Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

Sanzaru Games takes over for Sucker Punch for "Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time", the fourth entry in the series. While they did a fine job updating the original trilogy to HD, they stumbled a bit on this one. The story is good and holds a lot of promise- pages are vanishing from the Thievius Raccoonus, and the gang realizes someone has gone back in time and is eliminating the Cooper clan from history. Bentley builds a time machine, and away our heroes go, traveling to places like feudal Japan, the Old West, England in the middle ages, and even to prehistoric times. Each area is set up in episodic fashion, containing 7 to 9 missions each. There's quite a variety in the missions overall, but some mainstays remain, like recon and following the bad guy. Sadly, the controls are among the flaws that mar the fun in these levels. When they work, they work well, but all too often they are unresponsive, leading to frustration and cheap deaths. Some bits go on for too long, and boss battles are repetitious and range from okay to downright annoying. Speaking of annoying, the character of Bentley is especially annoying in this game. He was never my favorite character from the previous three games, and there is just way too much of him here. The hacking bits range from frustrating (using the Sixaxis controller to move a ball along the grid) to okay (a digital tank blasting through) to a somewhat fun side scrolling shooter. Each of Cooper's ancestors have their own unique abilities, but their use is restricted to their levels and to their respective parts in the final chapter. The game does wrap up the story nicely, leaving just enough opening for a sequel. The disc I played did have a few glitches, which consisted of characters being hung up in the environment and one freeze which necessitated restarting my PS3. Nothing that made the game unplayable, but they occurred, and when paired with the other flaws made things less fun. This is a rental at best, even for series fans.

Playing this game has brought back some fond memories of the PS2/Game Cube/Xbox era (i.e. "last gen").

Yeah, it has got its fair share of "everyone" humor (hence the "E" rating) that might throw off a more mature audience that is ignorant of the quality of the Sly Cooper series of games, but for those of us who played the three offerings last gen, "Thieves in Time" is a well received throw back.

If really want the full Sly Cooper experience, pick up "The Sly Collection" and play through the first three installments before jumping into "Thieves in Time". If you can tolerate the last gen graphics, you should be pleasantly surprised.