The Sly Collection (The Sly Trilogy in Europe, Sly Cooper Collection in Japan and South Korea) is a remastered collection of the Sly Cooper series for the PlayStation 3. The game includes all three original games remastered in high definition, as well as support for 3D (requires a 3D-ready TV).
The game is the second remastered collection of PlayStation 2 games to be made for the PS3, after the God of War series. It was ported by Sanzaru Games, whereas the original games were developed by Sucker Punch Productions. It was released on disc on November 9, 2010[1] followed over a year later by a digital download release on November 29, 2011.[2] On May 27, 2014, a PlayStation Vita version of the Sly Collection was released.
The Sly Collection features PS3 trophy support and mini-games that utilize the PlayStation Move.
Differences
The ports of the three games to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita were not exact, and the games have numerous differences compared to their PlayStation 2 counterparts. Following is an unofficial, incomplete list of these differences.
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus
- The player can now invert the games' camera controls.
- Due to a lack of Gameshark on the PlayStation 3, related cheats no longer work.
- The distance between Sly and an enemy required to cause the sneaking sound of Sly's feet and the sneaky music has been drastically increased to the point where Sly will make the sneaking sound almost all the time unless all nearby enemies are defeated. This effect is amplified vertically.
- The audio in the game went through many changes:
- Almost all background music has been remixed.
- Some background music is impacted by de-synchronizations, most notably during "A Deadly Dance."
- The background music that played during "Treasure in the Depths" was replaced by the music from "Burning Rubber," and the music from "A Ghastly Voyage" was put into "A Grave Undertaking."
- Some of the sneaky music was replaced by its non-sneaky counterpart. "Back Alley Heist" is one example.
- Some voice acting is also impacted by de-synchronizations, especially Carmelita in both "Police Headquarters" and "Duel by the Dragon."
- The Japanese version has every dialogue rerecorded from the ground up, with Sly, Bentley, Murray, Carmelita, and Panda King's new Japanese voice actors since the 3rd game taking over. However, some Japanese voice actors were changed for others solely for this HD remake:
- At the end of "Duel by the Dragon," if the player hits the fireworks clockwise, a glitch occurs where Carmelita doesn't speak, but the dragon head still falls, followed by the player not being able to move. The player must hit the fireworks counter-clockwise to avoid this.
- For the PlayStation Vita version, Matt Olsen had to re-voice the camera control tutorial that plays when the player approaches the entrance to "A Cunning Disguise" inside "Prowling the Grounds." Since the right analog stick cannot be clicked on the Vita, Bentley instead says, "to bring the camera behind you, tap the rear touch pad."
- The Template:Icon prompt that is in front of the Bentley icon that shows if the player wants to listen to Bentley on the Binoc-U-Com or hear the Fiendish Five on the PA is removed in the PS Vita version as that function has now been assigned to the touch screen.
- Some of the glitches (mostly speed-running ones) were fixed.
Sly 2: Band of Thieves
- The player can now invert the game's camera controls
- Due to a lack of Gameshark on the PlayStation 3, related cheats no longer work.
- Only the bonus videos for Episode 1, the stamp heist, and Episode 8, the credits, are available to watch from the level select screen.
- The cutscene that plays after defeating Dimitri Lousteau doesn't show the team playing cards in Monaco. Instead, the Cooper Van drives in place while Sly's audio continues, though he doesn't mention Monaco anymore. This was probably changed, because the games had to be ESRB rated again and it was most likely requested to remove this scene to lower the rating.
- A different sound is heard when entering the 2-8 episodes and the movie option from the Episode Select Screen. This doesn't apply to Episode 1 for some reason.
- The level reset glitch in Menace from the North, eh! was fixed.
- With the exception of the intro level, the first few seconds of each level's soundtracks are cut off each time they are played the first go-around. This includes all soundtracks except the alternative soundtracks for boss battles or other missions.
- The player can no longer use the USB Headset feature to distract the guards.
- For the PSVita version, Kevin Miller and Matt Olsen had to re-voice the way point & Binoc-U-Com controls to "tap the rear touch pad to bring up the way point" and "tap the touch screen to bring up the Binoc-U-Com".
- This is also the reason the amount of buttons used for the power-ups have lowered for the PSVita version, so the player can use only the L button for one power-up at a time.
- The Japanese version of the game also has the same voice rerecording with the prior game, and even for the other characters:
- Neyla: Sanae Kobayashi to Miho Yamada.
- Dimitri: Hisashi Izumi to Sousuke Komori, a change that was carried over from the Japanese version of Sly 3.
- Rajan: Takaya Hashi to Shunsuke Sakuya.
- The Contessa: Gara Takashima to Keiko Nemoto.
- Jean Bison: Shouzou Iizuka to Jin Urayama.
- Arpeggio: Motomu Kiyokawa to Shouto Kashii.
