To this day I wish that Sly 4 would have just been a one-off story with no cliffhanger. Had Sly not gotten stranded in Egypt it would have been fine for it to be one last hurrah for the series.
I agree and I hope they don't reboot this franchise without resolving its cliffhanger and tying up all of the loose ends, first. This is why you shouldn't end something like this on a cliffhanger, you're begging it to get canceled.
if i recall, thieves in time was originally supposed to have egypt levels, then they got moved to dlc, and then the dlc got cut for reasons i dont entirely know or remember
I have another question. Why wasn't Sly's dad the last Cooper ancestor? I would have loved to see Sly and his dad teaming up. Especially since Le Paradox's beef was with Sly's dad.
@@Im_Not_Here57 Depends on how much they would wanna invest in 1 character. I doubt Sunzaru would be able to give one character enough of substance to justify keeping them for a whole game.
Pretty sure sanzaru said they had no intention of touching sly's backstory with his father bc they didn't want to mess up his Batman like origin story with a cheap arc of him meeting his dad
I think J is my favourite UA-camr of all time purely for the reason that he goes above and beyond in his videos as of late, that these are more than just entertainment but a real form of expression that can go a long way, for better or for worse. He feels like a real human being who just wants to make videos on things he likes, and never once have I seen someone take such a passionate 180 on a past bad habit and go to such great lengths to correct themselves as you did J, it's really inspiring.
This is one of if not my favorite videogame franchise of all time. And while I'll always have a ping of nostalgia for this game, I can't deny it's problems, and you did a great job addressing them. Thank you so much for an amazing journey through the _Sly Cooper_ series.
Not gonna lie man, J Reviews has probably had one of the biggest character arcs for a youtuber at this point. A perfect example of how one can change over time, and look back at past mistakes, in line with the main theme of Sly 3.
They didn’t even need to make Penelope a villain, just a better position on the team. She would have made an excellent pro driver, given her piloting skills and understanding of machines.
Yeah her villain shift felt like straight up character assasination. Then you have people trying to defend it saying "But she was the Baron in Sly 3 so you can't complain". First off she made it clear at the end she hadn't meant to be bad as the Baron but the role simply took on a life of it's own and she needed help putting it to rest. Secondly it's called character growth. Just because a cahracter did a thing once doesn't mean it's now okay for them to just do it ... whenever. Espeically if they were specifically written to have grown past doing that.
@@metazoxan2 Honestly, the character assassination was less in her being a villain and more in her motive. Penelope didn't care for power or money in Sly 3, so her coming up with a plan that required her to backstab the Cooper Gang and Le Paradox to obtain power and money doesn't make any sense. If her motive was something like learning about Le Paradox's plot and wanting to deal with it without worrying Bentley, but going about it in a way that greatly conflicted with the Cooper Gang's code of honor, she could have worked as a one-off minor secondary antagonist again. Still a huge contrivance, but it at least wouldn't completely contradict her character.
I still think they were planning on explaining her turn in the 5th game they clearly had planned. Noting the references to clockwerk everywhere, the bird apparently already being mechanical all the way back in the age of the very first cooper, him having some technology that borders on outright supernatural, time travel being a factor, and Penelope’s technical specialties of robotics and arial combat, and her betrayal stemming from a sudden dislike for cooper specifically. It all leads me to think perhaps that maybe clockwerk was actually from the future, and that Penelope’s sudden turn and Clockwerk are interconnected. Heck I saw one short little fan comic suggest the possibility that she found the shards of the broken hate chip (probably not knowing what it was) and was essentially infected by it.
@@theheroneededwillette6964 Unfortunately there is no connection between Penelope and Clockwerk, it was a head cannon fans fell in love with after analyzing only part of the game instead of the whole game or sanzarus style. Given how easy it was for lame criminals like Leparadox can successfully steal ancestors canes with time travel means that master villains like Clockwerk would have no reason to fail in assassinating them if he actually did came from the future. And sadly, if you examine other sanzaru games and the concept art for thieves in time, it’s strongly likely that Penelope’s turn was due to Miss decibel’s hypnotic influence. Decibel was altered into a hypnotist the same time they replaced the intended mole villain with Penelope and mind controlled allies were featured in two other sanzaru games.
I don't mind them going for a twist with Penelope being evil, I'm more annoyed at the reasoning for it within the story. They could have done a pretty crazy twist of her being a mole plant by Paradox before she even joined the team in sly 3 and that she's conflicted about it since she actually does fall in love with Bentley in Sly 3. It would have made her more compelling and complex than just wanting more money, especially when they had the cooper family fortune anyway. You don't need to team up with a time traveling psycho who wants to assassinate your boyfriend's best friend to make a side gig.
I'll say this; if you were ever a fictional character, you'd be one hell of a well written character at that and the last chapter of this review is why. It really is hard to look at this review and think back to your old ones, knowing full well they were made by the same person. Like you are a completely different dude from back in those days...and that's a good thing. Changing is never bad, it just means we grow, as people, something I've strived to do for the last two or so years and honestly, you're pretty much the biggest inspiration for me to do just that, you always have been since mid 2021 I'd say. I still screw up every once in awhile but I always want to know when or where I do and still continue to do so to this day. Makes me glad I came across your channel when I did all those years ago.
Love the end section of you acknowledging how you, whether intentionally or not, have fucked up over the course of your time on UA-cam and how it has had a genuine negative effect on fandom spaces and potentially developers. I've seen so many people IRL or online make an apology, but just straight up refuse to actually acknowledge how they exactly fucked up and then get offended when asked, so seeing you do so is a massive breath of fresh air. Especially seeing how you have actually shown growth which is even rarer. Commentary channels are especially terrible with this because they consistently screw up, offer up half baked apologies that then become, like, 1/4 baked when they do the exact thing they were just criticized for in the next video they make. Seeing anyone acknowledge their faults, apologize for them and actually grow from them is a rare sight and I am glad to have witnessed such a rare event.
I say something often, a truly good comedy knows when it has to be serious, if this game don’t balance out the comedy with the right amount of seriousness either from the crew or the villains, El Jefe might be the best villain in this game because unlike everyone else when he’s put under pressure he acts serious, but every other villain in this game is some kind of punchline joke. Penelope’s evil turn is the punchline joke in and off itself.
Yeah the villains felt goofy as hell. You couldn’t take them seriously AT ALL, they just seemed to be so stupid. In Sly 2 for example, the villains were so good. I FEARED them as a kid. The game had its fair share of humour but didn’t let the villains become goofballs. Villains are supposed to be evil and ACT evil. Not be complete doofuses.
Sly 4 isn’t that much of a dead-end, most people just don’t have the patience or creativity to follow up with the challenge of continuing someone else’s story. The story is mainly about a master thief that targets other criminals, either than that there’s not really any limit to the different types of adventures he could face.
@@pafoneto1275 understandable, but a story from a video game series we spend hours, days, and even years playing shouldn’t end with the main protagonist trapped in a different time period or with another protagonists love interest going all dark side with the question of whether or not they’ll get back together.
Here's what I would have done. Instead of a sequel with a contrived time travel plot, I would have made a prequel anthology series that chronicled the lives of Sly's ancestors. This series would consist of three games: The first two following 5 ancestors each (Each ancestor would get a different campaign dedicated to them and you could choose which one to play), and the third one following Sly's father's gang from when they first met, to their eventual falling out and disband, coming full circle into Sly 1. It would allow the ancestors to be included in the series without the time-travel angle, and allow for Sly's father and his gang to be explored more thoroughly. Not to mention it would've been a great way to wrap up the series. I would call it the "Sly: Chronicles" series.
Do you think that making "I hate X thing" a personality is just sort of a teenager thing? When I was a fifteen-year-old on Sonic forums, I wanted EVERYONE to know that I just HATED Sonic Heroes, and then when I grew up I quickly realized how silly and weird that was lol. I can't imagine the kinds of things that would haunt me if I'd had a UA-cam megaphone at the time. I really feel for you in that regard. I've always taken Thieves in Time as a "comedic reunion" of sorts, not that every joke lands, but there's such a sense of fun and energy to the characters and their performances that I can forgive the lack of maturity compared to the OG trilogy. "Reunion special" is a pretty accurate way to describe the game, I think, and it can be viewed as a positive as much as a negative. That Penelope shit was always bad, though. Hard agree there. Great video.
