Sly Cooper
and the gang in
Thieves in Time
... To end the Sly Cooper Legacy is Thieves in Time... Which kinda pisses me off by a lot in both it's installment, cliffhanger and retconing the 3rd installment... that and the game coming out after 8 YEARS!... Sly 3 released back in 2005, This installment came out in 2013... It was Like Starcraft 2 except without a marketing budget...
OK; discussing the story, once you beat Sly 3, everyone goes their seperate ways with a share of the Cooper Family Loot except for Sly, as he fakes amnesia in order to be close to his love interest, Carmiltia Fox, who has been having conflicting feelings for him as well. Running off that amnesia story, Sly becomes a model citizen in dating Carmelita while doubling as her 'assistant' as a... Whatever you call a detective's assistant, a constable?... Whatever. Murray finishes his Dream Time Training and becomes a Demolition Derby Driver remaining undefeated while Bentley and his Girlfriend Penelope have been living out their lives on the island that holds the Cooper vault to remain as it's... Protectors I guess?.. Whatever, Dr. M dies and they purchase the island with their share of the Cooper Family Loot Sly left for them... Which, in retrospect, Sly never got to touch or even use a portion of that inheritance as he traded all of that away for love he could not attain as a thief... Romantic and idiotic; but I guess he's the better man for it... Anywho, Bentley and Penelope decide to try and build a time machine to look into the future to see what becomes of the Cooper line, his Line and Murray's... Line.... If they give him anyone... Which is suppose to lead into a game sequel...
Which, I think would be a lot of fun, seeing how the cooper kids and the other descendants adapt to a new world where Law becomes more strict and blurring the lines between Justice and Injustice in a cartoony way... Instead, we get the status quo.... WHICH I'M GOING TO SPOIL THE WHOLE GAME, RIGHT NOW!; so if you love the Sly Cooper game, but never got to play or beat Sly 4, then proceed at your own risk because thing's get worse in my opinion.
Sly Cooper Costume pops! Now in 11 different flavors!
So, to get started; as soon as Bently and Penelope invent time travel, the latter disappears and so does cooper history as the Thievius Racoonus starts to self erased itself of history.... Meaning Sly's history and his birthright is getting stolen a 3rd time from him... This time it's funny that it's not even funny; The guy steals back his families history and instruction book on how to become a master thief... Then has to rob back a vault that belonged to his family containing technological and expensive wonders... And now he has to steal back his past so he can have a future... it seems to me that a lot of his sh*t is getting stolen and there's no time cops to report a theft of ones timeline too... HOW do you steal someone's history line like this and make it illegal to make them non-existant?!.. So Bentley tracks down Murray who drops everything to help when the small guys say's there's trouble, get ahold of Sly who has been having trouble settling into civilian life and has been casing a museum because he has a hunch the curator running it has been doing some shifty things and explain they need to go back in time where the changes are and undo them... While leaving the book of the Thievius Racoonus with Dimitri, who would act as their scout across time, reading through the book about certain changes once they have rectified history for a particular cooper... A cuban Tiger in Japan, erasing the Ninja Stunts Sly uses in most games from tightrope walking to ninja spire jumping. A British Elephant in the Arbian Night's of time lines to screw with the remaining 40 Thieves one of Sly's Ancestor's was apart of. Some Gangsta Armadillo who kidnaps Carmilita in the Wild West. A terrible rapping bear in the stone age trying to pull off a cave-painting art scandal and Penelope, Bently's girlfriend screwing up a Cooper in the age of King Arthur and the knights of the round table.
The last one kinda disappointed me; One, Penelope double-crossing her boyfriend. Craving for more power than to be happy with what she had. They probably still have a sh*t ton of money left over from the Cooper Vault job and probably have a sh*t ton of legal patents on some crazy inventions or designs that they could live happily without lifting a finger... PROBABLY BECOME THEIR WORLDS EQUIVALENT TO BATMAN!.. Either case, sh*t happens and to wrap it up, Sly face's Paradox, the antagonist stealing the timeline, confesses his feelings to Carmilita how he feels since he was a thief all that time, Carmilitia confesses back before the final bout and a fight across time as a blackhole takes place around the location of their final battle and some form of explosion inward seals it... I know that's not how physic's work and they call it a 'time hole,' which is a punch hole in time that being thrown in there can toss you anywhere in time, but to me; it's just a friggin black hole with no destination to the past or future...
... Well, they just got done eating, what did ya expect?
They find Paradox in the wreckage of the battlefield, but Sly has been erased off the map. They can't find his body, family cane or trademark hat and mask... So Murray goes on a world demolition tour to search the planet for Sly, Carmilita throws herself into her work, busting Criminal's an an unheard of pace while opening a case file searching for her missing beloved while Bentley searches for him at a technological level and they can't use the time machine to go back before the battle since Bently's machine has a fatal flaw he never had a chance to work the bugs out on. He could only go as far as an item took him too at a random inter vernal or relevant point in time, he can't pinpoint the moment of when as Penelope fixed that in her final design before she betrayed him. So they know he's out there, but don't know where and don't know when he is.... Which, kinda leads me to a few other plot holes to point out.
