Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a 2013 action stealth video game, and the fourth and final installment in the Sly Cooper series. Available on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, the game was developed by Sanzaru Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.[2] Sanzaru had previously ported the original games, developed by Sucker Punch Productions for the PlayStation 2, into remastered versions for the PS3, named The Sly Collection, released in November 2010. Thieves in Time was teased in the bundle, but it was not formally announced until several months later at the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo during Sony's presentation in June 2011.
The game, set in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals, follows from the end of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. Sly Cooper, a raccoon from a long line of master thieves, will need to reunite with his gang to repair the Thievius Raccoonus, a book chronicling the Cooper family line whose pages have been affected by a villain traveling through time. The player controls Sly, Bentley, Murray, Carmelita Fox, and Sly's ancestors, using their skills to pull off heists and reveal who is putting the Cooper history in a jam.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was a part of Sony's cross-buy initiative, allowing purchasers of the PlayStation 3 version of the game to receive a free copy of the game for the PlayStation Vita via the PlayStation Network. The player can also save their game in the cloud, allowing them to play on one system and later continue playing on the other. The game was met with generally positive critical reception upon release. It was well-received for its amount of content, graphics, writing, and the utilization of the Cross-Buy program. However, the return of the previous entries' gameplay in the context of video games at the time, the sections for characters besides the titular protagonist, and the mini-games divided reviewers. Of wide condemnation were the loading screens, which were perceived as common and excessively long.
As with other Sly Cooper entries, Thieves in Time is an action-adventure stealth game with puzzle-solving and the ability to explore wide open spaces, regardless if they are part of the required objective.[3][4][5] Players primarily control Sly Cooper, who must sneak around and navigate various obstacles to help restore the history of the Thievius Raccoonus. Similar to the series Assassin's Creed, players go back into time periods saving his ancestors and killing the land's tyrant.[6] Many of Sly's abilities return, such as navigating poles and ropes, jumping across narrow platforms and stealing items from guards. New to this game are costumes earned throughout the course of the game, which give Sly access to new abilities. Examples include a suit of armor that allows Sly to reflect projectiles with a shield, an archery outfit that lets him shoot arrows at targets to create rope lines, and an Arabian pirate-like suit that allows him to slow down time and use a sword to break sturdy objects.[5][7][8] These costumes can be taken to previously visited levels to reach secret areas.[4]
New secret masks and treasures are hidden throughout the game; the latter item, unlike its counterpart in previous installments, is collectible only and cannot be sold on the game's ThiefNet service (although the player still receives an in-game monetary reward). The clue bottles from Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus and Sly 2: Band of Thieves make a return, allowing the player to unlock new abilities for all of the playable characters. A new feature allows anyone who owns both the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3 versions of the game to use the Vita system as "a set of x-ray goggles" to find any of these hidden collectibles anywhere in the world, through the use of augmented reality.[9] The binary characters displayed during Bentley's plans are ASCII-encoded text messages and can be decoded manually.
Bentley, Murray, and Carmelita Fox return as playable characters,[5] along with some of Sly's ancestors, who each possess unique abilities.[10] Worlds in the game are claimed to be three times the size of the original trilogy.[11] The game also supports stereoscopic 3D[12] and local multiplayer in some sections of the game.[13]
Sly is faking amnesia to be with his love interest Carmelita, Murray is racing with the team van, and Bentley and Penelope are constructing a time machine.[a] However, the words begin vanishing from the pages of the Thievius Raccoonus, and Penelope disappears, so Bentley reforms the gang to repair the damage to the Coopers' family history and find out who is responsible. Meanwhile, Carmelita discovers Sly's deception after she catches him robbing an art museum to steal the Feudal Japan-era dagger to get to Feudal Japan, and wants to permanently get her hands on him for lying to her.
The team begins their time-traveling journey in Feudal Japan, where they rescue Rioichi Cooper, a ninja and the inventor of sushi. After a showdown with El Jefe, a Cuban military strategist tiger who overthrew several small countries and sold them to the highest bidder, Rioichi's cane is stolen. In the Wild West, the gang breaks outlaw Tennessee "Kid" Cooper, who was framed for bank robbery before he had started, out of jail. They also discover Carmelita being held hostage by Toothpick, a self-proclaimed "gunslinger" armadillo posing as the town's new sheriff, under the orders of a black-market art dealer skunk named Cyrille Le Paradox, who sent her back in time to impede her investigation of him. The gang, however, gets captured as well.