I think it’s definitely something that can be a teenage issue. When the thing you liked does something different or not to your tastes, hating it can be an easy substitute for a personality. And from what I understand (not a child psychology expert) teens generally are desperate for identity. So marrying the disappointment with the need for identity are a natural combo. But yeah, in many ways, starting this when I was 14 was a great thing because I got to be ahead of the game when becoming an adult, but there are repercussions for having said dumb things lmao
Honestly I think the “have something from that time period” could work. I think we should return to the present after every chapter and have a one off heist steal those items to travel back with but that would require Paris to be more than just the safe house the museum from the prologue.
Only problem I have with that is that Sly's ancestors kept artifacts from each time period when they were thieves along with maybe the Thievius Raccoonus possibly acting as the item to operate the time machine since each ancestor wrote in the book from that time period. Just flip to the page that about one of them and boom it will send you there. Except for the caveman one but I'm 100% sure that was only made because it's a time travel clique that you would travel through time to the dinosaur period at one point when owning a time machine.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was my first and (as of yet) only played Sly game. And I really enjoyed it and the story a lot! Multiple characters and costumes was enough to have my brain satisfied.
You don't have to feel responsible for how everyone views this game. Let a series/game rest long enough and people are bound to see the cracks in it. I was in the exact boat as you, I've actively hated this game for years but eventually you ask yourself, what's the point? Sanzaru made this game out of passion and did their best to bring something fun and new to the table. I can't ever bring myself to call Thieves in Time a "good Sly game", but I admire their effort for trying.
This was a great video, very neat to see your reflections on the game and yourself, watching your content and reasoning about videogames, content creation and the ways you (and people in general) enjoy and consume content evolve over time has been great
I actually got into the sly franchise because I played the thieves in time demo on my vita back in 2013. I loved it so much I went out and bought the bf collection for my PS3. I remember really loving the time I had playing those games and I attribute it to sanzaru being passionate to actually want to make sly 4. I get older sly fans have issues with these games but I think sanzaru did well on at least making some new sly fans from their effort. Now I’m a junior in college still waiting for any news on Sly 5. Might never come but happy I found what I consider my favorite game series from just a demo.
I agree with everything you said, except Penelope's betrayal being pointless and not making sense. I think the real reason Penelope betrayed Sly was for the same reason Dr. M betrayed Sly's Father, she felt Sly was stifling Bentley's potential. She says herself that her and Bentley's minds combined could change the world, but instead, she felt Sly was making Bentley waste his talents on thievery. And she saw selling the time machine to Le Paradox as "a means to an end" she'd get payed, sure, but more importantly, she'd be able to get rid of Sly once and for all. Yeah, she probably should've realized Bentley would never go along with it, but still, it wasn't just for the money.
Okay but we don't see *how* she came to this conclusion. For fucks sake the gang were already separated for who knows how long so that motivation already doesn't make any sense conceptually.
@@TerrorOfTalos Considering it’s implied that Bentley intended to bring the gang back together for the Time Machine to work (Sly says that Bentley needed the cooper van for it to work) I feel Bentley’s plan was to have him sly and Murray travel through time together, pretty much using this life changing technology just to hang out with his friends,
@@DanGamingFan2406 but it’s still only part of an incomplete story. Bentley’s obsession with thievery might have been the main reason but it doesn’t explain why she chose to betray the gang the same time LeParadox needed the time machine. We were never given how LeParadox was able to get Penelope on his side or what methods he used. LeParadox is a two bit schemer who will say anything to get what he wants and able to understand how people behave in order to manipulate them, it’s dangers to make assumptions with characters like him about. We also don’t know how much of LeParadox’s plan was Penelope aware of, like did she knew about the other members of LeParadox’s gang or did she thought she was the only one messing with the time line.
I think it does a deserve a remake of the tetralogy with drops of reboot, like the Dead Space & Resident Evil 4 remakes. There are technology, story, character-building, world-building gaps to remake rather than to fill. It needs the strengths of the 2, 3 & 4 and none of their weaknesses. Remade in a way that leaves us hardcore fans surprised and that leaves the multiple age perspectives very much included so adult players don't feel like fools playing some aspects and find as much enjoyment.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with fan service, but I can understand disliking a character being reduced to it. The sort of “growth” in the industry you’re describing isn’t really a simple positive however when it creates this homogenized culture that other cultures around the world feel compelled to adhere to for marketing reasons. Showing grounded characters from hyper realistic games like The Last of Us or the more conservative re-designs for Resident Evil characters in their remakes I don’t think are the best examples for your case. You can have well written characters while also allowing fun sex appeal. I see a few other comments echoing similar points but they’re coming at it from a very reactionary point of view. I’m firmly on the left, but I do think we’re living in an oddly puritanical point in modern history. Other than that minor hang up this is a solid video. Really nice to see you give a more nuanced take on this game.
I do believe the well written character whose also sexy can work out well, it’s all about execution. It’s up to the writers and designers to choose the way they want to present their characters, how they’ll be perceived afterwards that’s up to the audience. No matter how sexy a boring character won’t have as much lasting appeal as a interesting one.
Going through Thieves In Time was definitely an interesting experience when I played it last year, and I was happy to find quite a few things to like about it. At the same time, the story and characterisation was ultimately what killed a lot of the game's appeal, which only got worse as the game went on. On the plus side, it made for some nice conversations in the server, including when I came across a glitch no one else in the server who played TIT even knew of. Concerning the matter of your own treatment of TIT, it's nice to see that you've gotten over the phase of having a hate boner for its mere existence and just want to move on from that and continue to improve how you talk about games and other media. Still looking forward to whatever you've got planned for this year.
The way I see it, Sly 4 didn't need to exist, but I'm glad it does. It was never going to be as good as the original 3, but it was nice just to get one more game from this series on (at the time) a next gen console.
I'm really glad that you're willing to try again and evolve your opinions as you go on, and eventually make peace of sorts with your issues with them. It's damn inspiring, dawg. Mad respect.
replaying as an adult i was surprised hoe easy it was! it really did have my stumped as a kid, i remember playing for hours on sly2. I still had fun, but it really is an excellent children’s game
I look at Sly 4 & the original Sly Trilogy the way I look at Friday & Next Friday. Despite being part of the same franchise, it feels almost like an entirely new IP; which isn’t *necessarily* a bad thing, but it can be a bad thing to those who understand what the franchise originally was. Sly 1-3 felt like Sly Cooper games while Sly 4 feels like a different game with Sly Cooper characters in it; if that makes sense. It’s good in it’s own right, but if you compare it to the previous entries (which people naturally do when a new game comes out) it’s easy to see that it’s a step down.
"it can be a bad thing to those who understand what the franchise originally was" Exactly why I still despise Sonic Adventure 2. I guess it's easier to give up "hating" when the object of hate is a one-off that doesn't interrupt one legacy with another; that is, doesn't have actual ruinous consequences for the franchise's image. My way of sort of moving on from that hate is simply to get the truth about Sonic out there and let people take it as they will. And I'm not against everything the new millennium added to Sonic, but rather want new things to EXPAND the old way, not REPLACE it. I heard Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex is sort of a combination of what happened to Sonic and what happened to Sly: didn't COMPLETELY screw up things but still resulted in a less-than-ideal game and path for its series. That's why I think Crash 4 was the wrong move: WoC had the right idea that was just badly executed. Apparently Thieves in Time is the same, at least in the story department.
I don’t get that at all, I just played 1-4 and 4 feels just like the first 3 with better graphics/animation. Same play style, same voice actors, same style missions, hub world etc.
thank god you talked about how heavy and stiff the characters feel. That was one of my biggest gripes no one talked about comparing from the previous trilogy
Having Penelope as the main villain wouldn’t be so bad as long as it was the type of villain that joins the protagonist at the end. Such as Cynder, Riku, Shadow, Namor, the doom raiders, and Captain Qwark. Part of me wished that Penelope had that Black Knight mech back when she was playable in Sly 3.
Cool shirt, bro! I can't believe this game is ten year old. I remember senior year of high school, my friend Trevor was on the bus and was glued to his PS Vita. I asked him "What are you playing?" And when he mentioned "the new Sly Cooper," I was surprised that they brought back Sly Cooper, especially, after almost eight years with no Sly. I didn't have much internet access as a kid, so it slipped under my radar.
Hello J’s reviews hopefully this reaches and your well, pretty excited for the new video because you can see your love for sly copper throughout your videos
God the game can't be 10 years old already. It means I played this in second year of university. I don't think I have the same appreciation for the trilogy so I like it. I do think Penelope's heelturn is actually good and made sense with how I saw the character. It also was just cool to see a former protag go bad. I definitely do not remember the load times being that insufferable though.
