Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

23 Sep 2002

PlayStation 2

Add to wishlist

8.2 rating

389 want

1276 played

56 playing

66 reviews

Developer

Sucker Punch Productions

Publisher

Sony Computer Entertainment

Time to beat

Main story

Main story + extras

8h 16m

100% completion

8h 23m

Based on 4 answers

Summary

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a stealth-platformer developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2, the game follows Sly Cooper, a skilled raccoon thief, as he and his gang attempt to recover the Thievius Raccoonus, a book containing the secrets of his family's thieving legacy. The gameplay combines stealth, platforming, puzzle-solving, and light combat, and is noted for its cel-shaded visuals and humorous narrative. This game is divided into five worlds, each themed around a particular part of the world and the villain headquartered there. Most worlds are structured as a central hub with entrances to numerous individual levels. Each of the levels has a primary goals which earns the player a key. You must collect all the keys in the world to fight the world's boss. Many of the levels have a platformer structure. The objective of these worlds is to reach the location of the key. There are substantial stealth elements here as the player must dodge searchlights and trips lasers which set off alarms and avoid alerting guards. In addition to the main objective, there are clue bottles to find. Finding all the clues in a level allows you to open a safe with a page from the Thievius Raccoonus which grants a new ability of some sort. After getting this, there is also a master thief sprint where the player must get from the start of a level to the exit within a time limit.

Sly Cooper comes from a long line of master thieves (the Cooper Clan) who only steal from other criminals, thus making them vigilantes. The Cooper family's heirloom, an ancient book by the name The Thievius Raccoonus, records all the secret moves and techniques from every member in the clan. On his 8th birthday, Sly was supposed to inherit the book and learn all of his family's ancient secrets which was supposed to help him become a master thief, however, a group of thugs by the name "The Fiendish Five" (led by Clockwerk, who is the arch-nemesis of the family clan) attack the Cooper household and kills Sly's parents and stole all of the pages from the Thievius Raccoonus. After that, the ruthless gang go their separate ways to commit dastardly crimes around the world. Sly is sent to an orphanage where he meets and teams up and forms a gang with two guys who become his lifelong best friends, Bentley, a technician, inventor and a talented mathematical hacker with encyclopedic knowledge who plays the role as the brains of the gang, and Murray, a huge husky cowardly guy with a ginormous appetite who plays the role as the brawns and the getaway driver of the gang. The three leave the orphanage together at age 16 to start their lives becoming international vigilante criminals together, naming themselves "The Cooper Gang". Sly swears one day to avenge his family and track down the Fiendish Five and steal back the Thievius Raccoonus. Two years later, the Cooper Gang head to Paris, France, to infiltrate Itnerpol (a police headquarters) in order to find the secret police file which stores details and information about the Fiendish Five but during the heist they are ambushed by Inspector Carmelita Fox (towards whom Sly develops a romantic attraction), a police officer who is affiliated with Interpol and is after the Cooper Gang. The gang manage to steal the police file and successfully escapes from her and the rest of the cops. With the secret police file finally in their hands, the Cooper Gang manage to track down the Fiendish Five.

Screenshots

Videos

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus screenshot

8 17

I want Sly to be my new personality.

29 Jan 2025

7 5

A 3D Platformer + stealth action game might be the coolest idea ever. Mascot platforming, but the enemies are guards with flashlights, and levels are filled with spotlights and laser tripwires that'll trigger an alarm if spotted. It's a shockingly effective genre mashup, and it's a blast to play. There's a lot of cool climbing systems too, like scaling pipes, shimmying across gaps, and swinging around with your hook cane. And it's all made so much better with Sly's incredible animation (his run cycle is so good!!!!). There's tons of awesome minigames, like racing levels, turret levels, twin-stick SHMUP levels, a level where you have to get oil from piranhas to light tikis, or even a level where you have to murder 50 chickens while dodging the explosive suicide chickens (totally normal stuff). On top of that, the bosses are actually pretty decent and fun to fight. The collectathon aspect asks you to find all hidden clues in a level to unlock a secret vault, that grant Sly new abilities. Finding the clues is a ton of fun (mostly thanks to their actually reasonable hiding spots), and new abilities is a very enticing reward for 100%ing each level. The problem is that only a handful of these new moves are actually useful, and most end up being super gimmicky or completely unnecessary. Also, toggling between the abilities is a chore and not very intuitive. My biggest issue with the game is the health system. Sly can only take one hit by default, and getting the charms that grant additional hits requires 100 coins (which is a lot). So playing most of the game with oneshot deaths, paired with the sparse checkpoints made the experience more frustrating than I feel it needed to be. Still, Sly Cooper is a super good time.

01 Dec 2024

9 3

Had I played this as a child, on my PS2, it'd have been my favourite game. Fluid controls and incredible art direction. Short and sweet. The only thing I didn't like was the weird minigames that didn't feel fun to play and often felt frustrating. Also, not a big fan of losing lives on death, which encouraged me to grind for lives in the first area (even though losing all lives was not a big deal, I just didn't want to reach that point). Played ot on my Vita, from the collection, which meant locked 30fps.

16 Dec 2024

8 2

An excellent platformer, fun to play on the Vita!

05 Jun 2023

9 2

The best in the series. The art style alon is enough to fall in love with. Great world building and fun levels! A great introduction to an awesome series!

20 Aug 2021