This is another new column I'll be starting, Bargain Buys. I give you the old games you can now get for under $20 that you need to check out.
First up: Sly Cooper and the Thevius Racoonus
And odd mixture of platformer and stealth action, this game, while not the most complex I've played, is one of the most fun. It throws away some of the extra details that make games tedious to play and it still is a blast.
The story revolves around the title character, Sly Cooper. Born into the long line of Cooper master thieves, he is no exception to the family tradition. But at five years old, a group of five super villains, the fiendish five, bursts into his home, kills his family, and steals the family heirloom, the theivius racoonus.
This is the main drive for the game. Sly needs to regain the five sections of the thevius raccoonus, which the fiendish five each took a section of. It details the techniques and abilities of all his ancestors, and the precious secrets it holds were meant to stay only in the cooper family.
As Sly battles and slinks his way into each of the fiendish five's bases, he'll put his main weapon, a hooked cane, to many uses, and learn new tricks as he goes along. Each level has a certain amount of clues which you must find so that Sly's braniac friend Bentley can decipher the code and open the safe in the area. Each safe holds a piece of the thevius raccoonus, allowing Sly to gain advantadges over his adversaries in every situation.
He can learn to be invisible, slow time, speed it up, and several other abilities open up to him. The gameplay is surprisingly easy to pick up, and combat is as well. It operates by the familiar one-hit-and-you're-dead philosophy, though you can protect against this by collecting gold coins and gaining lucky horseshoes. Sound familiar? If you've played Crash Bandicoot you'll recall that you could collect wumpa fruit and gain spiritual protection.
And therin lies the fun. You want to see what the next thing you'll get will be, and are motivated and frustrated(but not too severely) as you go after the next ability. The game also offers a lot of variety, with races and shooting to break up the stealth and all out action levels.
Also, the plot, though simple, is fun, and you'll love playing as the very James-Bond-esque Cooper, who time and time again frustrates his rival and crush, Carmelita Fox. The animation style very smooth, though occasionally prone to some odd little glitches, it feels like you're playing a cartoon. This is heightened by the comic-like cutscenes, with little actual movement.
The shortcomings? Well, for one, it's so simple at times it offers little challenge. I beat it in ten hours, albeit without doing the optional time trials. In this, it's probably a better rental than a buy, but if you want a fun little title to take for a spin with an amusing plot and gameplay that doesn't make you scream and throw your controller, (think opposite of splinter cell) grab this one.
As sly says: “I love a good fight, but sometimes it's so much more fun to sneak right up under their noses.”