Honestly thinking back, whilst I was like a big "HUH?" on the motivations of Penelope and thinking "WHY?" on the twist (which is still poorly executed), thinking back to the design of all of her Cyborg Flashlight guards and the appearances of a certain you-know-who combined with the cliffhanger... I was like "Oh no... you mean to say they're setting her up as the one that augmented Clockwerk?! That the source of nightmarish pain that stalked the Coopers since time began was potentially amongst them the WHOLE of the third game?!" and I'll have to admit... if that was Sanzaru's plan from the start if they were planning on making a fifth game, that'd be one way of leading us to theorizing that on our own.
If were ever get a 5th & final Sly Cooper game, this is what I'd like the plot to be: Bently, Murray, Carmelita & Dimitri get a scientist owl to help them rebuild a time machine to go back in time to rescue Sly by using his DNA to track him. But once they find Sly they can only come forward a little at a time, and every time they stop they encounter another Cooper member that they have to help. By the 5th or 6th level, we finally have Sly meet his father, but since Sly knows his father has to die, he's conflicted on whether to try to save him or let him die again. Meanwhile, the owl scientist who helps rescue Sly gets injured through these adventures with the Cooper Gang and he builds a robot body for himself, which we later find out is Clockwork. At the end of the game, Sly and the rest of the gang make it back to the future, but Clockwork steals the time machine, goes back in time, and he gets revenge on what happened to him by making it his life's work to go after the Cooper family. So, through this 5th and final game, the story comes full circle as Sly inadvertently created his family's mortal enemy in the form of a bootstrap paradox. And the game ends with Sly and Carmelita finally getting together as a couple with Sly ending his life as a thief so he can have a family with her.
Nah, that Clockwerck connection would be lame af. The game could show us what originally caused his hatred, but even then, no explanation would be satisfactory enough.
I played the trilogy followed by thieves in time for the first time a few years back. I always heard how hated the fourth game was, so I was interested to find out why. In short: I liked the game. I didn't love it, it still had a lot of flaws, but so did the trilogy, none of the games were close to perfect in any way. Sly 4 maybe felt less cohesive and the style didn't mesh as well, but the main problem for me was performance. If it ran well then it probably would have been tied at least with my favorite. Again, I get why people disliked it, and I agree with some of it, but as I said before I dont think any of the games were flawless. Many things that fell flat in 4, for me anyways, did so in the trilogy. Even then there are a few things that were improved in 4. If anything I'm disappointed that the ending never got followed up on. All in all, I didn't grow up with the sly series, but I enjoyed the 4 games pretty well. I dont love them, but they are still fun and I want another game with more of a focus on stealthy things.
I just finished playing this game a few days ago since I didn't have access to it as a child. i initially was not a fan of the art style/ game mechanics but after finishing it, I definitely take that back. I was very sad with the cliffhanger and hope someday Sly and the gang get their proper ending.
I really enjoy your videos that delve into your past opinions and actions and discuss how you've changed and grown from them, the introspection is something rarely seen in these kinds of videos, so props you to man. I think when it comes to fanbases, it's an easy thing to do. Jak TLF hate is super common in the Jak community, and there was a time (when I was a lot younger) where hating on TLF was kinda my whole personality as well. I'm just thankful I grew out of it fairly quickly, and any time it's brought up on a stream for example, my chat and I are able to have a nuanced discussion on the game instead of just "game bad lololololol". But like you with Sly 4, I don't like TLF, it's just the blind hate for the sake of it is lame and promotes lazy thinking. So Sly 4. I've only played the trilogy fully a handful of times (though I have countless replays of Sly 1 lol), yet I've still only played Sly 4 once. I've been meaning to revisit it, I just never have. I remember at the time thinking it was hands down the best in the series, because it was just so hecking fun! I was never in love with the gameplay formula of 2 and 3, but 4 took that and made it much more enjoyable. And you're totally right, they did variety correctly in this game, whereas variety in 2 and 3 was mostly annoying and frustrating. But when it comes to the story, I fully agree that it's abysmal, like, breathtakingly bad. But at the time, the Sly story wasn't something I was *super* invested in (playing the trilogy out of order certainly didn't help), but I even remember at the time thinking it was kinda crap, especially the Penelope stuff, yuck. But it didn't put a damper on my experience cuz I just enjoyed the gameplay so much. So at least it's got that going for it. I'm excited for your video on nostalgia, especially given our discussions on it. It's a topic I've thought a lot about, especially how the games industry weaponises it in such gross ways, but also on a personal level, especially with the Jak series, and how I feel glued to those games almost not by choice, and I get the feeling you feel similar with the Sly series. Anyway, great video as always mate :)
Same, I did this whole "My hate for this game is my entire personality" thing in 2020 with The Last Of Us 2, but my case was a *lot* worse because at least you and J got disappointed after playing it, and the hate comes from a place of love from the previous games I barely knew both Last Of Us games and never even played them (mostly because of money), but still joined the hate bandwagon anyway, it wasn't even to piss off some people for fun, I just wanted some drama and got it My realization of how stupid this thinking is hit like a truck, so I went out of my way to delete every comment I've made about Last Of Us 2, thank God I got out of this phase
37:26 I wholly agree with what you're saying here, barring the "sequel hook" thing cause SP did aim to make it an open-ended potentiality thing (though maybe that was just an exaggerated sentence). As a kid, I wanted more of the things I liked and have them keep going years on end. Now though, I'm perfectly fine if something just... stops. Not everything _needs_ a continuation, as I've learned throughout my 23 years of life, having a set goal and storyline can and do coexist with franchises like Final Fantasy, Mario, or Sonic where you can easily create new ideas and creations cause of how those three are designed. I'm not saying I'm completely opposed to a continuation of a Sly game, per se, but I definitely wouldn't want it to repeatedly revolve around *this* Cooper Gang and Inspector Fox, since their story is done. You can create a new story with a new set of casts that could potentially link to those quartet, if that makes sense. That said, I also think this goes double on the topic of gaming preservation. At the time of writing this, the only accessible way of playing these games is through the PS3, what with the -bungled- Trilogy HD collection and TIT being on there, or paying for a PS+ sub and going through those games via... streaming? I guess? Either that or you're emulating via PCSX2 and/or RPCS3, or buying up copies on eBay. This is another case on a long line of a serious topic about having modern access to play these old games, even on PC since Sony's now open to doing that lately. I'm not at all talking about remakes or remasters either, just some spruced up ports would do just fine. Anyway, after replaying TIT last year, I'm on the same boat you're on; I never really acted like it's one of the worst things ever, but I always made sure that my distaste of it was known even to casual fans of the game. Now though, it's fiiiine. I don't like the gameplay nearly as much as the trilogy, and I also find the story to drag the game down a lot and I unfortunately cannot divorce myself from this considering how connected I am with these fictional anthro people, but it's far, _far_ from being a bad game. There's some nuggets of enjoyments to find for sure, like in the Ice Age and England levels. It's not at all for me, but eh, I can't really express too much hate on it anymore since I've gone through far worse games.
sly 2 was the first ps2 game i ever played. i remember the excitement of discovering the world and characters of every chapter. I would plan my own sly 3, wolds and villians. I loved the 3rd but barley remember the 4th. I’ve found myself replaying the 2nd game
I'm replaying Crack in Time right now, there are frame drops, but it doesn't feel much worse than Tools of Destruction and looks far better. At its worst it's dropping to 45ish and hovering around 55. Overall I find the performance very impressive for a PS3 game with that level of visuals.
It's good to finally have a review back of a game you said you despised for so long since I began to watch you 3 years ago. So far so good your explanation and superposing of what the game represents for you is very good. I comment while I'm watching but since I feel I'd forget to tell what I think I felt I had to prematurely say it. Either way, great video, it's a mature step to you to grow up even more and a reason I love your "learning to love" videos. Cheers.
Another great video J. Very nice of you to put aside your hate and resentment of Sly 4 to review it in a calm and understandable manner. You played this review completely straight giving the game the credit where it's do and lambasting it for the criticism it's earned. I never knew much about Sly 4 before this video, all I had to go buy was video reviews and online scores. I was moved by your apology to Sanzaru. You understand as well making video games is not an easy process (and won't get any easier). I know you don't try to make these videos personal. Sly 4 is an overall well-made and polished game, it just suffers from being narratively and thematically misguided. Once again J, you are not in the wrong in disliking this game, it's great that you acknowledged its strengths, but you also have to recognize flaws. At the end of the day, Sly 4 is just another game that will unfortunately languish in obscurity.