Bentley Could get some help from a future version of himself, a future Bentley could come back in time from a point in time where they found Sly and inform them where they are going to find them or look for him. Carmalita could have the Time Hole machine in it's parts salvaged from the river and given them to Bentley for the man to re-assemble that machine in order to figure out where Sly went. He could also rebuild the better time Machine Paradox had into his own designs as to pin-point and pluck the moment Sly vanished, thus saving his gray furry ass... There are a dozen other holes I could point out, but those are my big ones... BUT NOPE! Instead, we get a vision of a probable sequel where Sly has to make his way home through time.... Which, spoilers, if you 100% the game, he's somewhere in Egypt; When he is, is still unsure.
Ok, so while you 4 get captured, Bentley Off camera is gonna come in here with a mini-giant robot and beat up his girlfriend before she kills you... Got it? Good!
... NOW, Onto the Mechanics!... WHO WROTE THIS SH*-?! Mechanic Wise, Sly, Murray and Bentley remain the same as they have been with the same pick pocketing, Bomb laying and grappling to mug thugs rules. The GADGET's however are a rougher and slightly more sadder change to the catalog; As, aside from the Paraglide, Sly's Gadget's are attainable via story as they are costumes... The image I posted above, the first 6 Sly's are the costumes attainable; each one with a different and unique power. The last 5 Sly's in that list are Sly's Ancestors, as you can play them in their respective time line's... Which I can say is a pretty good step up, being able to explore the game's over-world as different members of the Cooper gang... And after rescuing a livid-angry-in-pure-rage Carmilitia when she discovers he had been faking amnesia, you get to explore the over world and play as her too with some of her more useful movesets to explore the game from the Super Jump too... Well, the Super Jump is badass enough and her Shock-pistol one-hit-kills everything.... which is, why, sadly, if I remember right, she's on;y used in 2 missions and that's it..... Well, one in the wild west and a belly dancer in Arabia to distract the guards.... Bentley and Murray can purchase their own gadgets, however, they barely make much of any difference when used in the field as Murray is mostly punching early game and has less of a role later on while Bentley does... Hacking.... 3 forms of Hacking from the traditional Twin-stick hacking, to the sidescroller hacking to the tilt control hacking.... Which is welcome to break up game monotony.... That and the Bottles are back, though they do not offer special game breaking tools, but passives such as 1/2 damage from falling into water and getting more coins from a pick pocket to finding all the hidden locations of bottles about 4 levels in... So there's a lot of bad, but there's also a lot of good as once you gain certain abilities, it's wise to backtrack through time to attain treasures among costume masks and other items you couldn't get too before so there's some post-game replay value to it all.
Which leads me to the Wrap-up of this Sly Cooper Franchise... It's already obvious that a different art team took over the Sly Cooper Project as Sucker Punch sold the rights to the game to Sanzaru Games as well change a lot of the mechanics to the game series as a whole... a prime example?
The current being on the left and old generation on the right. The left picks up a more Anime-French-Animation style while the old generation has a more American-French-Comic-Book style... As the old game's we're in retrospect, treated like Old-fashion comic books; from the name of the chapters, introducing the comic book arc it covers to... Everything else.... Ontop of that, while Sly 4 acted out like a Sly Cooper game, it didn't feel like it as there was a heavier shift in it's soul somewhere... I know you don't have the same people behind the old Sly games making this one around and they did a good job in re-creating the game mechanics from the top down; but it's a different shift I can neither put my finger on nor can I tell what that shift even is... As to why I think and know why we won't get a Sly 5.
Sony is now ordering games, as in they now have more control on what comes out on the platform and Ratchet and Clank is one of their bigger money makers as opposed to their other previous champions such as Jak and Daxter or Spyro and Crash... Though Crash is getting a sequel at long last to the PlayStation 1 Trilogy, we no longer have any of these 2 titans to fulfill their roles. Jak and Daxter wrapped up their story... Somewhat with the Lost Frontier, though done in rough respects and Spyro is own by whoever makes the Sky Lander games... which I weep for the purple dragon now; but that's mostly it... As Sly 4 didn't make a bigger return on funds on the platform, it's deemed 'non-efficient' and tossed to the wind... Much like how we probably don't have a new Jak game due to the returns on Lost Frontier.
Depressingly, the classics are becoming faded obscure memories as more stuff get's "updated" to meet with Today's World views and standards where if there's something you don't like or traumatizes you; you can not only shut it down with a tweet, but put it's creators out of business and crushing a long sought for dream to make something memorable... Well, I guess that's why we have Gamer's Obscurea among classics to hunt down; the entertainment industry is entering this entire chaotic mix of what is and isn't and they're losing out with what they're doubling, if not yet tripling, down on....
And this was an annoying set of post's because, aside from the cheat I missed, Thank You Emilia, there's bound to be a lot of other sh*t I missed as I just gave the barebones of my expirences on the mechanics in the most rushed and simplistic bits I could write... Like an abridged post on a TV series... minus the TV and Team Four Star...And the abridged....
... Either case, I'll now take requests to try the games myself and post my experiences instead. If you got a rare or obscure game, shoot me a message and if I can track it down and play it; I'll write a post about it with my grammatical errors and spelling mishaps along with my terrible, terrible jokes... I know my jokes are bad.