Sly Cooper is a great platformer for the PlayStation 2, and is a must have for PS2 collectors of any age.
Sly Cooper is a 3D platformer that was published by SCEA (Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank), spesificly made for their creation, the PlayStation 2, to prove its processing power, and developed by a third party company called Sucker Punch, who is currently working on a stealth action game for the PlayStation 3 for next year, and worked on an N64 game called "Rocket".
The game revolves around a thieving raccoon named Sly Cooper, the last of the Cooper family. His parents were murdered by the Fiendish Five, who is a rival group of the Coopers, and Sly was the only one left in the family. Not only that, the Fiendish Five stole a family heirloom called the Thievius Raccoonus, a book held down generation by generation by the Cooper family, and tore 5 pieces out of the book. Sly was sent to an orphanage where he met his two best friends that make multiple appearences in the game: Bently, the brains of the gang, and a turtle, and Murray, the brawn of the gang, and a hippo. Together, they've been searching for the Fiendish Five and the missing pages of the Thievius Raccoonus, and to stop the Fiendish Five for good.
The game has a cel-shaded look, and comic book-like cutscenes that make the game more interesting. However, that's what you'd expect out of a game like this, as well as the game's story, which is out of this world. If you look at the game more, you can see that it's not just your average 3D platformer like Jak & Daxter. It's more of a stealth action game like Konami's Metal Gear Solid series or Rockstar's Manhunt. The Gameplay is classic platformer style. Once you get hit, you lose one life. You read right, you have lives in this game. You start out with 5 lives each time you continue after a Game Over or when you start a new game. However, there are lucky charms in well hidden places that prevents you from taking damage only once. You can obtain them in hidden areas or collecting 100 gold coins. You can also earn extra lives by looking or defeating a certain enemy. The graphics are top-notch and cartoon like. The characters are cel-shaded to make the game more lively, and the frame rate mostly depends on how much activity is going on in the game. However, there are some frame rate problems, but these happen rarely. The textures of the environment are pure PlayStation 2 graphics, and it's amazing. The music however is what gets you. You have this spy music playing in the game throughout (except the 2nd stage), and in the first and third stages, you hear this accordion music playing spy tunes. Not only that, it's quite catchy. When you sneak up behind an enemy when you're not being seen, you can hear guitar picks with the pitch getting higher at times, depending on how close you are to the enemy. The voice acting is well done, as well as Sly's voiceover in the cutscenes.
The game has 5 stages, and each one of them are quite long, so you have to be a patient person to play this game, and will take you about 10-15 hours on your first running depending on how good you are. Overall, this game is an instant classic. Sly Cooper is a great platformer for the PlayStation 2, and is a must have for PS2 collectors of any age.