- In the digital version of the game, at the start of dialogue, it is quiet, gets louder, and then the volume decreases again at the end of a line.
- Sly's portrait in the Gadget Grid is different. It uses the same portrait as the one in Sly 3.
- When recon photos are taken, they take up the entire screen.
- The Sony Computer Entertainment presents screen uses a different font.
- The in-game dialogue is slightly delayed sometimes.
- The background music will also occasionally loop when the character dialogue delay occurs.
- This problem does not occur in the PS Vita release.
- Some of the menus do not fill up the entire screen.
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves
- Due to a lack of Gameshark on the PlayStation 3, related cheats no longer work.
- The few missions that supported 3-D no longer ask the player if they want to enable 3-D because the entire collection is 3-D compatible (but despite this, the cutscenes that play before that menu popped up are still there).
- The music glitch in the "Hungry Croc" mission was fixed. In the original, the music never played. Though some of the PS2 versions (most likely the PAL versions) had the music played correctly.
- In the multiplayer game "Biplane Duel," the green-orange targeting beacon doesn't appear to be locked on to the person when using special items. However, it is only a visual glitch.
- When starting the game, there is a chance a random bug will happen where the music will begin looping 5 seconds of the audio, and the cutscene dialogue will take several minutes to load the dialogue, with characters freezing mid-speech and looping until the game catches up. A way to fix this is simply powering the system off and restarting the system, but there have been reports of people being unable to fix the problem without deleting their data, and some who have been unable to fix it at all, indicating that it is potentially an error on the disk itself.
- During the "Beauty and the Beast" mission, the music for the fight between Carmelita and Muggshot doesn't play. Additionally, after the mission is over, the rest of the game won't play any music unless the player returns to the XMB and restarts the game, dies, or use Bentley's Grapple-Cam.
- European Sly fans can finally watch The Evolution of Sly video without having to look it up on the internet, as every bonus video is now accessible.
- When Sly first meets Dimitri in "Police HQ," players can clearly see him even when his back is turned. This is because the HD port has different rendering, which causes the lightning to be much more clear.
- Characters count much faster when opening a double button security door.
- For the PSVita version, Kevin Miller and Matt Olsen had to re-voice the way point & Binoc-U-Com controls, tap the rear touch pad to bring up the way point and tap the touch screen to bring up the Binoc-U-Com.
- This is also the reason the amount of buttons used for the power-ups have lowered for the PSVita version, so the player can only the L button for one power-up at a time
- In the PS Vita version, you can use the motion sensors of the PS Vita system to steer the galleon in Dead Men Tell No Tales, though it is never mentioned in-game.
- As in Sly 2, recon photos now take up the entire screen.
- As in Sly 2, the Sony Computer Entertainment presents screen uses a different font.
- As in Sly 2, the in-game dialogue is slightly delayed sometimes.
- The background music will also occasionally loop when the character dialogue delay occurs.
- This is also fixed in the PSVita release.
- As in Sly 2, some of the menus don't fill up the entire screen.
- However, in Sly 3, the in-game aspect bars don't fill up the screen as well.
- Murray's bounce height was drastically decreased.
- This is only seen in the PSVita release, but In the "Dark Caves" mission, when exploring the second cave, the lighting is different.
If one platinum trophy from any of the three games has been collected, the player will be given access to a teaser trailer for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. It shows tall grass blades, where a shadow of Sly appears. The setting is in Feudal Japan, and a boar guard walks by while a crane guard walks along the rooftop of the building shown. It also shows two clue bottles: one in the bushes and another one on the rooftop.
The teaser is accessed from the main menu by pressing left on the D-pad until reaching a screen with two buttons: "Credits", which plays the credits for the Collection, and "?????", which plays the teaser. This screen, and by extension this teaser, is only accessible from the physical PS3 copy of The Sly Collection, since the physical Vita cartridge does not come with all three games and the digital versions are downloaded separately without the main menu.
Development
Before the release of the collection, Sanzaru Games began work on a prototype of the fourth game in the Sly Cooper series, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, as Sucker Punch was working on the inFAMOUS series. They showed the prototype to Sony, who were impressed with the prototype and gave Sanzaru the task of developing a PlayStation 3 port of the PS2 games to gauge interest. At E3 2010, on June 15, The Sly Collection was announced for release later in the year. It was released physically on November 9, 2010 and each game became available to purchase digitally from the PlayStation Store on November 29, 2011. An ESRB rating for a PlayStation Vita port of The Sly Collection was leaked online on April 20, 2013. On February 10 the following year, the release date for the PS Vita version of the Collection was revealed as May 27, 2014.
Due to the success of The Sly Collection, Sanzaru was given the greenlight to develop the next game in the series, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.
Reception
The Sly Collection fared well, receiving a Metacritic score of 85/100.[3]
- IGN: 8.5/10 (received "Editor's Choice")
- GameZone: 8.5/10
- DragonAx: 9.2/10
