Two games from the original Sly Cooper trilogy down, one more to go.  That’s right, everyone, I have just started Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.  I am writing this particular post two hours into the game rather than just the usual hour, and…I’m not quite sure what to say yet.  Okay, first off, this game is really similar to Sly 2.  The controls are largely the same.  The graphics are the same.  (I think Carmelita’s voice actor has changed again, though.)  Honestly, I don’t have a lot to go on right now, so I’m going to devote part of this post to pure speculation as to what I think is going to happen.

So far, the game has opened up on Kaine Island, which appears to be a later level in the game, as after completing it, the story returned to a point far earlier on, so it appears I’ll now be playing through the events leading up to the game’s opening.  Which is probably good, as I was getting rather confused by all the new characters suddenly introduced in that initial level.  Well, none of them were actually introduced, but simply shown as silhouettes with a little bit of dialogue (I think I recognize one of them, but not any of the others…one of them is Dimitri from Sly 2, right?), which seemed strange at the time, but now I understand why their identities are currently a secret (for the sake of suspense for the player, of course).  Well, all I can say is I look forward to finding out who all of these guys are.

Apparently, the goal of this game is to gather a group of thieves to help with opening the Cooper family safe on Kaine Island, which is currently occupied by a villain named Dr. M.  (What does the M stand for, you might ask?  I don’t know.)  One of the people they are trying to recruit is actually Murray, who left the group because he felt guilty over Bentley’s injuries at the end of Sly 2, the specifics of which I won’t spoil.  Thus far, I have been trying to stop the villain Don Octavio in Venice, Italy, with the hopes of also convincing Murray to return to the team.  I think this might be why the game has a different feel for me at the moment.  It just feels a bit…off with just two members of the group together.  Maybe that’ll change once we get Murray back on the team, so I’ll just have to see.

The other thing about this game I want to mention is the plot.  The second game had me working to collect the pieces of the evil mechanical owl Clockwerk to prevent him from being rebuilt, which I thought was kind of cool.  As for this game’s story, well…I don’t have as much interest in opening a safe as I did preventing the diabolical owl’s return, so at the moment, the story doesn’t have the same sense of “urgency”, if that’s the right word, as the second game did.  I had actually gotten the impression at the end of the first game that Clockwerk might have been the main villain of the series, and if the second game had led to his revival and possible return to full strength in the third game, I thought that could have made for a solid idea for a trilogy.  Unfortunately, Clockwerk doesn’t seem to have any relation to the third game yet, which disappoints me a bit, as he was an interesting villain that I wanted to learn more about.

Ah, but alas, I’m only two hours into the game, so I suppose it’s too early to nitpick too much.  As the game progresses, my ideas on the plot may be proven right, maybe not.  Maybe I’ll learn that there is a lot more importance to this game’s story than meets the eye (I still know very little about Dr. M, after all, so we’ll see what he’s really up to).  Only time will tell.  Right now, all I can focus on is the gameplay.

So now, on that note, there have been a few changes I have noticed in this game, two of which I like and two of which I do not.  One, there are no longer any clue bottles to find, which is a bit disappointing.  I actually had a lot of fun looking for those, and they were really great in allowing me to thoroughly explore and get to know a new location.  Exploring for the sake of it is not my thing.  If there is nothing to get out of it, I don’t typically do it.  So no clue bottles, no exploring, which likely isn’t wise, as it’s making it a little difficult for me to find my way around in this game.  Two, I did not like trying to open the combination lock on Dimitri’s cell (why I let him go to begin with, I’m not certain…).  I did not really understand the whole concept, and it took me a bunch of tries before I got it open.  Heck, why’d I even need to retrieve a key from Carmelita’s office in the first place just to open a lock that doesn’t require a key?  Hopefully there won’t be many more of these.

Now for my two positive thoughts.  So far, I’ve gotten a few opportunities to choose what Sly will say in a certain situation, which I like.  Choice is always nice, even when they make me try again if I choose the wrong option, but at least it gives me a little more involvement in what’s going on.  Secondly, I enjoyed looking for the codes to safes in the three coffee house paintings (plus, the paintings were of locations from previous games, which was cool).  These codes were actually hidden within the painting itself, and it was rather fun looking for them.  I hope to see more of those later.  I kind of feel that I won’t, but you never know.

And that’s about as far as my initial views go.  The game’s been fun so far, and it’s kind of nice that it feels like an extension of the previous game.  Familiarity can be comforting sometimes.  All I can do now is keep playing, and we’ll see how my views change.  Farewell ‘til next time, everyone!

Honor Among Ducks