Sly Cooper Thieves in Time - PlayStation 3 and Vita review

I completed Sly Cooper Thieves in Time on Vita a few days ago and the PS3 version earlier today.
I've been playing through both simultaneously with separate save files, comparing the two as I went along.

I love the original trilogy on PS2 by Sucker Punch, but this was made by Sanzaru Games Inc. as Sucker Punch were busy making more Infamous games at the time, and still are, as far as I know.
It's important to keep that in mind.
Sanzaru did a fairly good job mimicking a lot of what made the PS2 Sly games good but they're clearly not on the level of Sucker Punch as virtually everything feels a lot less polished than the older PS2 games and the entire final episode of the game feels a bit rushed with large areas never being used and missions feeling like they miss important segments you've gotten used to at that point, they did however improve some minor things so it's not all for the worse.

It's also important to keep in mind it was originally released as a budget title, so it was never meant or intended to compete with bigger budget series like Ratchet & Clank, sadly.

With those things in mind I'd say it's still a good game, despite numerous shortcomings. For one, it has a lot of big budget features, if you have a PSN account you get cross-buy where in the PS3 version you get a digital version for Vita, cross-play where you can use the same savefile on both PS3 and Vita and a cloud-save where you can upload your savefile to the internet, it also supports 3D on compatible 3D HDTVs. It also features Trophy support for those interested in that.
There were a couple of more features I couldn't check out myself, supposedly there's a multiplayer option, it says 1-2 players on the back of the cover, and there's an augmented reality feature using the Vita to look for hidden things in the PS3 version by syncing up the Vita to the TV screen, but as with most of the other features it requires things I don't have, an HDTV and I think also a PSN account.
Custom music playback is only available on Vita.
Regardless, not bad at all for a new team with a lower budget.

But what about the game itself?

Storywise it canonically continues where Sly 3 left off and for those unfamiliar with the series up to this point there is a choice presented when you start a new game to either get more backstory told through animated cutscenes, with Sly narrating in broad terms what's happened so far, or to just go on with this game's story instead.
The game is structured the same as the previous titles where each new environment and the story being told therein is presented as a saturday morning cartoon episode with beautifully animated 2D cutscenes at the beginning, middle and end.
The quality of the animated cutscenes in this game are arguably even higher than the ones from the original trilogy and are a true treat to behold.
The rest of the cutscenes are also good, rendered in real-time they do a good job with animations and expressions.

The story itself, in short terms and with as few spoilers as possible, is a time travel mystery about how Sly's family of master thieves is seemingly being erased from history and how Sly and his friends set out to try and find out what's going on, how they can stop it and how to set things straight again.
It's a pegi 7 rated game so don't expect any deep theories about time travel to take center stage here, think more in the terms of saturday morning cartoon level of time travel, it's more of a catalyst for the characters to act upon than a long in depth scientific lecture about complicated paradoxes and warping the fabric of reality, though some of that stuff is mentioned from time to time throughout the game it never delves further into it, it's kept fairly simple and to the point.

You get to play as a myriad of different characters, as is tradition for the series at this point, with some returning characters and some new faces we haven't seen before.
In total there are 9 playable characters in this game, including but not limited to Sly, Bentley, Murray and some of Sly's ancestors, with each ancestor being playable in their respective time period only.
The basic controls are the same for all characters but they all have their own strengths, weaknesses and unique special abilities to set them apart.
There are more playstyles than just the playable characters though as lots of minigames, both recurring and mission specific, are present in almost every mission, and plenty of additional abilities are made available for Sly and the other main characters to purchase with the money you collect, Sly especially has even more additional abilities in the form of new costumes in each episode that changes how he plays so drastically it's almost like there are another five additional characters you can turn into on the fly, once they've all been acquired.

You pick who to play as in the hideout before heading out, but to play the story missions you have to pick whoever the missions is assigned to. If you pick someone who doesn't have a mission you can still explore the environments, look for collectibles, get money from breaking objects, go on treasure hunts or just sneak around pickpocketing enemies. A good addition to the formula that the older games didn't allow you to do is to complete these sidequests while still on a mission, in the older games you had to quit ongoing missions to take on any type of sidequest.
Switching characters is a bit cumbersome as the loading times are pretty long when entering and leaving the hideout, thankfully there's an option in the pause menu to instantly return to the hideout no matter where on the map you are.

Visually both the PS3 and Vita version of the game looks fairly good, with the PS3 version looking notably better than the Vita version, of course, but they're both visually competent on their respective platforms and compare well enough to other games in the cartoony platformer genre.
There are plenty of special effects and minor details to behold in the many different environments, especially on PS3 where the more advanced lighting effects come into play, and the large and open environments look quite impressive when you're sitting on a high rooftop or tower looking out over everything there is too see down below, with enemies patrolling the streets and birds flying around and stuff it's downright beautiful at times and you can just take a breather and absorb the sights around you.

