Sly 2: Band of Thieves

"Two steps forward and two steps back for the Sly series."

I enjoyed the original Sly Cooper game to some degree. It wasn't on par with the first Jak or Ratchet titles but good in its own unique way. Sly 2 takes away all of the bad in the original game and replaces it with good but has its own shares of bad things. Read on for the review!

The story this time around feels stupid. The Clockwerk parts have been stolen. Sly and his gang are off trying to get all of the parts back. Carmelita is back and is hunting for the parts as well, with her new co-worker Nyla. The plot never really advances from there. Character motives are horrid. Background of the baddies are really just bad. The baddies aren't even as fun as the ones in the first title. I did enjoy the ending; it delivered where rest of the story didn't. I also find it hard to believe that anyone would store all of the parts in one place; it's just asking to be stolen. Also, each baddie is using a part for a crime but in no way are they going to rebuild Clockwerk, making Sly's quest kind of pointless.

The graphics in the game are still the same cell shaded stuff. It looks good but there are very few varying character models. Many clones actually. The levels are huge though and they have a some what decent draw distance. Nowhere as good as that found in the original Jak game. I also found that while every level looks different, they feel a lot a like due to them being very open and full of buildings. Excluding the final level which still some how has buildings but not as many.

The sound in the game seems to be better than that found in the original. Nice music that seems to fit the mood and settings. The sound effects are nice and the game uses the old Batman sound effects once in a while in the beginning (words appearing on the screen, for those who aren't familiar with the old Batman stuff). The voice acting seems to be better this time around. Everyone sounds the same to me, well almost. I found Murray and Bentley to be way less annoying, voice wise in this title. Murray's character still grinds my nerves with his inane dialog. Some complain that Carmelita had a voice change, I didn't notice and she sounded fine to me.

The control in the game is great for the most part. I found it easy to jump, swing, attack, paraglide, shoot, use special skills ect. It was all easy and took no time at all. Now, the game has some vehicle missions, kind of. The tank missions I found almost unplayable. My brain could not process the controls for turning. No matter what I did, I could hardly get it to work. Thankfully, you only use the tank once or twice in the entire game.

Ah game play, my favorite part to write about. For details on how the original game played, read that review. This time around things are different. If memory serves my correctly the original title had very small over worlds with portals to each area. In Sly 2 you have a safe house in each place. You hit L3 to bring up icons and you take a specific character to their own icons to activate a mission. That's right; you can play as everyone this time around. This spices things up a bit but the main part of the game is Sly based. Mission range from blowing something up, to stealing keys, ect. The problem is the game repeats a lot of the missions over and over and over for the worlds, It's fun at first sneaking behind someone and stealing their keys, but when you have to steal 5 sets of keys in every level, it gets old.

The lame mini game stages are now gone from Sly 2 and it's a good thing. They are replaced with Tank, Chopper or hacking missions. Tank has you driving and shooting in a tank, chopper plays like a first person shooter that doesn't allow movement. The hacker stages has you as a tiny little thing shooting little ships (right stick shoots wherever it's aimed at) and getting rid of all red dots and entering the green doors. I know that description is terrible but it's the easiest way to put it. Think of it as a top view shooter of sorts.

One thing I found fun is the combo missions. The final mission always has you and your gang going at one mission together. You all split up and the game automatically switches from person to person as each goal is met, this keeps the whole heist thing fun and interesting. Too bad it isn't used a lot more. The final world uses it a lot. For example, the end of the first mission has Sly climbing this figure as Bentley shoots something up to him and then Sly has to keep the guards at bay while Bentley and Murray use the van to pull the statue down. This just seemed really cool to me.

There are still 30 bottles to find but instead of being in every area, they are just in the over world and you will find 27 of them just by doing the missions as at least 25 of them tend to be near the markers and in plain sight. Problem is, you really don't get anything worthwhile for collecting them in this game. There is also treasure hidden around the levels, you need to grab it and back it back to the safe house without getting hit. You can then sell it and get money which is used to buy new gadgets, some of which are required for beating the game. I found it slightly fun but the gadgets aren't worth it and I found that most of the time I had enough coins to buy the stuff without stealing items.

The levels also feel much shorter now. Actually, the entire game is very short. Missions ranged from 60-90 minutes. Depending on if I got all of the bottles. A lot of the game is spent running around the over world getting to the icons to activate missions which is fine but it does get tiresome. Also gone in this game is the fun boss fights. Now they all suck. Not a single one was unique. Bentley's boss fight was fun though but way too easy. The game also only has 8 missions and it took me just over 9 hours to finish the entire game with almost all of the bottles and all gadgets.

I really feel Sucker Punch took two steps forward and then two steps back with this title. If they could meld the first and second game together then I'm sure the third will be a blast. As of this writing I have only played a demo of Sly 3 which I found to be more enjoyable but I only played one mission and have no clue how rest of the game is. I'm sure I'll check it out once the price drops. If you're a fan of the first sly game then by all means pick this one up. It's just as good, but for different reason. I want to say I liked the first one more but they each have their own faults and strengths.

Story - 7/10
Graphics - 8/10
Sound - 8/10
Control - 7/10
Game Play - 7/10
Replay Value - 3/10

Final Score - 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/18/05