Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. 
If you haven’t heard of Sly Cooper, then there’s a good chance you aren’t a furry.
But that’s not the point.
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is the first game in the Sly Cooper franchise, and was developed by Sucker Punch Productions for the Playstation 2 in 2002.
The story revolves around Sly and his gang, Bentley the computer genius turtle and Murray the not-so-genius hippo driver, as they fight against a gang known as the Fiendish Five to recover the pages of the Cooper clan’s book, the Thievius Raccoonus, which tells of each member’s journeys and abilities.
Gameplay consists mainly of sneaking around sections of enemy lairs (at high speed if you’re playing the time trials) to collect the Treasure Keys at the end of each one.
Collect enough Treasure Keys and you can unlock the second half of the lair.
Collect all the Treasure Keys a lair has to offer and you can unlock the boss battle.
There is no gameplay outside of enemy lairs except for the prologue in Paris, and the hideout (used as a main menu).
Lairs are constructed in the following format.
The Hideout (a truck situated at the base of X lair) -> Lair entrance section containing a Treasure Key -> Lair main section -> Several side sections containing Treasure Keys -> Boss Battle unlocked with 7 Treasure Keys.
The main section of a lair is split in two and will require about 3 Treasure Keys to unlock the second half.
As Sly recovers more pages of the Thievius Raccoonus, he will gain a range of abilities. One major ability is gained with each boss defeated.
Pages can be recovered by collecting a defined number of Clues in each Entrance and Side lair section, then opening a large safe with a code given to you by Bentley.
Each lair section has various NPC enemies unique to each lair but do, for the most part, the same things. They can all, except for one, be defeated in one hit.
Sly really only has one attack, which is to swing his all-purpose cane.
He can attack in new ways as you recover more pages of the Thievious Raccoonus.
Battles are short anyway though, since the focus is on sneaking and not beating.
Each lair section has security systems ranging from laser grids to searchlights. Security systems are yellow by nature, but if you trip a laser or are caught by a searchlight, that set of security will disappear momentarily, and then reappear in red. Trip a red laser or get caught by a red searchlight, and your little raccoon tushie will find itself cooked very well done.
Also, tripping a yellow security system will blare the alarm and cause the timer (if in time trial mode) to tick away faster. A security system can be disabled by smashing the alarm.
The camera pretty much controls itself and really doesn’t have too many issues. You can also reset it by hitting R3.
The game has a life count system, but it doesn’t really play much of a role.
If you get hit by an enemy, are burned, or fall into a pit or water, you will lose a life. However, you can pick up a Lucky Charm to allow yourself to get back up if you’re taken down by something, and you can also pick up a second one to give yourself three chances per life.
You can earn a Lucky Charm by collecting 100 coins, which are placed around lair sections and can be dropped by enemies and breakable objects at random amounts. A short range money magnet can be obtained via recovering a page of the Thievius Raccoonus.
Losing a Charm/life via falling in water and later a pit can be eliminated though via recovering pages of the Thievius Raccoonus.
If you lose all your lives, you will be asked if you want to try again. This will put you at the beginning of the section or boss battle you game over’d in. Coins and Clues are carried over, and life count is reset to 5.
Lucky Charms do not carry over, but can be given to you randomly when you respawn after a death or retry after a game over. It is advised you be grateful when you’re given one.
Sections and boss battles should be completely memorized, They are not overly difficult or complex and are not overly long.
Side sections are split into mini-game type and normal-type missions.
Normal ones will play just like the entrance section, while minigames will obviously be minigames.
Minigames will only have a Treasure Key.
Normal sections, including the entrance, will have a Treasure Key, a page from the Thievius Raccoonus, and a time trial. You must collect the Key and the page to be able to attempt the time trial.
Time trials, known as Master Thief Sprints, can be very challenging. Even one mistake can completely screw up your time, and forget about Lucky Charms and recoveries – they’ll just waste precious seconds.
Completing a time trial will allow you listen to bonus commentary from the developers for that section, by pressing the L1 button when prompted upon entering that section.
This commentary feature is made possible by the game’s dynamic sound system, which allows the music to change based on what is happening in game.
While I couldn’t find anything about how the music was created or what went into it besides this from the Sly Cooper wiki page "The music was inspired by the artwork from the game; Ashif Hakik, composer of the game’s music, stated that "Stylistic influences came from a combination of instrument choices and musical character defined and inspired by the locales in the game, and similar composer works like Yoko Kanno and her work on Cowboy Bebop, Henry Mancini, and Carl Stalling." He continued to note that "the interactive music engine we used made us consider the gameplay for each specific level a sort of starting point that would influence the way the music would be written.", I personally think that the music is very reminiscent of good old fashioned chip tunes, and that this is apparent in many parts of the game’s OST.
The dynamic sound system also allows for a different track to play over the normal section BGM when an enemy is encountered or something else is happening.
This system is very apparent when fighting the third boss, Mz. Ruby.
However, despite this, the music is definitely NOT a selling point of this game. While the music is well done and has the nice chip tunes feel, it is quite repetitive and all in all rather uninteresting.
Of course this is only my personal opinion.
What is the selling point of this game is the design and gameplay.
The art borders on cartoony, but not too cartoony so that it’s unrealistic (anthropomorphs aside).
Sly is cunning, suave, debonair, fast, sneaky, and he’s one devious, thievious raccoonus.
And the gameplay controls are really simple to learn and use, and the game itself is really simple to play, but is still very fun for even a veteran platform gamer like myself.
Boss battles are pretty lame to be honest, but for what the game is, I wasn’t expecting much from them in the first place.
All in all, I give Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonus
4 legendary book pages, out of 5; and 8 all-purpose canes, out of 10.
Recommended for platformer fans, furries, and criminals in need of a role model.
Official Site on Playstation.com.
Sly Cooper section on Sucker Punch’s website.
Sly Cooper Wiki.
[あさらぎ Ｗｏｒｋｓ] 