You know, i respect the way how you handled this video and also how you looked back and decided to adress things and move on. Not a lot of video game reviewers do that and honestly it makes you the most mature UA-camr we have these days. Great job on this review.
On the topic of Sly5, not a remake but a follow-up - we can all be sure that if it happened NOW it would be a multiversum game (maybe creating some kind of rift in the fabric of the universe because of playing with time and all the paradoxes) with OG Sly as one character and TiT Sly as the other. Or just hints that those are different timelines. And there would be alternative versions of our known characters (most likely hyper-intelectual Murray, martial arts master Bentley, Le Paradox as a police chief or something), and a female version of Sly (not Carmelita, she would defenitely be turned from a cop into a private investigator or something like that tho) as some kind of his relative or just a variant. OR Carmelita from an alternative universe who's actually a master thief (you know to "subvert our expectations" with the first thing that came to creators mind, and everyone already wrote a fanfiction about.) If it was suppose to happen in future, then I don't know, but I guess we are stuck with this trend for a while, but no racoon. Don't know which is worse.
Fun fact: I played the Vita version of this game on PSTV, and that's easily the best way to play. The six axis controls are entirely removed and put on the left stick, and I think the loading screens are faster, too. It's pretty great. (I'm halfway through the review, so if you mention this later that's my bad.)
Gotta say very glad you revisited this when I picked up the HD trilogy I also grabbed the Vita version of this to check out. Still have yet to play any of them but these videos got me one step closer to hooking up the PS3 (it's mostly already set up) or firing up the Vita and giving them a proper play through. This channel has definitely expanded my interests in series like this that kind of passed me.
Time travel in endgame: Did ya know if you shrink yourself down SUUUPER small, you'll experience time much slower? Well apparently at a rate that being sub atomic it would take five years real time for five minutes to pass for you... So of course that means If we tinker with shrinking ourselves down enough we can go backwards(?) And undo the last five years. Ta-da! Genius writing.🙃
Honestly, I think they should just release the lost dlc in the form of a collection for ps5 just to wrap things up and then start over, but that’s wishful thinking on my part. They have been teasing Sly making a return due to Sony’s references and the newly released anniversary merch and the Sly funko pop. Maybe he’ll soon make a comeback
I love all the sly games. Story, characters and gameplay all seemed pretty unique, cant really compair it to anything else but itself. So i think the series should be looked at as it own thing, with its own highs and lows as a complete packedge was pretty fun for a broad range of ages. I wish there were even more of these games.
I really didn't think Thieves in time was a terrible game, actually enjoyed the game a lot, and even play through it every once and awhile still. Sly cooper definitely deserves a reboot. Every couple years they tease something, and than it ends up getting cancelled sadly.
love your content its calming to just hear you ramble and babble about games their history, how to work and many other things about them, keep up the great work
Was just watching your last Sly 4 review last night while doing the dishes. And now, after going on UA-cam to find a video to watch while doing the dishes, I find this😂 Was wanting a new one from you too😂
HOnestly, I think no one would have a problem if they made a NEW Sly 4, like new story and such (maybe the matter of the Time Machine is becuase Bentley's lab was attacked and they stole his TIme Machine, then he learns that other member of the crew was attacked, SLy included, so he decides to contact them. SLy then decides it is time to reunite the gang and figure it out what was happening and if they were still in danger. Carmelita included, who he tries to keep in the dark while he travels with the gang, also because he is afraid to reveal to her his amnesia was fake, afraid to lose her because of it. At some point the Time Machine becoming a major plot piece, with the antagonist wanting to use it), or a complete remake Thieves in Time to correct some narrative and story issues, as well as gameplay and world improvements. I like Sly 4, but they could have done SO much better in the matter of the story and characters. Sanzaru has potential. Hell, if they wish to work on a Sly 5 to perhaps correct this narrative and other issues 4 had, more power to them. If they want to complete reboot it, then I wish them all the best, as well. At the end of the day we still have the OG trilogy to remember as the best point of the franchise.
my biggest issue with the story is that they had SUCH a missed opportunity by not seriously including Clockwerk in the story considering he terrorized the Coopers for centuries it would’ve made sense.
I'm curious what J's reviews will be like 10 years from now, because I see him talking about how he watches the high dramas of HBO and such and that has allowed him to see how kiddish the Sly games are. But I've found as I've gotten older that a LOT of people come full circle on that where the high drama shows start feeling tedious and there is a renewed appreciation for kids media which, while more simplistic, are often infinitely more inventive and interesting than crime drama #865, historical drama #1738 or post apocalypse #100,000,000.
The stiffness and weight of Sly in this game really bugged me since day one and still does to this day. The weightlessness in the originals defined the gameplay for those games, I really think it was a terrible misstep to do away with that.
I've always felt that the Penelope reveal in Sly 4 makes more sense than people give it credit for. The signs of Penelope's ego and her growing bored were also there right from the beginning. Her entire backstory is her joining a competition that she was too young for, in disguise, because she just really wanted to at the and then getting to the point where she was tired of it. Bentley and the others recruiting her just gave her an easy out, though it's never explained why she didn't just retire, instead of being complicit in and helping with the murder of la rge number of her own employees. And while she is smitten with Sly at first, she moves onto Bentley pretty quickly after a heartfelt conversation about Bentley feeling overshadowed by Sly. Remembering that plot point did help with the transition to her betrayal. She signed on for the biggest heist in history, and that cumulates in her and her boyfriend guarding the legacy of someone not on their level of potential in her opinion. She and Bentley are making amazing things that she clearly feels aren't really benefitting them, but Bentley loyalty and moral compass make him content to just stay where's he's at. So it makes some sense that her rash conclusion is that she needs Sly to have never been in the picture, despite all of the holes in her logic...like Bentley likely not developing into the guy she fell for without Sly. Not saying it's a masterpiece in writing, but I was able to see the through-line for that at least. Tenn was hands-down the most enjoyable part of the game for me. That and Bentley continuing to be a jack of all trades, since he'll always be my favorite character.
At this point my main issue with The Twist is that there's no buildup or reasonable explanation for the sudden change of heart. It's not like Penelope _couldn't_ have been used - outside of your well put reasoning, let's take a look at the other candidates: Guru's whole thing is meditation and inner peace so he's immediately out, Dimitri is helping the gang out in the present so him doing a double cross is next-to-impossible, and Panda King's turned over a new leaf and is chilling in China so him just going back to evil is destroying his whole character arc. Now you look at Penelope, a new character that has just enough wiggle room to explore and expand her character for this game, and suddenly the twist is fitting into place. I also agree that people tend to look too deeply into the "but she already liked Sly first!" angle, considering it's not uncommon for one to fall in love, find someone else, and then notice the flaws of the other. The problem, though, comes with communicating this sequence. If you try to disregard the scenes themselves, there's still the problem of the chapter being so, *so* blatant about it. It's the first time she's ever mentioned outside the opening, it's the most tech-aligned villain of the squad, which leads us to believe they could be the reason Le Paradox has a time machine to begin with something that Bentley and Penelope were working on, the insignias are riddled with the face of a rodent, Bentley's whole moping thing is suddenly brought back even though again it was dropped at the beginning, at this point the only thing missing are medieval flags just screaming who it is. I get that this is a family-oriented game and all, but I am highly curious as to how many younguns didn't immediately clue in Penelope = Black Knight. Her reasoning that Bentley was being held back and that he could've been using the skills to focus on weapons is just strange, cause that's never something he was that into, he was the gadgeteer while she was the RC and vehicle expert, and I feel like the mere creation of a *time machine* is a pretty fruitful use of a skillset after retiring from thievery. Her having a beef with Sly can make sense, but again it's sort of thrusted upon us with no real sense or reason, especially since he was the one that let everyone do what they wanted in life, selflessly giving up the Cooper Vault. What I'm getting at is, aside from overhauling it to the point of using a different villain, either a new one altogether or doing what S3 did and reuse an old one - I've seen few bring up Raleigh which could probably work - Penelope's debacle could work by one of two ways: Firstly, Sanzaru could've placed more emphasis on Paradox's control of her. Either by a cop-out via Decibel's Hypnotism or more elaborate such as him finding out a dirty secret from her time as Black Baron that she feels just enough shame for to consciously deciding to work with him. Or, if we want to lean harder into how mysterious of a past Penelope had, take that last point, but center it so that _she_ was the one that came to Paradox about time travel, either because she fell into the trappings of egoism and wanted to do Bigger and Badder, or cause something happened and she lapsed into that BB persona again. Then, instead of having her exposed about 3/4 into the chapter giving Bentley a less-then-stellar turnaround (he gets benched for like, two and a half missions, which severely undercuts the emotional trauma), have the reveal be either immediate at the start, or two missions in, establishing enough time between decommissioned rut to the reinvigorated comeback at the heist job. All that's left is refactoring the conversation between him and her so that her final tone is either bittersweet, remorseful, hardened anger, or compromised jealousy. I understand my idea of a rewrite isn't perfect, especially considering you'd basically have to rewrite and reorient all the missions within this chapter, and perhaps the one before even, so that it makes the most sense, but it's an idea. All that said, I'm at least glad I got over my cringeworthy grudge against Sanzaru about this, cause now I look at this as an interesting point to ponder over, even if I still think the execution they had was rather trite.
