For those of you who missed the thieving raccoon last generation, The Sly Collection packages the trilogy of Sly Cooper games that came out on the PS2. Sly 1 Review These were among the wave of awesome PS2-exclusive platformers that marked the early to mid 2000s. Developer Sucker Punch then went on to Infamous, which any fan of the developer can tell you is basically Sly Cooper with awesome super powers.
Sly 2 Review Let's cut to the chase: stop reading this review and go buy The Sly Collection. Now.
I don't have to sit here and tell you how good each of these games is. IGN has reviewed them all, and if you take a glance to your right Sly 3 Review you can go and check out the reviews for each one. The games have already proven themselves by being critically acclaimed, best-selling titles. If you like platforming, stealth, boss battles, cool weapons or smartass talking animals, then you're going to like these games.
What makes the collection fun to play is that each Sly game feels significantly different. The first is a very linear, very pure platformer. The second is a mission-based, more open-world experience. And the third is a jack of all trades action adventure game. They're not only a lot of fun to play because they're so different I didn't get burned out on the experience.
Because these Sly games are straight ports, don't expect anything to have changed drastically, including the problems. Sly 2 still has some of those camera issues, and Sly 3 still has too many playable characters that dilute the experience. This is no way makes the games bad, but for those of us that played the games you'll have those moments of "Oh yeah, this part was so annoying!"
For the collection, developer Sanzaru Games took Sly 1, 2, and 3 and upped the resolution, giving it a boost for the PS3. The games have a nice new widescreen presentation and some shiny new character models. I was actually surprised at how good the game looks on Sony's current-gen console. Everything is slick and smooth. The cel-shaded characters and environments give the whole world a cartoon feel. The 3D portions that are in Sly 3 have been redone to support fancy new 3D TVs and look cool (even if they are a gimmick). You can also see how the game's graphics improved over the course of the series. The cutscenes, while staying simple paper doll flash cartoons, get a lot more detailed and well drawn as the series progresses. Plus, the worlds get bigger, the action gets more exciting, and the bosses get huge.
The sheer amount of value you get out of the collection is incredible. Each game's story mode is between 8 to 12 hours long. They all have their own collectibles, and their own trophy sets. Sanzaru has also created four Playstation Move compatible mini-games exclusive to the collection. Three of them are shooting gallery games, and one is a helicopter flying game. None of them are worth playing more than once, but they're in there if you feel like playing around with them.