Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Overall, the game feels like a fun throwback. Sucker Punch seemed to have given up the series when they took on Infamous. The cell-shading style seems to have mostly come and gone in the industry. I'm not sure that stealth-adventure-platformers were ever that common, but I can't point to many examples there. By and large, it was good. Sanzaru Games did a good job of maintaing the voice (and not just voice actors) of the characters and the look at feel of the world.

The drawbacks? Primarily the loading screens - they feel like a long wait starting out any new level/mission. Otherwise... well, there are a couple choices of story direction that I'm not altogether pleased with. Things start to feel a little rushed at the end, making the overall experience feel a bit on the short side even though it's probably not really shorter than this sort of game usually is. And for all the nifty abilities unlocked, there isn't much chance/reason to go back and use them save for tracking down all the achievementy things in early chapters. Not enough disappointment there for me to feel negatively about the game overall, though.

I loved seeing more of the rocky relationship between Sly and Carmelita. And while not many of the wider cast of previous games make an appearance, those present are nice to see as well.

The ending bothers me a bit. Without getting into spoilers, it's far more of a cliffhanger than any previous installment and it strikes me as a very bad way to end a series - so I really hope the game does well enough to merit a follow-up.


I hit the beginning of the medieval chapter (entitled Of Mice and Mechs) and several things clicked for me at once, making the twist there obvious. Bentley was mentioning Penelope again, the place was overrun by clockwork automatons, and a loading screen helpfully informed me that the place had gone to hell since the "Black Knight" showed up and took over. Hmmm... why does that sound familiar? Oh yeah, because the "Black Baron" of a previous game had turned out to be the remote control/gadget wiz mouse-girl Penelope.

So, yes, one of the chapter enemies was a former enemy-turned-ally, and Bentley's girlfriend who'd gone mysteriously missing in the prologue. I thought maybe the messing with the timeline had brainwashed her or something, but nope. She helped start the whole mess by taking off with Bentley's time machine plans in the first place, enabling Le Paradox to go back in the first place. Betrayal!

And why? Well... that's where things get fuzzy.

One minute, she's talking about how Sly's "honorable thief" influence is preventing Bentley from realizing his true potential (making a fortune with her selling weapons). The next, she's making a quip about how Bentley is sort of cute when he's being dumb, seeming to indicate she doesn't really respect him. So I get some mixed signals there about whether she actually cares about the braniac turtle or not. Considering how well they seemed to be getting along at the end of 3, that feels like a jarring turn.

So... yeah. It feels a bit arbitrary, and perhaps done just for the impact. Maybe that isn't bad exactly, but I find it bothers me. Part of me hopes that she was somehow brainwashed or something, but... that didn't come up as a possibility and Bentley faced and "got over" her, which seems to leave little room for a reunion or even an ongoing love-rivalry thing like Sly and Carmelita have going on.