@@blazingwaters7469 That was very nicely thought out. I definitely would have liked the idea of fleshing out her backstory and possibly her ego. She was my favorite of the new gang and I did feel like Sly did her a disservice in execution. So many people have been on the bandwagon of the signs having never been there that I just wanted to point out that the issue with her writing isn't the betrayal, it's the lack of in-game lead-up. In short though, I really enjoyed your comment.
@@FullMoonDeria It's probably from the shock of using one of the most well-liked additions combined with the overly analyzed failing of trying to use this twist in the first place that's gotten a lot of people, me and J included, to get really angry about it. I mean, it's already a tough pitch that a character you like could possibly be brought over to the villain's side, how'd it fair if the execution of it is botched? Still I'm 23 years old now, I've learned a lot about writing between then, I've looked carefully into these sorts of things and try to rationalize how they're done, and like many things in this game I can feel Sanzaru has their heart in the right place, it just needed some fine-tuning. Although, now I just feel bad they're in the Facebook (I'm not calling them Meta) Mines, but at least they were able to help out with Spyro 3's Reignited remake.
@@blazingwaters7469 That's fair on all counts. Mostly just my mindset on twists like that come down to if I can look back at the franchise and see it coming. The rest of my opinion goes to execution after the fact. I have a pretty mild to middling opinion on a lot of media, but I can understand the reasons behind how others react when I know them.
@@blazingwaters7469 Or better yet, why not add Clockwerk's Eye in the brainwashing bit? Clockwerk's fuel by hate and his eyes can hypnotize people and can hate-inducing effects. Her hatred for Sly could've been something she secretly harbored, let's say, after the Cooper Vault job was over. She's mad because she thought that after the job they all would go on a ton of adventures and pull off more heists with her new friends. But because of Sly's retirement, the gang disbanded and she & Bentley were left to tinker away. To her she thought that she was just recruited under false pretenses and after it they all go home. Like, "You've helped me get my family's legacy back, thanks. Now go home". She only kept it secret for Bentley's sake. She probably did feel like she and Bentley were wasting their talents trying to preserve the legacy and treasure of a retired thief when they could be out there pulling off more heists and gaining all of the world's treasures with their genius and engineering. But she didn't want to because Bentley wouldn't want that. She understood how much he loved Sly like a brother and how much preserving his legacy means to him. So, She wanted to support her the turtle she loves all the way. And that's where the Eye comes in.
I gotta say seeing this played on a handheld in the tech demos felt like a dream. Though the game itself drops harder than it's predecessors, I dont inherently hate it. Though I'm more inclined in playing the collection on the VITA, than play thieves in time.
The bad loading screens made the platinum trophy awful. ESPECIALLY the Navigate Like Drake trophy where you have to open your map in every single area.
In hindsight, I also didn't hate Sly 4, but i did when I played it. Yeah it wasn't as good as the others (This still stands). But that doesn't mean it wasn't a good game. The game was fine, the characters very expressive, with many different and varied set pieces. The levels were a bit too streamlined and simple, I thought they could've done much more with this idea, but after looking back to it, it was fine.
This is the last time I'm ever going to play Sly 4: Thieves of Time- J (2016) And look where we are, now the game is a decade old and you are two plus and counting and actually pretty competent so yeah this is NEAT
I think the biggest flaw in this game is the dialogue. Sly 2 and 3 had a great mixture of childish/witty comedy, while Sly 4 dialogue felt like childish comedy trying to be witty. But you do make some excellent points about the visuals and production value.
The overall story and Le Paradox's "Brilliant plan" was BEYOND stupid! I can name NUMEROUS media franchises that uses time travelling as a theme in their stories and it'd STILL make more sense than this hot mess Sanzaru wrote! At least the whole idea of "Time travelling" and how it works was better than what Thieves in Time came up with! Heck, using the idea of time travelling based on the ones from Harry Potter, DragonBall and Sailor Moon sounded way better. Even the time travel gimmick from Crash 4 sounded more plausible than THIS! And as for Le Paradox's plan? He wants to be the "Master Thief" with a family legacy like Sly's and became jealous of that, so he tried to have the Cooper line erased....BUT he suddenly decides that he ALSO wants to "Take over the world" by making forged documents in the past. Ok, so here's MY question to the writers... WHICH PLAN DO YOU WRITERS WANT LE PARADOX TO HAVE IN THIEVES IN TIME!? Erasing the Cooper Family or to rule the world!? This just went from a hot mess to a landfilled garbage dump with burning tires strewn on it! Clockwerk's plan to take down the Cooper Family was WAY better than the skunk's plan, and he's a HUGE ROBOTIC OWL that looks like he couldn't fit into a house! I mean, HELL I'd even accept Neyla's last minute plan of being Clock-La for whatever reason over THIS "Idea"! It made Le Paradox sound like Yzma from the Emperor's New Groove for when she explained her plan to try and kill Kuzco off, but accidentally turned him into a llama! On top of ALL of that, the writers at Sanzaru, for WHATEVER reason, decided to make Penelope as a "Plot Twist Villain", aside from Carmelita acting like the petty, pissed off angry ex-girlfriend who won't accept Sly's explanation or whatever. (She knew he lied, but lied to herself that he changed WITHOUT getting the reason WHY he did that...Pathetic...) Penelope was one of the best female characters to be written in the Sly series, and is a perfect match for Bentley, but the writers just ignored the story in Sly 3 and decided to make her a vindictive villain with a "Sly's stolen Bentley's potential! We've could've been BILLIONAIRES with our inventions!" BS, when there's been NUMEROUS POINTS on WHY Penelope being changed to a villain is a BAD idea! Sly's given his gang the Cooper inheritance after the events of Sly 3, Bentley and Penelope are the guardians of the Cooper Vault, Sly and his gang basically helped her escape the endless Black Baron shtick cycle, she's got Bentley as a BF and friends, she's free to do whatever she wanted and even spend time with her BF. HOW and WHY would Penny ever decide to be a bad guy and toss EVERYTHING I've just pointed out away like yesterday's garbage!? For fan service? Because that's about right to some of us! I also wanted to point out that she was planned to be a playable character, until the writers changed their minds at the last minute for whoknowswhatever excuse. The fans had better explanations on WHY Penelope would become evil: Kidnapped and brainwashed, influenced, threatened to work for the villains.... My theory is that Penelope has a twin sister who's the complete opposite of her and tried to use Penny's identity to frame her and cause a shift of mistrust with the Cooper Gang. If Sucker Punch ever decides to rewrite Thieves in Time, which I HOPE actually happens (But not holding my breath), I hope Penelope and Carmelita's character/story writing is completely fixed. We seriously need our favorite inspector to form some kind of bonds with the rest of the Cooper Gang, mostly with Penelope. I can actually imagine them having a special Girl Bond and talk things out between each other, especially having Penny help Carmelita sort out her feelings for Sly. There ya go, I JUST came up with a plot idea for Penelope and Carmelita, your welcome! But seriously, out of everything that needs to be fixed in Thieves in Time, story, plot and character writings should be one of the top priorities here.
To this day I wish that Sly 4 would have just been a one-off story with no cliffhanger. Had Sly not gotten stranded in Egypt it would have been fine for it to be one last hurrah for the series.
I agree and I hope they don't reboot this franchise without resolving its cliffhanger and tying up all of the loose ends, first. This is why you shouldn't end something like this on a cliffhanger, you're begging it to get canceled.
