heist movie!
But I think Sly 2's biggest improvement over the original is in the story. Right from the get-go, there's so much more confidence in the delivery of Sly 2's narrative as well as the voice acting. The initial premise is similar to the first game, Sly and his gang needs to retrieve a bunch of parts from a group of villains (the Klaww gang), this time the pieces of the first game's villain Clockwerk. However, the way the story plays out is dramatically different. First off, most of the actual missions Sly goes on are more varied and interesting, like the ball arc or the train heist. It helps that you can now play as Murray and Bentley, meaning they can also get more involved in the missions which once again helps with variety. But even more, things go wrong for the Cooper gang way more often here. Halfway through the game, Sly and Murray get put in prison, and you need to play almost entirely as Bentley for a chapter as you try to break them out. Not too long after, Carmelita gets framed and has to join along with the Cooper gang. And in the end of the game, Clockwerk is reawakened for one final battle, Bentley loses the ability to walk in the fight, Murray quits, and Sly has to turn himself in to Carmelita. Sly 2 is the Empire Strikes Back of the series, and as such, it has some of the most engaging drama I've seen in a video game.
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves is far and away the weakest of the trilogy, but it's still a great game and it makes some strong additions. For starters, the story is still really good. It's not as dark as Sly 2's, but it does resolve all of that game's cliffhangers in a satisfying manner and ends the trilogy as a whole on the perfect note, especially with its fantastic final chapter. I particularly love how Bentley fares. This game perfectly completes his character arc from 2 as he grows into a fantastic field spy, with his new wheelchair only making him even more badass. There are only six chapters this time rather than eight, but the game makes up for it with far larger open worlds with more missions. The highlight is probably the pirate chapter, which has a full-on open sea to explore and some of the most robust pirate gameplay you'd get until Assassin's Creed IV. While Sly 2 did admittedly have some repetition in its mission design, Sly 3's missions go for full variety with not a single borrowed idea. At its best, there's some stellar missions, particularly the platforming gauntlets which have amped back up in complexity. Though at its worst, Sly 3's weaker missions can admittedly cross the line into gimmickry.
In general, Sly 3 is a bit more of an uneven game than its predecessors in terms of quality, and it has my least favorite 100% campaign. Sly 3 does bring back the Master Thief Challenges, but they're not quite as fun as the ones in Sly 1 which were tailored around that game's linear level design. Sly 3 also removes the Clue Bottles which is a real shame. I didn't mention this earlier but Sly 2 kept the clue bottles in its eight overworlds which gave you a good incentive to fully explore them, but in Sly 3, that incentive doesn't really exist sadly. The economy for buying upgrades is also better in Sly 2 with its hidden treasure collectibles in each world, compared to Sly 3 where it's built almost entirely around grinding money through pirating. That being said, I still do really like Sly 3 because it really does stick the landing for the characters. Sly finally achieves closure and presumably settles down with Carmelita, Bentley finds someone on his same wavelength in Penelope, and Murray... umm... well he keeps just being himself.
As far as the presentation goes, all three Sly Cooper games hold up incredibly well. The first game went for a comic book-y cel-shaded look presumably for budget reasons, but it fits Sly Cooper's slick noir vibe so well that it stuck for the entire trilogy and, like many other cel-shaded games, has aged incredibly well. These games nail the style of a heist film like Ocean's Eleven, from the sharp dramatic lighting, to the effortless way Sly moves, to all the little touches like how the title screen always smoothly transitions into each game's prologue act. The voice acting is also really great across the board, especially in the sequels. There's a bunch of memorable performances like David Scully as Dimitri, Kevin Blackton as Clockwerk, and especially Matt Olsen's legendary work as Bentley. Sly Cooper's music is also pretty fantastic. Ashif Hakik's more funky soundtrack for the first game is probably the weakest of the three, but it's still got some bangers. Peter McConnell's more traditional orchestral heist scores for 2 and 3, on the other hand, are absolutely phenomenal. The Paris theme in particular is easily one of the PS2's best themes, it perfectly fits the tone of these games.
Overall, I absolutely adore the Sly Cooper trilogy. Despite how different the first game is and the weaker elements of the third game, they all click together perfectly into a cohesive whole that perfectly shows the growth of Sucker Punch as a developer. The Sly Cooper games feel like playable heist movies in a way that no other game has ever been able to replicate, they're stylish, fresh, emotionally enthralling, and just plain fun.
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