After the rescue, they manage to defeat Toothpick, but unforeseen complications cause them to be sent to the Ice Age in Prehistoric Australia. Carmelita is still very upset at Sly and leaves the group. A cave-raccoon nicknamed "Bob", revealed to Sly's primordial ancestor, teams up with the gang to stop The Grizz, an art thief bear forging cave paintings. After much thought, Carmelita finally decides to help the gang in order to stop Le Paradox and return home. They then travel to Medieval England, where they recruit Sir Galleth of The Knights of the Cooper Order, a knight with a flair for the dramatic. They confront the tyrant Black Knight in control of the area, but are shocked to discover it is actually Penelope, who believes Sly is a negative influence on Bentley and provided Le Paradox with a means of traveling through time. This revelation sends Bentley into a deep depression, but eventually overcomes it and arrives just in time to save the gang from Penelope and break up with her.
The gang finally catches up to Le Paradox in Ancient Arabia with the help of Salim Al-Kupar, the last active member of the Forty Thieves, and battle Ms. Decibel, a "music snob" elephant with the power of hypnosis thanks to a trumpet stuck in her trunk. Le Paradox's plan is eventually revealed: forge documents in the past depicting a fake royal lineage to expand his fortune and influence, and steal the Cooper ancestors' canes as revenge for his own family's misfortune as thieves. As a final insult to Sly, he kidnaps Carmelita.
The gang returns to present-day Paris, now under Le Paradox's control. Using Carmelita as bait, Le Paradox captures Sly. However, Bentley, Murray, and a team of Cooper ancestors retrieve the missing canes and free them just as Le Paradox inadvertently rips a hole in the space-time continuum. Finally reconciling with Carmelita, Sly sends everyone home just before entering a final showdown with Le Paradox atop his blimp, ending with Le Paradox falling into the sea. The various villains are sent to prison, though Penelope escapes and remains at large. However, though Le Paradox was later found and incarcerated, Sly was trapped aboard the blimp and has disappeared, saddening everyone, especially Carmelita who was hurt the most. Despite this, the gang vows to do whatever it takes to find him, no matter when or where he is.
If all trophies are collected or if the "end credits" are selected in the menu,[14] a secret ending is unlocked that shows Sly waking up, surrounded by the wreckage of Le Paradox's blimp in front of a jackal-headed temple and pyramids in Ancient Egypt.
Sanzaru Games was interested in developing the Sly Cooper franchise further after Sucker Punch Productions, the original developer, had moved on to the Infamous series. Quickly after the purchase of a PlayStation 3 development kit, they worked out a prototype game engine for the console which they presented to Sony Computer Entertainment. Sony was impressed and gave them the development duties for the PlayStation 3 conversion of the original trilogy, The Sly Collection and then subsequently green-lit Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.[5][7]
Thieves in Time represents a return to the series after a nearly eight-year hiatus following the release of Sly 3. Several hints of the series' revival were previously included in Infamous and Infamous 2, released in 2009 and 2011 respectively. In addition to other nods to the series, such as Sly's calling-card logo patch on Infamous' protagonist Cole MacGrath's backpack in both games and the ability to use Sly's cane as an alternate melee weapon within Infamous 2, both games features marquees that included the title "Sly 4".[15][16] A teaser trailer included in The Sly Collection, released in late 2010, titled "Sly 4", was believed to be an indication that a new game would soon be announced.[17] The game was formally announced for PlayStation 3 during Sony's presentation at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) convention on June 6, 2011.[18] A PlayStation Vita version was revealed on May 18, 2012 during GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley.[2]
At Gamescom 2012, Sony announced the new cross-buy program. Through this program, one could purchase the PS3 version of a game and receive the PS Vita version (provided one is available) completely free of charge through a code redeemable at the PS Vita's PlayStation Store, with Thieves in Time among the games supporting the program.[19] A new trailer was also seen at Gamescom 2012, introducing Salim Al-Kupar as another confirmed ancestor and sending news that the release date had been pushed back to early 2013.[20] Sony later clarified the release date to be in February 2013, stating that they didn't want Thieves in Time to release at the same time as all of the other games coming out in the fall of 2012;[21][22] putting it in February would give it more prominence during the game's vital opening week with fewer big-name titles releasing at the same time.
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