Finishing off our Sly Cooper retrospective series we have the final game released in the series Sly 4 Thieves in Time. Sly 4 was released exclusively on the playstation 3 over half a decade after Sly 3. It was released in February of 2013 and was developed by Sanzaru Games while the prior three were developed by Sucker Punch Studios. The studio shift came as a result of Sucker Punch wanting to focus on their new InFamous series and gave Sanzaru permission to develop the fourth instalment for Sony. It’s apparent right away that this game is made by new developers from the graphics alone. Granted the prior games were made on the old generation consoles, the graphics were a seismic shift from what the fanbase had become accustomed to. With Sly 4 following what felt like a perfectly wrapped up end to the series in Sly 3 it left a lot of the fans divided on if this was the right move. Of course it’s thrilling when your favourite series has a new release but sometimes an unneeded sequel can leave the viewer feeling cheated and I think this is part of what made this game suffer.

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To recap the story, the events of this game pickup shortly after the end of the third, despite the real life eight year hiatus between games. It starts with Sly getting the itch to steal come back as it’s in his blood as a cooper. He does come from a long line of master thieves after all. He picks his target as an art museum owned by a millionaire named Le Paradox. The goal was to steal an item from the time that he and the gang were looking to travel to which was mid 1500’s Japan. With pages of the Thievius Raccoonus being erased, they look to visit Sly’s ancestors and figure out what’s going wrong. As they travel through time alongside Carmelita who now knows Sly faked his amnesia, they find that LeParadox had been hiring criminals ( one of which being Penelope) to take over time periods of Sly’s ancestors and imprison them for a selfish goal that was later revealed as wanting to be the one and only line of master thieves. After freeing all of his ancestors Sly and his family return to the present day to find that LeParadox is an icon and famous worldwide. During the final faceoff between LeParadox and Sly, the time machine is broken leaving the blimp tearing itself apart as a time hole opens up. After defeating LeParadox, Sly shows mercy not wanting him to die and helps him up which his foe used as an opportunity to steal his parachute leaving Sly on a blimp that’s headed for a crash landing with a time hole opening up inside. When the blimp crashes there is no sign of Sly at the scene leaving the gang to believe that he must’ve slipped through time but with no clues as to where it leaves them with an endless amount of options. This is how the series has concluded to this point with no real ending or knowledge of what exactly has happened to Sly as we approach nearly twelve years since. 

This game when viewed as a standalone is a decent experience however comes up short when compared to the rest of the series. This game suffers from a few major issues starting with storytelling. The Sly Cooper series has time and time again shown they know how to develop a compelling story that leaves the player entertained and interested and this game it feels as though the depth of the story falls rather shallow. With the main villain’s motive more or less being that of the original villains, he doesn’t come across as original. In addition to this LeParadox is hard to take seriously with his goofy tendencies and over the top ego compared with Clockwerk who had the same motive yet had a menacing hatred that burned inside him for Sly. Furthermore the story doesn’t do an excellent job of keeping the player on edge. A lot of it feels like a slog and obvious to the seeing eye. Oh Sly’s ancestor was imprisoned? By a criminal hired by LeParadox? His cane was stolen? It just feels like each episode is more or less a carbon copy of the last and doesn’t find real innovative tools in conveying the narrative. 

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Another side issue that this game suffers from is the oversexualization of Carmelita. Although there was always an underlying narrative of Sly’s admiration for Carmelita, in the previous games she was still a badass. In Sly 4 it just feels as though she’s this trophy that all of Sly’s ancestors are after and she spends most of the time leading them on to get back at Sly for lying to her. The oversexualization comes to a head in the level where she belly dances for the Ms. Decibels guards, distracting them while Sly and his ancestor break in. Carmelita in this game went from bad as Interpol officer to Sly’s girlfriend and it just felt like a major downgrade.

Now let’s look at what this game did well. Sly 4 saw great innovation to character mechanics with the playability aspect of Sly’s ancestors. Each of his family members had their own unique abilities that the player could use in a game that set them aside from each other. Sliding down rails while shooting his pistols as Tennesse Kid Cooper was unlike anything the series had seen before, or the ultra stealth-like jump moves of Riochi Cooper ( a personal favorite of mine) made for great innovation and helped make the gameplay feel fresh. Additionally the twist of Penelope being one of the bad guys made for a shocking surprise. Penelope who had seemed to be smitten with Sly through a large portion of the previous game and was now dating Bentley was one of the last people to be expected to turn on the gang. Not only did she turn as a side villain she helped LeParadox create his time machine making her subtly the big bad of this game in general. In the post credits of the game she was also shown breaking out of prison, leaving her future in the series as uncertain as Sly’s.

In conclusion Sly 4 was a good game that fell short because of its predecessors. When looked at in its own category it has a decent story, fun and innovative gameplay and rather advanced graphics for its time. However it’s shortcomings are somewhat glaring as it failed to live up to standards the previous games had set. Fans of this series came to expect storytelling as a staple in this series, and this game had insufficient character development and narrative as a whole. It felt like the passion behind this series was missing in development and this may be due to it being produced by a different studio than the one that created this. All in all it’s a good game that if you’re a fan of the series I would recommend giving a go but it is without a doubt the runt of the franchise. Now all we can hope for is that Sly 5 will still be made and developed and can help put SLy back at the top of the mountain where he belongs.