We’ve already played some platformer classics on the Playstation 2, but I didn’t even notice many of them at the time. That’s exactly what happened to me with “Sly Cooper” – a game loved by many that was suggested to me recently. We tried the first part of the trilogy; You can read how I liked it here.

Judging old games is not always easy. Sometimes it’s too easy to be influenced by the technical limitations of the time – be it mediocre graphics, slow performance or a lack of freedom when playing. If you compare to today’s games, the classics can’t always keep up in these points. Nevertheless, there are masterpieces that still offer a special experience today, often through the stories they tell or through mechanisms that have not been seen before (and perhaps never again since).

On the other hand, you may also have a romanticized view of the past and rate games that were already mediocre much better because you associate them with memories – when you came home from school and were looking forward to a game that day and it kept you busy and excited for hours, you may be disappointed by today’s review if someone else doesn’t share that nostalgia.

To be honest, both of these things don’t apply to “Sly Cooper” theirselves. It was recommended to me by a few who played it when it was released – so the nostalgia could have a transfiguring influence. However, it’s definitely not a bad game and I actually had a lot of fun at times – but I still abandoned it after the first part, so it wasn’t a masterpiece either.

If I had to find an adjective for this game, it would probably be something like “solid” or “safe”. Safe in the sense of safe choice, not in the sense of well protected. Because in all the technical points the game is definitely impressive: the controls are precise (enough), the graphics are quite good (we played a remaster – it wasn’t great, but not terrible either) and there is a certain degree of variety in the levels – but this is limited to a handful of gameplay variants.

The story, on the other hand, is nothing special, but not bad either – in the first part, pages of a very valuable book were stolen from us, which we have to get back from five other villains. Since we are also a thief ourselves (a noble thief similar to Robin Hood, of course), we keep clashing with a policewoman who wants to catch us – without giving too much away, it should be said that there is of course a story between the both of them, too.

The controls aren’t anything phenomenal either – we mainly jump and run, fight every now and then and use the occasional window ledge to shimmy along somewhere. The main gamplay is to get from A to B to watch a cutscene or collect something that advances the main story – classic platformer.

All in all, one thing is probably clear – it’s nothing special. And even though we’ve played other games of this type that I rated much better (Phantomias, for example), these games had one advantage – they were an easy activity for an afternoon and then over. Unfortunately, “Sly Cooper” feels rather stretched out – some levels take a long time, even though you only do the same things over and over again – you collect keys in mini-levels to unlock the boss level, defeat the boss, and in the next world it starts all over again. That didn’t excite me in the long run.

The second part seemed to take a different, but not much more original approach – so we stopped it quite early on at the beginning.

Overall, I could have written a much more negative article, but that wouldn’t have been fair – at the end of the day, it’s a children’s and young people’s game. Back then, it would probably have kept me glued to the console for hours, and today I would be much more excited about it as a nice memory. Unfortunately, since it didn’t do that, it’s not much more than an interchangeable platformer game for me.

My recommendation: if you played it back then, try it again today, the remaster seems to have been quite well made to me. If you haven’t played it, enjoy it with caution – I personally don’t think it will keep you entertained for long. Of course, your mileage may vary.

What do you think? Did you find the game interesting to watch, did you play it yourself back then or do you still plan to? Join the discussion on Discord!