Less than a year after the release of “Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus” Suckerpunch Studios has released “Sly 2: Band of thieves”. For those of you who played the first Sly you were treated to what was essentially a textbook example of how game design works. The first game could be completed in about 8hrs; this was due to the flawless level design and well incorporated differing game play. Once you started playing you did not want to stop.
Sly 2 continues the traditions of the first, but adds more game play and addresses tech issues found in the first game.

This time around (as in the first) Sly teams up with “the Brains” Bentley, and “the Muscle” Murry to take back the Clockwerk parts from the first game; the Claw Gang must be stopped. One of the biggest differences this time around You Get To Play as Bentley and Murry!
Each level to the game is broken up into an Episode; the first takes place in Paris. These Episodes start on what is essentially a “Hub” world. In the world you must complete jobs that build up to a bigger Heist (think Oceans 11, but with a Raccoon, Turtle and a Hippo) once all the wide variety jobs are finished your team can proceed to steal back the Clockwerk parts.
The variety of tasks in each level range from straight forward platforming (mainly with Sly) to beat-em-up, puzzles, playing with RC helicopters, picking pockets, recon photos, disabling alarms, finding hidden loot, cracking safe’s, hacking computers, shooter elements…ok there is A LOT to do!

Because there is so much to do and accomplish in each level the game is a great deal longer than its predecessor, also Suckerpunch has done a lot of work on the games engine. The original Sly was one of the first Cell Shaded games on the PS2, and to put it nicely frame rates were a problem! Now given the size detail of the areas the detail of each char in the game and the fast pace, there is no slow down, I am glad to see my biggest problem with the first game addressed in Sly 2.

The Graphics in Sly 2 build on the style of the first. Everything is this game makes it feel as if your playing a cartoon! Animations, models, and intros all have a great sense of Saturday morning.
The controls are rock solid, one button to hit, one to jump and a contact sensitive button to allow for running on ropes, crawling, hugging walls, climbing and other “thieving” abilities. These controls are very responsive, and there are only slight variances between Sly, Bentley and Murry.
Although I have only made it through the first two levels of Sly 2 (about 6hrs so far) it just keeps getting better and better as I go along. Its not often that a Studio takes less than a year to produce a new title and to have that title surpass an already great game deserves some recognition. The Sly series is now on par with the Ratchet and Clank and JAK series Well Done Suckerpunch! Ok I have to split, because I am about to boost the Clockwerk wings, have a good weekend Monkeys.