There are some video games that
shouldn't exist. Be it for say being a mess of programming held
together with chewing gum. Then there's a game like Sly Cooper
Thieves in Time that just takes the franchise up to this point and
runs it over with a monster truck. A game that misses the point of
what made the original Sly Cooper trilogy,especially the latter two
games, fun and enjoyable. Boiling it down to a mess that while
perfectly functional should not have been made.
To understand what makes this game such
a slap in the face we need to step back shortly. The Sly Cooper games
have always been about the titular thief who stole from criminals
because there was no fun in stealing from regular people. The first
game,The Thievius Raccoonus, was your standard 3-D platformer that
followed Sly and his friends,Bentley Turtle and Murray Hippo, as the
took back the title book that detailed his ancestors various thieving
techniques and defeated his families most feared rival, Clockwerk.
The sequel, Band Of Thieves, was a
radically different game. Murray and Bentley were upgraded to fully
playable characters and become less of a collectible platformer to a
open world game that felt like a heist. It did well enough to spawn
another sequel, Honor Among Thieves, which took everything that made
the previous game work and streamlined it, while adding new forms of
game play against the backdrop of building a team to make one massive
heist. Despite the radical changes both these games made everything
fit. You explored the hubs, stole from guards, and just felt
stealthy. They're excellent games I come back to again and again.
Thieves in Time is a game that I can't say I'll probably ever
revisit.
The first strike is the lack of a
bigger goal both within in the levels and in the grander scheme of
the narrative. Band and Honor both had Bentley giving a briefing on
how things were going to go and then giving you a host of missions to
pull off then you went about your merry way to do those tasks how you
pleased. It was fun and gave you a sense of progression,not the case
here. You still get to go out into the world to pull off jobs and
steal optional treasures but there is always one job at a
time,barring one instance in the final stage, and the details are
explained as needed. I never had a good idea of why I was really
doing this or how this helped...what ever the plan was. The briefings
aren't gone completely just moved to the start of certain missions to
explain the apparent big plan we'd been prepping for. Then Bentley
descries about four or five steps that sound like fun things to do
and then come to find out we're only doing one character's portion of
the plan while everything else is done off screen. It's a huge let
down and breaks the supposed sense of unity these people are supposed
to have. I don't know if I can accidentally beat a game but I felt
like I stumbled through most of this game. This ties nicely into the game play, I might add.
The missions have this bad habit of
either been criminally short or go on for ages. Most fall into the
latter category with tedious sections of do task to open up a path to
do a short combat section to do more of the tedious task again. The
few new characters that are fun to play as tend to get the short end
of the straw with actual tasks for them to do. Which leads to a
bigger problem of most of the characters that aren't the core trio of
Sly, Bentley and Murray having little purpose.
Honor Among Thieves had the set up of
expanding the team but everyone had a role that they filled. Even
characters like Penelope, who was there to be better at something
than Bentley, felt relevant. Here the new characters are all just
worse versions of Sly with like one technique that makes them
special. This brings up a whole host of problems story wise that I'll
get to shortly but they add really nothing to the game play. Sure you
could explore the world and collect treasures with them but you still
need certain things only Sly can do,barring a random exception in the
fourth stage, so it's pointless to explore as anyone but him. Most
of the jobs they pull off reek of “This looks like a job for
Aquaman” and could have been easily done with Sly if they hadn't
been specifically tailored to the one move the new guy knows. Also
while Carmelita was a sometime playable character in Sly 3,she's
upgraded to a select able character but she really has no reason to
be used in the field since Sly is the only reasonable choice and her
upgrades don't seem to really help,though this is less a problem with
here and more a problem with everybody.
Outside of a few core upgrades you can
purchase to help build the characters most of them are quickly
forgotten. Murray has four add-on to give his fists elemental powers
and while entertaining all serve the same function of bashing skulls
in equally well. There is no need to learn them when the basic
attacks will do the trick. Speaking of upgrades remember when Honor
Among Thieves let you dress up as a guard on occasion to pull off
jobs well now Sly has even more costumes and they are all shoe horned
in so hard I'm surprised the disk doesn't reek of astro glide.
Nothing they really do needed to be in this game and ultimately make
you back track if you want to collect all the games optional
treasures.
