2003’s Sly Racoon was a hit on the PlayStation 2, and developer Sucker Punch capitalised on that leading left by following it up with a sequel the next year: Sly 2: Band of thieves. The game expanded on the original’s raccoon-ocentric premise with the inclusion of two further playable characters: Bentley and Murray, very much a brains and brawn combination. The trio where charged with recovering the lost components of Clockwerk, Sly’s arch nemesis who was defeated in the first game.
Clockwerk may have been laid to rest in the last title, but Sly and the gang are back in the inevitable third in the series: Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves. Sly the master thief returns, as do Bentley the Turtle and Murray the Hippo, but there are plenty of other playable characters to try out, too, including the intractable Carmelita Fox, the Interpol officer who was never far from Sly’s striped tail in previous games.
The storyline sees the trio trying to unlock the secrets of the Cooper family vault. You see, Sly is only the latest in a long line of master thieves. Orphaned as a young raccoon, Sly never had the chance to find out about the family vault. A depository for the wealth amassed over years of thieving, the vault can only be unlocked by answering questions and finding clues, and these are heavily slanted so that a true Cooper should be able to make short work of it. Discovering the vault’s existence, the trio make for the island it is situated on without delay. But a mysterious fellow known only as Dr. M, aided by four bizarre henchmen, already knows about the vault and has set up shop on the island, increasingly frustrated after years of trying to unlock the secrets of the vault. Sly wastes no time in recruiting a team of super thieves – each with different skills – as he tries to achieve what his new enemy has failed to do for years.
Sly 3 reprises the neat, humorous cartoon styles of its predecessors. Also awaiting your playing pleasures are a selection of most amusing multiplayer games so your friends can get a slice of the action too.