Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (PS2) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 482
14Time to be sneaky...
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sly_Cooper_and_the_Thievius_Raccoonus
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (known as Sly Raccoon in Europe and Australia) is a platform stealth video game created by Sucker Punch Productions that was released on the PlayStation 2 in 2002. The game was followed by three sequels, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. On November 9, 2010, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, as well as its first two sequels, were released together as The Sly Collection, a remastered port of all three games on a single Blu-ray disc as a Classics HD title for the PlayStation 3.
The game focuses on master thief Sly Cooper and his gang, Bentley the Turtle and Murray the Hippo, as they seek out the Fiendish Five to recover his family's "Thievius Raccoonus," a book with the accumulation of all of Sly's ancestors' thieving moves. The game was praised for using a variation on cel-shading rendering, which is used to create a film noir feel, while still rendered as a hand-drawn animated movie, though criticized for being too short.
An upcoming CGI animated film based on the game is set for a theatrical release in the near future. No set release date or year has been confirmed.
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was developed by Sucker Punch Productions, being the 2nd game created by them following Rocket: Robot on Wheels for the Nintendo 64. Brian Flemming of Sucker Punch called the rendering style as "Toon-shading", comparing the detailed backgrounds with cel-shading foregrounds to that of animated movies.[6] An interview with the Sucker Punch development team identified that they took this route because "We wanted Sly and his world to look illustrated, but one step away from a flattened graphic style."[4] To prevent slowdowns with framerates, the team "had at least one engineer working on nothing but performance for the entire development of Sly."[4] The game art team "collected hundreds of photos and drawings of areas that looked like the worlds [they] wanted to create" to generate the backgrounds. The characters themselves underwent up to "six or eight major revisions" before the designs were finalized.
The music was inspired by the artwork from the game; Ashif Hakik, composer of the game's music, stated that "Stylistic influences came from a combination of instrument choices and musical character defined and inspired by the locales in the game, and similar composer works like Yoko Kanno and her work on Cowboy Bebop, Henry Mancini, and Carl Stalling." He continued to note that "the interactive music engine we used made us consider the gameplay for each specific level a sort of starting point that would influence the way the music would be written."
There are two different covers for the game and they both have two different names, depending on location; Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus in North America and Sly Raccoon in Europe.
The Japanese version of the game sports a vocal theme song called Blackjack, set to a flashy intro not seen in the North American or PAL versions of the game. While the group singing the song, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, has a distinct Japanese accent, none of the lyrics are in Japanese and the entire song is in English.
Another addition in the Japanese version not present in the other versions is alternate animated introduction and ending sequences. These sequences feature full animation, as opposed to the limited flash-style animation seen in the other animated sequences present throughout the game. These alternate sequences are drawn in a typical anime style. The Japanese introduction is unlockable for view in the North American and PAL versions, but the Japanese ending can only be unlocked in the PAL version.