The second strike is the characters and
the story. As I mentioned above the games always have had this
feeling of working towards something bigger. Here again we're just
fumbling in the dark against villains that are probably the worst the
series has to offer. Most of the villains in previous entries had
either a bit of a tragic back story,were jerks were just hamming it
up or a combination of the three. It gave the player someone to rally
against and made the take downs mean something. Here we see the
villains so little and their plans are either insanely petty or just
plain stupid. We see so little of them that they feel more like a
carrot dangling out in front of the player than any actual threat.
There are two notable villains that do
merit discussion: Penelope and Le Paradox. Penelope came all the way
from Honor Among Thieves to do a heel face turn that while it is well
foreshadowed in ways still makes little to no sense. She's doing it
because apparently, Bentley being with Sly is holding him back.
Despite all of Honor Among Thieves being about how Bentley is equal
to Sly and they'd support each other no matter what...apparently she
forgot about that and how she helped Bentley through that problem
last game.
Le Paradox opens up a very interesting
avenue as a parallel to Sly, both grew up as orphans after losing
their fathers but Sly went one way and Le Paradox went the other. It
could have made the villain much more personal like most Sly final
bosses but no were just treated to a quick back story shoved in the
last episode and a motive that is about as petty as everyone else.
The villains are clearly phoning it in
but to be fair the protagonists are too. They all act like they
always have with a few new traits that are just a bit bizarre. The
humor is rather off, Bentley and Sly's conversations come off less as
charming and more mean spirited towards Bentley. Murray seems to have
forgotten the arc he went through that reminded him that he's
valuable to the team even if he can't do everything. He also has this
obsession with cross-dressing that, like most of the humor comes off
as, more mean spirited. There is a scene where Murray disguises
himself as a geisha and seduces all the guards. I can't honestly tell
if the humor is from the stupidity of the disguise or that the guards
are all being tricked by a man. I'm more inclined to believe the
latter since there is a scene later where Murray is really eager to
dress up as a belly dancer and we're supposed to laugh that he'd want
to do that but I don't know why. Some jokes do land but they are few
and far between and more often than not come off as nasty than
actually funny.
The new characters are Sly's ancestors
who Le Paradox is trying to interfere with by stealing their canes.
As noted above they add little to the game play and for the most part
are just unlikable. They were all featured in the first game when
Sly was thieving back his family's book and I guess they forgot to
write down the actual useful techniques like zooming up poles or
leaping great distances by concentrating. The Cooper ancestors them
selves are a mixed bag,they range from boring to just plain
unlikable. The only decent one is Sir Galleth Cooper,with his noble
tendencies and headstrong attitude honestly leads to some of the
better jokes.
The story makes little to no sense in
the slightest. As mentioned above Le Paradox is screwing with time by
stealing the Cooper canes but it's never clearly stated why he needs
the canes and what's to stop the Coopers form making a new cane. Then
they start talking about time regulating itself for no real reason.
All the villains are petty and the characters are either so bland or
nasty that I can't really be asked to care.
There is no third strike...what? You
thought you knew what you were in for well I didn't so you get
disappointed too. I'm actually going to say some nice things about
the game. The game play really works just fine for all of it's
superfluous additions and on occasion we do have a fun platforming
section that made me remember why I liked the original games.
Bentley's hacking has been over hauled and has three separate
variations that are reminiscent of different arcade games. Most are
actually enjoyable and provide some challenge. The timed treasure
hunts that were in Band of Thieves return after being absent from
Honor Among Thieves and are fun even if the thief
costume's time slow ability makes the challenge a joke.
Despite the fact that the developers
had no idea what made the original games great they did clearly play
them as the game is packed with references. The treasures you pick up
are all nods to either past villains or events. Speaking of call
backs, I believe that this is the only reason the clue bottles remain
in the game. The previous games had you collect bottles to unlock a
safe that contained something to make game play easier. They do the
same here but the safes are not a number combo; you just play a mini
game,so why did I need to collect the bottles? Sorry the good things
about this game are few and far between the more prominent
annoyances.
Thieves in Time is a game that has a
very warped idea of what made it's predecessors great games. It's too
afraid to stand on it's own and while throwing out an interesting
idea every once in a while it just fails to be fun.It's humor seems
out of place and mean-spirited, the characters are either bland,petty
or just out of character and the story which had the potential to go
to interesting examination of Sly's history ,squanders it on piss
poor villains and plotting. I could go on for days about everything that pisses me off in this game but for brevity's sake I'm stopping now Go play any other Sly game and leave this
game forgotten by time.