@@kidprime6863 not to mention making Bentley’s girlfriend Penelope an antagonist.
This game wasn't technically sly 4. Hopefully sucker punch will come back and make another trilogy
if i recall, thieves in time was originally supposed to have egypt levels, then they got moved to dlc, and then the dlc got cut for reasons i dont entirely know or remember
bro you just spoiled me
I have another question. Why wasn't Sly's dad the last Cooper ancestor? I would have loved to see Sly and his dad teaming up. Especially since Le Paradox's beef was with Sly's dad.
Maybe that was being saved for the fifth game. Except for the Le Paradox part.
@@mrflyingace It would be cooler if he got a whole game to explore his character rather than a single segment of a game I suppose.
@@Im_Not_Here57 Depends on how much they would wanna invest in 1 character. I doubt Sunzaru would be able to give one character enough of substance to justify keeping them for a whole game.
Pretty sure sanzaru said they had no intention of touching sly's backstory with his father bc they didn't want to mess up his Batman like origin story with a cheap arc of him meeting his dad
llmm.kl@@mrflyingace
And yes, for those of you who missed the text blurb on screen, I would also like to apologize for my past antics in regards to this game.
All is forgiven, besides we can feel the same in the past. Still good luck with your TBP videos and do like your Rift Apart video.
Hmm, cool to see you back. 😎👍
@@doomarang3208 they aren't using TGX anymore. They now go by Tactical Bacon Productions, or TBP.
@@anothergamer112 Yeah, I just read his community tab yesterday and subscribed to his other channel.
Dang look at you being TGX again.
I think J is my favourite UA-camr of all time purely for the reason that he goes above and beyond in his videos as of late, that these are more than just entertainment but a real form of expression that can go a long way, for better or for worse. He feels like a real human being who just wants to make videos on things he likes, and never once have I seen someone take such a passionate 180 on a past bad habit and go to such great lengths to correct themselves as you did J, it's really inspiring.
This is one of if not my favorite videogame franchise of all time. And while I'll always have a ping of nostalgia for this game, I can't deny it's problems, and you did a great job addressing them. Thank you so much for an amazing journey through the _Sly Cooper_ series.
Hey, buddy fancy meeting you here lol. I also love watching his review even for games that I never got the chance to play like this one.
@@johnark Hello. Yes, this channel's pretty great. And so is yours.
P
Man went through a better character arc than anyone in sly 4
Not gonna lie man, J Reviews has probably had one of the biggest character arcs for a youtuber at this point. A perfect example of how one can change over time, and look back at past mistakes, in line with the main theme of Sly 3.
They didn’t even need to make Penelope a villain, just a better position on the team. She would have made an excellent pro driver, given her piloting skills and understanding of machines.
Yeah her villain shift felt like straight up character assasination.
Then you have people trying to defend it saying "But she was the Baron in Sly 3 so you can't complain".
First off she made it clear at the end she hadn't meant to be bad as the Baron but the role simply took on a life of it's own and she needed help putting it to rest.
Secondly it's called character growth. Just because a cahracter did a thing once doesn't mean it's now okay for them to just do it ... whenever. Espeically if they were specifically written to have grown past doing that.
@@metazoxan2 Honestly, the character assassination was less in her being a villain and more in her motive. Penelope didn't care for power or money in Sly 3, so her coming up with a plan that required her to backstab the Cooper Gang and Le Paradox to obtain power and money doesn't make any sense.
If her motive was something like learning about Le Paradox's plot and wanting to deal with it without worrying Bentley, but going about it in a way that greatly conflicted with the Cooper Gang's code of honor, she could have worked as a one-off minor secondary antagonist again. Still a huge contrivance, but it at least wouldn't completely contradict her character.
I still think they were planning on explaining her turn in the 5th game they clearly had planned.
Noting the references to clockwerk everywhere, the bird apparently already being mechanical all the way back in the age of the very first cooper, him having some technology that borders on outright supernatural, time travel being a factor, and Penelope’s technical specialties of robotics and arial combat, and her betrayal stemming from a sudden dislike for cooper specifically. It all leads me to think perhaps that maybe clockwerk was actually from the future, and that Penelope’s sudden turn and Clockwerk are interconnected.
Heck I saw one short little fan comic suggest the possibility that she found the shards of the broken hate chip (probably not knowing what it was) and was essentially infected by it.
@@theheroneededwillette6964 Unfortunately there is no connection between Penelope and Clockwerk, it was a head cannon fans fell in love with after analyzing only part of the game instead of the whole game or sanzarus style. Given how easy it was for lame criminals like Leparadox can successfully steal ancestors canes with time travel means that master villains like Clockwerk would have no reason to fail in assassinating them if he actually did came from the future.
And sadly, if you examine other sanzaru games and the concept art for thieves in time, it’s strongly likely that Penelope’s turn was due to Miss decibel’s hypnotic influence. Decibel was altered into a hypnotist the same time they replaced the intended mole villain with Penelope and mind controlled allies were featured in two other sanzaru games.
I don't mind them going for a twist with Penelope being evil, I'm more annoyed at the reasoning for it within the story.
They could have done a pretty crazy twist of her being a mole plant by Paradox before she even joined the team in sly 3 and that she's conflicted about it since she actually does fall in love with Bentley in Sly 3. It would have made her more compelling and complex than just wanting more money, especially when they had the cooper family fortune anyway.
You don't need to team up with a time traveling psycho who wants to assassinate your boyfriend's best friend to make a side gig.
I swear you just have a common trope with loving games that you first hated don't you.
And exhausting level of detail. But sometimes if it's not broke, don't fix!
Well as you get older you tend to change opinions about things.
@@skibot9974 sonic 06?
that is what happens when you grow up and eventually realize that you were judging something for what it wasn't instead of what it was
mmx7, racsm, sac positive rereviews when?
I'll say this; if you were ever a fictional character, you'd be one hell of a well written character at that and the last chapter of this review is why. It really is hard to look at this review and think back to your old ones, knowing full well they were made by the same person. Like you are a completely different dude from back in those days...and that's a good thing. Changing is never bad, it just means we grow, as people, something I've strived to do for the last two or so years and honestly, you're pretty much the biggest inspiration for me to do just that, you always have been since mid 2021 I'd say. I still screw up every once in awhile but I always want to know when or where I do and still continue to do so to this day. Makes me glad I came across your channel when I did all those years ago.
Love the end section of you acknowledging how you, whether intentionally or not, have fucked up over the course of your time on UA-cam and how it has had a genuine negative effect on fandom spaces and potentially developers. I've seen so many people IRL or online make an apology, but just straight up refuse to actually acknowledge how they exactly fucked up and then get offended when asked, so seeing you do so is a massive breath of fresh air. Especially seeing how you have actually shown growth which is even rarer. Commentary channels are especially terrible with this because they consistently screw up, offer up half baked apologies that then become, like, 1/4 baked when they do the exact thing they were just criticized for in the next video they make. Seeing anyone acknowledge their faults, apologize for them and actually grow from them is a rare sight and I am glad to have witnessed such a rare event.
I say something often, a truly good comedy knows when it has to be serious, if this game don’t balance out the comedy with the right amount of seriousness either from the crew or the villains, El Jefe might be the best villain in this game because unlike everyone else when he’s put under pressure he acts serious, but every other villain in this game is some kind of punchline joke. Penelope’s evil turn is the punchline joke in and off itself.
Yeah the villains felt goofy as hell. You couldn’t take them seriously AT ALL, they just seemed to be so stupid. In Sly 2 for example, the villains were so good. I FEARED them as a kid. The game had its fair share of humour but didn’t let the villains become goofballs. Villains are supposed to be evil and ACT evil. Not be complete doofuses.
Sly 4 isn’t that much of a dead-end, most people just don’t have the patience or creativity to follow up with the challenge of continuing someone else’s story. The story is mainly about a master thief that targets other criminals, either than that there’s not really any limit to the different types of adventures he could face.
And some stories don't have to be endless multiverse marvel thingy... Some stories just end.
@@pafoneto1275 understandable, but a story from a video game series we spend hours, days, and even years playing shouldn’t end with the main protagonist trapped in a different time period or with another protagonists love interest going all dark side with the question of whether or not they’ll get back together.
