Sly Cooper and the Really Cruel Final Battle

Just finished Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus about 10 minutes ago. It’s a well-designed game where when you play it you can tell everything was really thought out well. It’s a relatively short experience, but you can extend the fun with collecting bottled messages in every last level and trying to run through a level in a certain amount of time in the Master Sprint mode.

The story is rich and entertaining. One of the bigger pluses of the game besides its simple-yet-challenging design is how the story is told. There is no overuse of cutscenes, and to see them in between worlds is like a reward. They are brightly colored and well-drawn and animated. One of the nicer touches also is how each world is more like an episode of a cartoon, with intros a la Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes cartoons and the suspenful music kicking up. It makes you want to go through every last nook and cranny of this game.

The game itself is platform near-perfection. Every level blends together and there aren’t any unwelcome surprises. The enemies are really stupid in intelligence, and yet when pushed to their limits can get the best of you. The real threat lies in the numerous traps that will kill you in an instant. One of the drawbacks, though not in any way a design flaw, is the one-hit system that hasn’t really been utilized too much since the 16-bit era. A lot of silly mistakes can end a life and force you to restart. This is remedied with the coin-collection, where collecting 100 rewards you with a lucky horseshoe that gives you a second and third chance should you find yourself compromised and hit.

I appreciate the entire game’s fluidity. One thing that really annoyed me was the final battle. Each boss in the game has to be taken down in three or four different phases. Each boss battle is unique in its own way. They aren’t difficult by design, but a silly mistake can cost you a life and no matter where you were, you’re back to the beginning of the fight. This is especially cumbersome in the final battle, because some of that battle is based on waiting for it to attack before you make your next move.

I’m glad to say I’ve finally played through this game, except for the Master Sprint. I’m not particularly interested. I’ll move on to Sly 2: Band of Thieves, but not yet. I have other titles under my belt.

Grade: A

Update (LTTP: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus)

Holy crap does time fly.

So what seemed like a short period of time spanned into five days since my last entry. I’ve been dealing with my injury and working out other details in my life.

I’m writing this just to give Goosterblog a sign of life. When I first started, I wanted to write Monday through Friday. It turns out that’s a bit difficult for me given the subject matter of this site.

To keep true to the last entry:

I’ve been playing Sly Cooper for what seems to be quite a while in between hours of Final Fantasy XIII. Although the game has two sequels, and the studio Sucker Punch went on to create the PS3 hit Infamous, I’m not entirely sure the first game sold all that well despite its status as a critical darling in 2002. I remember X-Play‘s Adam Sessler absolutely gushing over the game, and I kind of regret not having tried it sooner. The game should have achieved the kind of status that Super Mario 64 did for the Nintendo 64 in 1996. I don’t feel like I am playing a 2002 game when I pop in the disc. This game could still easily work in this generation, in 2010.

You start in an overworld and you find your way to the world’s individual stages. In these stages, you can defeat enemies and avoid traps to collect the optional hidden messages that unlock new moves or powers and get to the end to reach the star, I mean, key to unlock the next area.

I enjoy that the game wants me to think on my feet. I love the world designs and the stealth/superspy/thievery atmosphere to them and the music. Maybe I’ve played too much Splinter Cell and Metal Gear, but I wish there were tougher conseqeuences to the stealth aspects. You aren’t supposed to be seen by lights or touch laser beams. Doing so can kill you. A lot of the time, you can just race to the other side and destroy the alarm and shut down the defenses. There are a few times where getting spotted spells your inevitable doom.

This brings me to another thing I enjoy about the game: the difficulty. Although Sly’s moves are fairly simple and the worlds aren’t too dangerous, the game is quite challenging nevertheless. For every simple hop and roll over defenses, you might not have timed it right for the next alarm you didn’t see coming. I’ve had my share of cheap deaths, though, but I think finding all those hidden messages, which gives you access to each stage’s secret vault and thus finding those new moves, might make the game easier or keep the playing field leveled.

I’m already looking forward to playing Sly 2: Band of Thieves. The Sly Cooper story is well-told so far, and it’s a fairly simple story, but like Sly Cooper himself, I’m in it for the challenge.

Next up: Probably more FF13, possibly Perfect Dark for Xbox Live Arcade.