There are however some technical low points to mention, like whenever you hit too many destructible objects at a time being the most common reason for sudden minor drops in the framerate in both versions, and the overall lower framerate on Vita in general.
On PS3 the game runs smoothly for the most part, doing a good job staying around the maximum 50fps in the PAL version (presumably 60 in NTSC for North America and Japan), but on Vita the game runs capped at 30fps, which is fine and never really bothered me, but some areas of the game struggle to even reach those 30 frames and stutter along at lower framerates, with the third episode being the worst offender by far due to some geysers spewing out big upwinds that really wreck havoc on the framerate whenever they're on screen.

There are unique positives in both versions, like how on PS3 you have a higher screen resolution, native 720p to be exact, and a better draw distance, meaning you can make out smaller objects from further away than you can on Vita, while on Vita the lack of some of the minor environment detail and lighting effects meant it was easier to see certain things as your view was less obstructed. I was constantly finding stuff I had missed when playing one version after the other, with some things being easier to find on PS3 and others on Vita, I feel they complimented each other well in this regard and owning both was a clear benefit.
I like the visual design and the new art style of the characters looks good too.
The Vita version lacks the cartoony outlines for the characters, which is fine and I would've actually preferred had they been optional on PS3, but oddly enough some minor objects still have them on Vita, probably being the results of oversight by the developers. I've only noticed it on the loot items you can pickpocket from enemies with shiny pockets though, so not a common occurrence or big deal at all, at first I didn't even notice as I was so used to seeing them with outlines on PS3 I didn't reflect on the fact they probably shouldn't have them on Vita when nothing else does.

Content wise they both contain the same amount of game, with everything that's there on PS3 still present on Vita.
In fact the only actual difference between the two versions gameplay wise I was able to find was the set goal of one specific part of one single mission; during a shooting gallery segment with bow and arrows on PS3 you have to score 120 points while on Vita you only need 85 points to pass, with the same results on both if you pass or fail, even the same trophy unlocked if you get a perfect score on both, making it much easier to complete on Vita.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the Vita version does not contain all language options and will have a different selection of languages depending on the version you get hold of.
The really odd thing about this is how the default english language option was cut out entirely in some versions, so if you're unlucky you can end up with a Vita version with no english language option at all, probably not a big deal in the US where they probably only released the english version, but here in Europe you better hope you get a version with at least one language you understand beside english. For me there were no problems with this as I played through the game in swedish on both anyway, and I can gladly report that several of the voice actors from the older games make a return, most importantly Sly, Bentley and Murray, the three main characters of the series, and this goes for both the english and swedish dubs! So Sly still sounds like the animated series Batman from the 90s in the swedish dub, which is fantastic and I love it and I wouldn't want it any other way.
The lack of english on Vita is somewhat of a bummer for Vita owners as there is tons of voice acting in this game and for those like me who always enjoy comparing my native dub to the original dub, not having the original english dub in this reminded me of how disappointed I was at X-Blades on Xbox 360 for not including the original russian dub, sure it had english but instead of the original russian dub it had a random french dub, such a stupid waste. Thankfully having the PS3 game I could listen to the english dub there and get my fix and honestly I think most people who have a Vita are likely to also own a PS3 and this is a common and usually very cheap game on both so it's far from an unfixable problem for those who really want it. Where there's a will there's a way, it's just a shame it had to be a problem to begin with.

Unlike even many big budget titles there is no text-only based dialog in this game, everything spoken is voice acted and there's a lot of dialog in this game, even for NPCs with only a few lines of dialog they still have it fully voice acted, and it only very rarely repeats dialog during certain events, like boss battles, and even then the repetition is kept to an unusually rare minimum, especially for the genre, there's no equivalent to Eggman's "You know what they say, the more the merrier!" in this game, thankfully!
The only gripe I have were certain moments where characters were talking over each other making it hard to hear what either of them were saying, it thankfully didn't happen very often.
Subtitles can be turned on but they're not present at all times, the 2D animated cutscenes and in-game talk all lack subtitles.

Might as well mention the sound effects and music while we're on the subject of voice acting.
The music has a lot of personality and sounds great. It has several different themes that fit the time periods and locations nicely and the cutscenes have fitting music for the mood portrayed as well.

Same goes for sound effects, everything has a satisfying noise to it and nothing stands out in a negative way.

The volume I felt had to be adjusted from the standard as sound effects and music both came off as too loud, thankfully you can adjust the volumes for sound effects, music, voices and animated cutscenes separately and it was easy to set it all to my liking.

Gameplay mechanics wise it's sadly more of a mixed bag.
The controls work well enough in theory, they're very similar to how they were in the original trilogy overall and as a fan I felt right at home with the returning mechanics and the new stuff was never overwhelming and got introduced at a nice pace, allowing you to get used to the things you have while keeping things fresh at a steady pace for the most part of the game.

