Hands On: Sly Trilogy

HD remakes are very much in fashion just now, and anyone not fully au courant with the concept should take a look at the God of War Collection for a perfect example of how to do such an refurbishment: solid frame rate, tweaked graphics, disposable price tag and enough little augmentations to make a purchase an easy decision even when the games included have been done and dusted a long time ago.

There’s next year’s Team Ico Collection too, a standard-bearer sure to find fortune with any PlayStation fan worth their merit, and Ubisoft have jumped in on the action with a re-imagining of the last-gen Prince of Persia games too (and rumours still bubble of the Splinter Cell series getting a similar treatment).  However, it’s fallen to Sony to pick up on the next pack of high definition renovations with the Sly Trilogy.

Sly Cooper wouldn’t have been my first choice for a current-gen showcase of PlayStation 2 talent, but it only took a couple of minutes with the final code to convince me otherwise: this is brilliant stuff.  It’s true that I was never a massive fan of Sucker Punch’s sneaky platformers (I much preferred the Jak and Daxter games) but looking back it feels like I probably should have paid them more attention.

The Sly Cooper games feature a racoon who happens to be a master theif, placed in a world much like our own except populated entirely by animals.  It’s a blend of slapstick cartoon and brooding film noir, with characters playing off each other like a black and white movie but with a splashing of comic book scripting.  They’re lovable, immersive adventure games originally appearing in 2002, 2004 and 2005, and are all eminently replayable today.

Let’s give credit where credit is due, though, Californian studio Sanzaru have worked wonders with Sucker Punch’s code.  The visuals are pin sharp, the frame rate super slick and – save for a few low resolution textures made evident by the much improved resolution – the graphics look much better than I’d imagined they would.  Even the (oddly non-skippable) cut-scenes look like they’ve been nicely upscaled.

The triple pack, which we’ll review fully in due course, contains (as you’d expect) all three PlayStation 2 adventures, plus a bundle of Move-based minigames.  There’s also full 3D support.

Sly Trilogy is out early December in Europe (it’s already out in the States) priced around £25.