Internet wars of the highest order rarely achieve a clear victory in the PlayStation 2 battle of Sly Cooper, Jak and Daxter, and Ratchet and Clank. Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog, and Insomniac, respectively, produced an extraordinary trilogy of platforming all-stars – dethroning similar efforts from both Sega and Nintendo in the process. Sly Cooper’s deliberate style of play and Saturday morning cartoon personality cast it aside from its peers, leaving Sly and the gang masters of their domain. Stylish-stealthy-silly-platforming-action never had it so good.
In 2010, Sanzaru Games updated all three of Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper games for the PlayStation 3 with The Sly Collection. With higher resolution, clearer assets, and proper widescreen, it was the first modern update for any of the PlayStation 2’s holy trilogy (and similar collections for both Jak and Ratchet would follow). Sanzaru eventually would produce their own entry in the Sly universe, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, for both Vita and PS3. Now we’ve come full circle, with The Sly Collection getting an official release for Sony’s content-starved Vita. At its best, it could accurately reproduce The Sly Collection’s appearance on its bigger brother. At worst, well, look at how the Vita release of The Jak and Daxter Collection turned out.
Before issuing a verdict on the quality of the port, it’s important to briefly step inside the Wayback Machine and view each Sly Cooper game as a product of its time and place. 2002’s Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus introduced Sly along with his cohorts Bentley (a timid turtle) and Murray (a boisterous hippopotamus). The most rigid of the trilogy, it embraced the early-aughts understanding of a typical platformer by assigning five villains and a kingpin to five separate worlds, with each world acting as a hub to more linear levels. Thievius Raccoonus, with Sly as its only playable character, came packed with obligatory collectables, boss fights, and multi-genre challenges inherent to the typically manic platforming genre.
Sly Cooper, as we’ve now come to expect, didn’t get away with simple platforming. As a sneaky thief, his moveset was all about being quiet and limber. He could squeeze between tight spots, tip-toe along veritable tightropes, and cautiously sneak up behind patrolling guards. Any time Sly jumped he almost magnetically stuck to the nearest pinpoint of a surface. Sly’s meager (read: one hit death by default) hit points encouraged perfection, rendering any missteps as highly costly. That being said, the agile nature of an anthropomorphic raccoon and an audio/visual package that complimented his posture helped sell his role as a master-class thief. Sneaking up behind a guard, hearing the strumming guitar with every footstep, and pilfering a key was as good of a Pavlovian dopamine generator as there was.
Underappreciated in its time was Thievius Raccoonus’ dedication to telling a proper story and relating an engaging world. Sly, Bentley, and Murray were a family-friendly cast of characters absent of the lowbrow snark and adolescent minutia that worked its way into later versions of Jak and Ratchet. Thievius Raccoonus was more cartoonish, sure, but it focused on a bunch of friends undertaking a noble, if not contrived, cause. The music was great as well – I’ll never forget the low bass rumble that permeated throughout Vicious Voodoo – calling to mind the thematically consistent musical backbone of the ghosts of platformers past.
As good as Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was, 2004’s Sly 2: Band of Thieves was even better. Sly 2 dropped segmented levels in favor of a more modern, all inclusive series of challenges packed inside a monstrous hub world. Sly & Co. occupied a hideout, and Sly, Bentley, and Murray all had unique missions inside each area. Particularly memorable of Sly 2 was its final world, Anatomy for Disaster, which to date is one of the finest instances of platforming I’ve ever played. Its lethal combination of expedient stealth sequences alongside an obligatory floating-platform hub made for some of the best moments in the series. Anatomy For Disaster and its accompanying boss was Sly Cooper at his absolute best.
Playing as other characters was a big change for Sly 2. Murray, a pounding bruiser, made combat sequences more palpable, undertaking brawler-friendly missions that Sly would never contextually fit into. Bentley was also a welcomed change of pace, as his frailty was often overcome through intense computer-hacking sequences. Computer hacking, typically a monochromatic series of twin-stick shooter action/puzzle challenges, seemed to compose a larger portion of the game than I would have liked, but I couldn’t fault Sucker Punch for wanting to change things up.
2005’s Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves was…well intentioned. Opting for bigger and better, Sly 3 bulked up the playable roster to eight different spread across six unique worlds. It didn’t break the mold established by Sly 2 – visit different hubs, complete missions, achieve an end-goal – but it certainly tried to further expand the gameplay. In the opinion of some, myself included, Sly 3 was spread too thin across its myriad of gameplay styles. Dogfights? RC Cars? Even more computer hacking? The boss fight against General Tsao across bamboo treetops was a technical marvel in its day, and it’s still fairly fun, but it’s the lone standout moment in a game that, in terms of originally, falls in the shadow of the strides taken by Sly 2. Sly 3 isn’t bad, I don’t want to give that impression, but it’s more Sly 2, as opposed to more than Sly 2.
So how does The Sly Collection fare on Vita? Quiet well, actually. I don’t know if Sucker Punch’s cel-shaded art was more friendly when translated to Vita’s hardware or if Naughty Dog’s code was obscenely difficult to work with, but The Sly Collection makes The Jak and Daxter Collection look like a flaming barrel of garbage. It doesn’t look HD, but every aspect is smooth, consistent, and well within the Vita’s limitations. If nothing else, no part of The Sly Collection feels compromised by its hardware. Sly feels and plays just like he did a decade ago, which is exactly what you want from a modern collection.
Minor inconveniences are present, however. Some of the HUD elements are now activated by the rear touchpad, and the Vita’s touchscreen comes into play (like Bentley firing a sleep dart at a target) to replace missing L2 and R2 features. Oddly, the download code for The Sly Collection initiated three separate downloads of 1366 MB, 2052 MB, and 2816 MB, respectively, for each game. On one hand it’s kind of disappointing that all three games aren’t wrapped up in a complete, furnished package. On the other, my god is that a lot of memory on my 16GB card and I’m thankful it’s able to be broken up. At the time of this writing neither cross-save nor cross-buy with the PlayStation 3 version of The Sly Collection appeared active, although I will update this review if that happens to change upon release.