Here's what I would have done. Instead of a sequel with a contrived time travel plot, I would have made a prequel anthology series that chronicled the lives of Sly's ancestors. This series would consist of three games: The first two following 5 ancestors each (Each ancestor would get a different campaign dedicated to them and you could choose which one to play), and the third one following Sly's father's gang from when they first met, to their eventual falling out and disband, coming full circle into Sly 1. It would allow the ancestors to be included in the series without the time-travel angle, and allow for Sly's father and his gang to be explored more thoroughly. Not to mention it would've been a great way to wrap up the series.
I would call it the "Sly: Chronicles" series.
Do you think that making "I hate X thing" a personality is just sort of a teenager thing? When I was a fifteen-year-old on Sonic forums, I wanted EVERYONE to know that I just HATED Sonic Heroes, and then when I grew up I quickly realized how silly and weird that was lol. I can't imagine the kinds of things that would haunt me if I'd had a UA-cam megaphone at the time. I really feel for you in that regard.
I've always taken Thieves in Time as a "comedic reunion" of sorts, not that every joke lands, but there's such a sense of fun and energy to the characters and their performances that I can forgive the lack of maturity compared to the OG trilogy. "Reunion special" is a pretty accurate way to describe the game, I think, and it can be viewed as a positive as much as a negative.
That Penelope shit was always bad, though. Hard agree there.
Great video.
I think it’s definitely something that can be a teenage issue. When the thing you liked does something different or not to your tastes, hating it can be an easy substitute for a personality. And from what I understand (not a child psychology expert) teens generally are desperate for identity. So marrying the disappointment with the need for identity are a natural combo. But yeah, in many ways, starting this when I was 14 was a great thing because I got to be ahead of the game when becoming an adult, but there are repercussions for having said dumb things lmao
Man I love this franchise so much. I literally just a got a big Sly tattoo like 4 days ago too. I miss it
Honestly I think the “have something from that time period” could work. I think we should return to the present after every chapter and have a one off heist steal those items to travel back with but that would require Paris to be more than just the safe house the museum from the prologue.
Only problem I have with that is that Sly's ancestors kept artifacts from each time period when they were thieves along with maybe the Thievius Raccoonus possibly acting as the item to operate the time machine since each ancestor wrote in the book from that time period. Just flip to the page that about one of them and boom it will send you there. Except for the caveman one but I'm 100% sure that was only made because it's a time travel clique that you would travel through time to the dinosaur period at one point when owning a time machine.
Sometimes I think Paris was meant to be bigger, but was cut off from the main game.
Now all we need from you J is a retrospective of Twisted Metal
i used to get in trouble for doodling little sly sketches in my note books.
I did the same thing, except I was more making villains for him to fight.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was my first and (as of yet) only played Sly game. And I really enjoyed it and the story a lot! Multiple characters and costumes was enough to have my brain satisfied.
You don't have to feel responsible for how everyone views this game. Let a series/game rest long enough and people are bound to see the cracks in it. I was in the exact boat as you, I've actively hated this game for years but eventually you ask yourself, what's the point? Sanzaru made this game out of passion and did their best to bring something fun and new to the table. I can't ever bring myself to call Thieves in Time a "good Sly game", but I admire their effort for trying.
This was a great video, very neat to see your reflections on the game and yourself, watching your content and reasoning about videogames, content creation and the ways you (and people in general) enjoy and consume content evolve over time has been great
i’ve always enjoyed thieves in time, as a kid and again as an adult a couple years back
I actually got into the sly franchise because I played the thieves in time demo on my vita back in 2013. I loved it so much I went out and bought the bf collection for my PS3. I remember really loving the time I had playing those games and I attribute it to sanzaru being passionate to actually want to make sly 4. I get older sly fans have issues with these games but I think sanzaru did well on at least making some new sly fans from their effort. Now I’m a junior in college still waiting for any news on Sly 5. Might never come but happy I found what I consider my favorite game series from just a demo.
I agree with everything you said, except Penelope's betrayal being pointless and not making sense. I think the real reason Penelope betrayed Sly was for the same reason Dr. M betrayed Sly's Father, she felt Sly was stifling Bentley's potential. She says herself that her and Bentley's minds combined could change the world, but instead, she felt Sly was making Bentley waste his talents on thievery. And she saw selling the time machine to Le Paradox as "a means to an end" she'd get payed, sure, but more importantly, she'd be able to get rid of Sly once and for all. Yeah, she probably should've realized Bentley would never go along with it, but still, it wasn't just for the money.
Okay but we don't see *how* she came to this conclusion. For fucks sake the gang were already separated for who knows how long so that motivation already doesn't make any sense conceptually.
@@TerrorOfTalos Considering it’s implied that Bentley intended to bring the gang back together for the Time Machine to work (Sly says that Bentley needed the cooper van for it to work) I feel Bentley’s plan was to have him sly and Murray travel through time together, pretty much using this life changing technology just to hang out with his friends,
I can see this, though I wish this was foreshadowed.
@@smashers6971 Thank you. This person gets it.
@@DanGamingFan2406 but it’s still only part of an incomplete story. Bentley’s obsession with thievery might have been the main reason but it doesn’t explain why she chose to betray the gang the same time LeParadox needed the time machine. We were never given how LeParadox was able to get Penelope on his side or what methods he used. LeParadox is a two bit schemer who will say anything to get what he wants and able to understand how people behave in order to manipulate them, it’s dangers to make assumptions with characters like him about.
We also don’t know how much of LeParadox’s plan was Penelope aware of, like did she knew about the other members of LeParadox’s gang or did she thought she was the only one messing with the time line.
I think it does a deserve a remake of the tetralogy with drops of reboot, like the Dead Space & Resident Evil 4 remakes.
There are technology, story, character-building, world-building gaps to remake rather than to fill.
It needs the strengths of the 2, 3 & 4 and none of their weaknesses.
Remade in a way that leaves us hardcore fans surprised and that leaves the multiple age perspectives very much included so adult players don't feel like fools playing some aspects and find as much enjoyment.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with fan service, but I can understand disliking a character being reduced to it. The sort of “growth” in the industry you’re describing isn’t really a simple positive however when it creates this homogenized culture that other cultures around the world feel compelled to adhere to for marketing reasons. Showing grounded characters from hyper realistic games like The Last of Us or the more conservative re-designs for Resident Evil characters in their remakes I don’t think are the best examples for your case. You can have well written characters while also allowing fun sex appeal. I see a few other comments echoing similar points but they’re coming at it from a very reactionary point of view. I’m firmly on the left, but I do think we’re living in an oddly puritanical point in modern history. Other than that minor hang up this is a solid video. Really nice to see you give a more nuanced take on this game.
I do believe the well written character whose also sexy can work out well, it’s all about execution. It’s up to the writers and designers to choose the way they want to present their characters, how they’ll be perceived afterwards that’s up to the audience. No matter how sexy a boring character won’t have as much lasting appeal as a interesting one.
Going through Thieves In Time was definitely an interesting experience when I played it last year, and I was happy to find quite a few things to like about it. At the same time, the story and characterisation was ultimately what killed a lot of the game's appeal, which only got worse as the game went on. On the plus side, it made for some nice conversations in the server, including when I came across a glitch no one else in the server who played TIT even knew of.
Concerning the matter of your own treatment of TIT, it's nice to see that you've gotten over the phase of having a hate boner for its mere existence and just want to move on from that and continue to improve how you talk about games and other media. Still looking forward to whatever you've got planned for this year.
The way I see it, Sly 4 didn't need to exist, but I'm glad it does. It was never going to be as good as the original 3, but it was nice just to get one more game from this series on (at the time) a next gen console.
I'm really glad that you're willing to try again and evolve your opinions as you go on, and eventually make peace of sorts with your issues with them. It's damn inspiring, dawg. Mad respect.
I’m going to miss that Sly 4 is non canon video honestly. I liked when you and TGX were pointing out the design and plot flaws of the game.
replaying as an adult i was surprised hoe easy it was! it really did have my stumped as a kid, i remember playing for hours on sly2. I still had fun, but it really is an excellent children’s game
I look at Sly 4 & the original Sly Trilogy the way I look at Friday & Next Friday. Despite being part of the same franchise, it feels almost like an entirely new IP; which isn’t *necessarily* a bad thing, but it can be a bad thing to those who understand what the franchise originally was. Sly 1-3 felt like Sly Cooper games while Sly 4 feels like a different game with Sly Cooper characters in it; if that makes sense. It’s good in it’s own right, but if you compare it to the previous entries (which people naturally do when a new game comes out) it’s easy to see that it’s a step down.
