POSTED 3/1/11


THE SLY TRILOGY

Sony
PS3/Move

In the typically Morrissey-esquely titled ‘Paint a Vulgar Picture’ on The Smiths’ final album back in 1987, Moz moaned about the music industry rereleasing, repackaging and remastering the same things over again. Hey, gladioli boy, three words: ‘pot’, ‘kettle’ and ‘black’!

How the hell’s this related to The Sly Trilogy? Well, generally the games suits have been slow cottoning onto demand for older games; just look at all those emulators out there. More cynically, you could also argue that there’s mucho cashola to bank from making once popular things available again...

Depending upon your stance, either ‘yay!’ or ‘boo!’ to Sony for taking the three Sly Cooper games – amongst the creamiest PS2 third-person platformers - giving them a lick of HD remastering, popping them on one disc and hawking three games for less cost than one typical new release. Ignore the Move labelling, for as Mozzer might rightfully rue it only supports some naff minigames.

2002’s Sly Raccoon is first. If you know the Ratchet & Clank games then you’re basically on the money, just swap out whatever the fuck Ratchet is for a raccoon, and ditch the Clankster for a turtle/hippo duo in Bentley and Murray. They’re trying to recover the ‘Thievius Raccoonus’, a Sly family heirloom documenting their assorted purloining skills. Yep, Sly’s a baddie, but he only robs robbers, so he’s a criminal with integrity...

2004’s Sly 2: Band of Thieves is more open world and stealth dependent. 2005’s Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves is similar, just with more cutscenes (as games started devolving into mini-movies about then).

With generally natty graphics (interludes betray pre-HD roots), literally days of gaming and individual trophy sets for all three games, appropriately The Sly Trilogy is a steal. We’d have cherished a tacky badge though.

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