A good start to an excellent trilogy.
In the game you take on the role of Sly Cooper who, along with his best buddies Bentley and Murray, set out to recover a precious heirloom to the Cooper family called the Thevius Raccoonus, which contains all of the thieving secrets handed down from Sly's family from generation to generation. But one night as a kid, he and his parents were encountered by a group of villains called the Fiendish Five. They kill Sly's parents and they each take pages from the book. Sly was sent to an orphanage, but it was there that he met his life-long pals.
Your objective for each chapter is to go to various areas and complete varied missions, such as simply reaching the rest of the level, racing, and shooting on floating turrets, that reward treasure keys. You use these keys to gain access to certain areas. There are seven total keys you need to collect in order to face one of the members of the Fiendish Five. Scattered in each level are clue bottles. If you collect all of the clue bottles in the area you can obtain a password that you can use to unlock a safe which can reward you with things like new moves and enemy information. Collecting all of the bottles in the game unlocks something special.
The gameplay is alot of fun, especially during platforming sections. The controls are very intuitive and the camera is surprisingly good for a 3-D platformer. The level designs for each stage are very unique for each and varied. The shooting stages are actually pretty fun, especially when you're on a hover vehicle and you're shooting down enemies. There are also a few racing portions in the game, but they aren't too exciting. It's a shame that the stealth aspect isn't really prominent in this game. The only major problem about these levels is that they are all too easy to beat. You can easily collect all the clue bottles in the game and be done in about 5-6 hours.
The biggest standout about the game has to be its graphics. They are some of the very best I have seen on the PS2. It's also pretty amazing considering this is an early title for the system. The environments and character models have a very cool, cartoony look to them. The characters themselves have very fluent animations. Equally as good is the game's sound design. The music is very cool, providing different varieties, like some pop, rock, jazzy, and bluesy music that suits the game nicely. The voice acting isn't too bad, but some lines do dwell into the hokey or cliche at times.
PROS:
-Beautiful graphical cell shaded art style
-Great controls
-Special moves, while unnecessary to complete the game, are a nice touch
-Decent camera
-Quirky characters
-Pretty interesting story
-Good voicework overall
-Great music
-Fun platforming
-Some gameplay variety thanks to the inclusion of the some shooting and driving levels
-Unique level designs
CONS:
-The game is ridiculously easy
-You can clock in 100% in about 5 hours
-Very little stealth mechanics
-Some of the dialogue is pretty hokey
While it is obvious that the two sequels that follow it are much better, that doesn't hide the fact that this is still a fun game to play. It may be too easy and too short, but I feel that this was only a taste of what Sucker Punch had in store for us. Overall, it's a blast to play while it lasts.