The hit detection is sporadically unreliable and some things are downright unresponsive and clunky, especially the motion controls.
There will be sudden unwanted deaths, and frustration during the more challenging parts of the game is virtually unavoidable. You will fail, it won't be your fault and you will get annoyed by it.
Thankfully the game is extremely forgiving and lenient with constant checkpoints and unlimited tries getting you right back into the action, at worst you may have to replay a minute or two and even then that's only if you run out of health entirely, as you have a lifebar and can take multiple hits before dying and there are health pickups you can collect by smashing objects and defeating enemies, there is also a permanent upgrade you can acquire later in the game that removes water damage entirely for all playable characters, you'll still sit through the rewind animation but at least you won't take any damage from it or die just because you got your shoes wet a few times too many.

The implementation of some of the abilities and features are questionable in their execution and on Vita it becomes more apparent due to the fewer amount of buttons they had to work with, forcing you to use both the touchscreen and the rear touchpad of the Vita to compensate.
The touch controls were kept as simple button functions and never once went into full swiping territory, but not getting the tactile feedback of pressing a physical button meant that far too often you accidentally pressed these and sometimes it happened during the wrong moment and, you guessed it, added a few more unwanted deaths and more frustration to the mix.

The Dual Shock 3 SIXAXIS and Vita motion sensing controls were put to use quite a lot, more than I felt comfortable with and a certain reoccurring minigame in particular became a dreaded unwanted encounter on both systems because of it, not because it was overly long and arduous in itself but because you failed far too often due to the awful motion controls not responding properly, forcing you to start over again, and it sucks even more because had they just allowed the use of the analog sticks instead it could've been a genuinely fun minigame, it reminds me a lot of one of my favorites PSP games; Mercury.
Actually, Mercury Meltdown Revolution on Wii uses the wiimote motion controls only to play the game, which sucks, but it's still far more playable with better sense of control than this minigame has. It's not unplayable but it's not fun either.
The other minigames I enjoyed a lot more and if you collect all the hidden treasures in any one episode you unlock an arcade machine with one of the minigames on it, with brand new levels to play through, there's also a simple ping pong minigame but it's nothing but a minor time waster, I think a Trophy can be unlocked if you get perfect wins on it but that's about it.

The different styles of gameplay may sound like a lot but it's far fewer than what Sly 3 offered and it feels like a much smaller game because of this. There are no airplane dogfights, there aren't really any true vehicle sections, not proper ones like Sly 3 had anyway, definitely no pirate ships to go on adventures with and so on, there are some RC vehicle missions but they're heavily limited to the task at hand and they're very few and far between, the only other RC vehicle beside the car is the RC helicopter and you only use it for a short smoke bombing mission very late in the game, the rest are all done with the RC car.

There are your standard turret sections and other boring minigames like serving sarsaparilla drinks at a bar a-la-Diner Dash but they're at least kept short and are mostly one time occurrences, the most fun ones were some of the more involved shooting segments as they at least take some skill and feel a bit more polished and less forced for the shallow sake of variety over quality like the aforementioned turret sections and such.

A great thing they brought back that was missing in Sly 3 though are the clue bottles you can find scattered all over the maps, finding all 30 of them unlocks a safe with a special power hidden inside, like the no water damage I mentioned earlier and other such helpful things. Another good thing that makes a comeback are the hidden treasures you can find that you have to bring back to the hideout without taking any damage within the time limit, they're the ones that unlock the arcade machines I talked about earlier.
Having these additional sidequests available again adds a lot of value to the big open environments and makes them feel worth exploring. Sly 3 sadly felt very empty with the omission of these things and it was heavily criticized for it, so it's a warm and loving welcome back for them in this game.
One of the clue bottles on the final episode however seems to almost have been placed incorrectly by mistake, as you nearly have to glitch the game to reach it, by doing an awkward paragliding jump with a very precisely timed attack at the end forcing just enough additional forward momentum to manipulate the physics in such a way that you can glitch upward against gravity to reach just high enough for the hit detection to allow you to land where you need to be feels like it was intended to be executed with much more ease that it is, it stands out to everything else in the game in a most awkward way and when researching what others had to say about it it seems I wasn't the only one who had problems reaching this bottle, and it has proven to be the bane of many completionists out there having completed everything else in that game, lacking only that one bottle. It took me dozens of tries on PS3 to finally get it but only a couple of tries on Vita, I'll go ahead and write that off as luck on Vita more than anything else.



With everything in mind; the low budget, a new developer, lots of big budget features, gorgeous 2D animation, overall good visual design, framerate issues and omission of entire languages on Vita, certain control and hit detection issues, the rushed feeling of the final episode and that one damn clue bottle I give Sly Cooper Thieves in Time for Vita and PS3 a "good" 3,5/5, because it's better than your "average" 3/5 platformer but it's too flawed to be a truly 4/5 "great" game.

The star score is a 4/5 though because if I have to round it up or down I'm rounding it up as it's clearly above average in my opinion and has enough great parts that deserve to be recognized.