Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

About Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

Sly Cooper is a third-person platformer with stealth elements. An Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine retrospective describes the gameplay as "mix[ing] one-hit-kill arcade action with Splinter Cell sneaking". The player controls Sly Cooper as he moves between each uniquely themed lair of the Fiendish Five and the sub-sections of those lairs, avoiding security systems and patrolling guards. Sly uses his cane, a family heirloom, to attack enemies, and he can be defeated with a single hit. The player is encouraged to perform stealth maneuvers and use the environment to evade or silently neutralize threats.

To assist in these stealth moves, the environment contains special areas colored with blue sparkles of light, identified in the game as Sly's thief senses. The player can trigger context-sensitive actions in these areas, such as shimmying along a narrow ledge or wall, landing on a pointed object such as an antenna or street light, climbing along the length of a narrow pole or pipe, or using the cane to grapple onto something. The player must avoid detection by security systems and enemies, otherwise, an alarm will sound and the player will either have to destroy the alarm quickly, avoid or defeat foes alerted by the alarm or hide for several seconds until the alarm resets. The game uses an adaptive music system that changes depending on the state of alarm in the area: the music will increase in volume and pacing when Sly attacks or is detected, and then will quiet down as the disturbance goes away.

Each sub-section of a lair contains a number of clue bottles that, when collected, allow Sly to access a safe in the level that contains a page from the Thievius Raccoonus. These pages grant Sly new moves to aid in movement, stealth, or combat, such as creating a decoy or dropping an explosive hat. Defeating each of the bosses also gives Sly moves, and these abilities are typically necessary to pass later levels. Coins are scattered about the levels and are also generated by defeating enemies or destroying objects. For every 100 coins collected, Sly gains a lucky horseshoe that is the color blue and when you have two horseshoes, it turns to gold. It will allow him to take extra hits, or if he currently has one, an extra life. If Sly collapses and loses a life, the current sub-level will be restarted or at a special "repeater" that acts as a checkpoint; if the player loses all of Sly's lives, they must restart that boss's lair from the beginning. Besides the regular gameplay, there are minigames that include driving levels (based on Murray), shooting levels to protect Murray as he ascends certain levels, and a cyber-tank game representing a hacking attempt by Bentley. One notable boss battle includes a rhythm-based sequence similar to Dance Dance Revolution.

Sly Cooper is an anthropomorphic raccoon and the last member of the Cooper Clan, a long line of master thieves who primarily steal from other criminals. On his 8th birthday, Sly was to inherit an ancient book known as the Thievius Raccoonus, which contains his family's secrets, to help him become a master thief. However, a group of criminals known as the "Fiendish Five" invaded his home and murdered Sly's father, then stole pages out from the Thievius Raccoonus before spreading across the world to forge their own criminal empires. Sly is sent to an orphanage, where he forms a gang with two boys who become his lifelong best friends and partners in crime: Bentley, a turtle technician, who plays the role of the brains of the gang, and Murray, a hippopotamus who acts as their getaway driver. The three leave the orphanage together at age 16 to start their lives as international vigilante criminals, naming themselves the "Cooper Gang." Sly swears to avenge his family by tracking down the Fiendish Five and recovering the pages of the Thievius Raccoonus.

Two years later, the Cooper Gang infiltrates Interpol headquarters in Paris, France to steal a secret police file containing information about the Fiendish Five. During the heist, they are ambushed by Inspector Carmelita Fox, an Interpol officer with a vendetta against the Cooper Gang. The gang manages to steal the police file and successfully escapes in the getaway van. They use the files to track the Fiendish Five to their respective hideouts around the globe. The Fiendish Five comprises Sir Raleigh, a frog pirate in Wales who built a storm machine to sink ships and steal their treasure; Muggshot, an American Bulldog gangster in Utah who took over a city to build a gambling empire; Mz. Ruby, an alligator mystic in Haiti raising an undead army; and the Panda King, a giant panda explosives expert in China using fireworks to extort and destroy villages. Sly defeats each member of The Fiendish Five and takes back their pages of the Thievius Raccoonus, then leaves them for Carmelita to arrest. Each Fiendish Five member reveals the location of the next one, up to their leader, an elusive mechanical owl named Clockwerk.

The Cooper Gang breaches Clockwerk's lair in a Russian volcano to discover that he has captured Carmelita. Sly rescues Carmelita, and they agree to a temporary truce to defeat Clockwerk. During their battle, Clockwerk reveals to Sly that he is himself a master thief; bitter and jealous of the Cooper Clan for eclipsing him with their superior talents, and in retaliation, he converted himself into a machine to gain immortality. Clockwerk explains that he killed Sly's father and stole the Thievius Raccoonus in an effort to prove that the Cooper Clan was nothing without the book; Sly counters by saying that it took great thieves to create the book, rather than the other way around.