"it can be a bad thing to those who understand what the franchise originally was"
Exactly why I still despise Sonic Adventure 2. I guess it's easier to give up "hating" when the object of hate is a one-off that doesn't interrupt one legacy with another; that is, doesn't have actual ruinous consequences for the franchise's image. My way of sort of moving on from that hate is simply to get the truth about Sonic out there and let people take it as they will. And I'm not against everything the new millennium added to Sonic, but rather want new things to EXPAND the old way, not REPLACE it.
I heard Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex is sort of a combination of what happened to Sonic and what happened to Sly: didn't COMPLETELY screw up things but still resulted in a less-than-ideal game and path for its series. That's why I think Crash 4 was the wrong move: WoC had the right idea that was just badly executed. Apparently Thieves in Time is the same, at least in the story department.
I don’t get that at all, I just played 1-4 and 4 feels just like the first 3 with better graphics/animation. Same play style, same voice actors, same style missions, hub world etc.
The cliff hanger for sly 4 would make for a great television series. Especially if they use the art style they used in the shorts
Rather have a game sequel
thank god you talked about how heavy and stiff the characters feel. That was one of my biggest gripes no one talked about comparing from the previous trilogy
Having Penelope as the main villain wouldn’t be so bad as long as it was the type of villain that joins the protagonist at the end. Such as Cynder, Riku, Shadow, Namor, the doom raiders, and Captain Qwark. Part of me wished that Penelope had that Black Knight mech back when she was playable in Sly 3.
One of our favorite video game franchises.
I still remember the day I bought a copy of Sly 4 for PS Vita.
Cool shirt, bro!
I can't believe this game is ten year old. I remember senior year of high school, my friend Trevor was on the bus and was glued to his PS Vita. I asked him "What are you playing?" And when he mentioned "the new Sly Cooper," I was surprised that they brought back Sly Cooper, especially, after almost eight years with no Sly. I didn't have much internet access as a kid, so it slipped under my radar.
Hello J’s reviews hopefully this reaches and your well, pretty excited for the new video because you can see your love for sly copper throughout your videos
I got this notifcation and my brain immediately
"I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THE LONGEST TIMEEEE
I CANT BELIEVE ITS REALLLLLLL"
God the game can't be 10 years old already. It means I played this in second year of university. I don't think I have the same appreciation for the trilogy so I like it. I do think Penelope's heelturn is actually good and made sense with how I saw the character. It also was just cool to see a former protag go bad.
I definitely do not remember the load times being that insufferable though.
I love how J calls Carmelita's belly dancing cringe, but ignored Murray's dance. Hey, whatever you're into J, whatever you're into.
Most bad or irritating games are better the second time around because you then know what to expect and also know how to work around certain issues
Honestly thinking back, whilst I was like a big "HUH?" on the motivations of Penelope and thinking "WHY?" on the twist (which is still poorly executed), thinking back to the design of all of her Cyborg Flashlight guards and the appearances of a certain you-know-who combined with the cliffhanger...
I was like "Oh no... you mean to say they're setting her up as the one that augmented Clockwerk?! That the source of nightmarish pain that stalked the Coopers since time began was potentially amongst them the WHOLE of the third game?!" and I'll have to admit... if that was Sanzaru's plan from the start if they were planning on making a fifth game, that'd be one way of leading us to theorizing that on our own.
Or could've at least used Clockwerk's eye to brainwash her and bring out the inner hatred she secretly harbored for Sly after the gang disbanded.
Yeah, I felt like Sanzaru was dropping some hints on where they wanted to go for a fifth game. I don't think it's as much of a dead-end as we think.
Heh. Maybe Sucker Punch had something like that in mind to leave to another developer or even tackle themselves much later.
If were ever get a 5th & final Sly Cooper game, this is what I'd like the plot to be: Bently, Murray, Carmelita & Dimitri get a scientist owl to help them rebuild a time machine to go back in time to rescue Sly by using his DNA to track him. But once they find Sly they can only come forward a little at a time, and every time they stop they encounter another Cooper member that they have to help. By the 5th or 6th level, we finally have Sly meet his father, but since Sly knows his father has to die, he's conflicted on whether to try to save him or let him die again. Meanwhile, the owl scientist who helps rescue Sly gets injured through these adventures with the Cooper Gang and he builds a robot body for himself, which we later find out is Clockwork. At the end of the game, Sly and the rest of the gang make it back to the future, but Clockwork steals the time machine, goes back in time, and he gets revenge on what happened to him by making it his life's work to go after the Cooper family. So, through this 5th and final game, the story comes full circle as Sly inadvertently created his family's mortal enemy in the form of a bootstrap paradox. And the game ends with Sly and Carmelita finally getting together as a couple with Sly ending his life as a thief so he can have a family with her.
Perfect. Tbh I thought that’s roughly where sly 4s plot would have went (I was sadly mistaken)
Nah, that Clockwerck connection would be lame af. The game could show us what originally caused his hatred, but even then, no explanation would be satisfactory enough.
Sounds good. Maybe he can even get a job testing security systems a la It Takes A Thief so he can scratch his thief itch without making trouble.
I never thought this day would really come, so many years later and we've come full circle
I played the trilogy followed by thieves in time for the first time a few years back. I always heard how hated the fourth game was, so I was interested to find out why. In short: I liked the game. I didn't love it, it still had a lot of flaws, but so did the trilogy, none of the games were close to perfect in any way. Sly 4 maybe felt less cohesive and the style didn't mesh as well, but the main problem for me was performance. If it ran well then it probably would have been tied at least with my favorite. Again, I get why people disliked it, and I agree with some of it, but as I said before I dont think any of the games were flawless. Many things that fell flat in 4, for me anyways, did so in the trilogy. Even then there are a few things that were improved in 4. If anything I'm disappointed that the ending never got followed up on. All in all, I didn't grow up with the sly series, but I enjoyed the 4 games pretty well. I dont love them, but they are still fun and I want another game with more of a focus on stealthy things.
It feels so nice to see mh favorite series still being remembered, thank you
I just finished playing this game a few days ago since I didn't have access to it as a child. i initially was not a fan of the art style/ game mechanics but after finishing it, I definitely take that back. I was very sad with the cliffhanger and hope someday Sly and the gang get their proper ending.
I really enjoy your videos that delve into your past opinions and actions and discuss how you've changed and grown from them, the introspection is something rarely seen in these kinds of videos, so props you to man. I think when it comes to fanbases, it's an easy thing to do. Jak TLF hate is super common in the Jak community, and there was a time (when I was a lot younger) where hating on TLF was kinda my whole personality as well. I'm just thankful I grew out of it fairly quickly, and any time it's brought up on a stream for example, my chat and I are able to have a nuanced discussion on the game instead of just "game bad lololololol". But like you with Sly 4, I don't like TLF, it's just the blind hate for the sake of it is lame and promotes lazy thinking.
So Sly 4. I've only played the trilogy fully a handful of times (though I have countless replays of Sly 1 lol), yet I've still only played Sly 4 once. I've been meaning to revisit it, I just never have. I remember at the time thinking it was hands down the best in the series, because it was just so hecking fun! I was never in love with the gameplay formula of 2 and 3, but 4 took that and made it much more enjoyable. And you're totally right, they did variety correctly in this game, whereas variety in 2 and 3 was mostly annoying and frustrating. But when it comes to the story, I fully agree that it's abysmal, like, breathtakingly bad. But at the time, the Sly story wasn't something I was *super* invested in (playing the trilogy out of order certainly didn't help), but I even remember at the time thinking it was kinda crap, especially the Penelope stuff, yuck. But it didn't put a damper on my experience cuz I just enjoyed the gameplay so much. So at least it's got that going for it.
I'm excited for your video on nostalgia, especially given our discussions on it. It's a topic I've thought a lot about, especially how the games industry weaponises it in such gross ways, but also on a personal level, especially with the Jak series, and how I feel glued to those games almost not by choice, and I get the feeling you feel similar with the Sly series. Anyway, great video as always mate :)
Same, I did this whole "My hate for this game is my entire personality" thing in 2020 with The Last Of Us 2, but my case was a *lot* worse because at least you and J got disappointed after playing it, and the hate comes from a place of love from the previous games
I barely knew both Last Of Us games and never even played them (mostly because of money), but still joined the hate bandwagon anyway, it wasn't even to piss off some people for fun, I just wanted some drama and got it
My realization of how stupid this thinking is hit like a truck, so I went out of my way to delete every comment I've made about Last Of Us 2, thank God I got out of this phase
37:26 I wholly agree with what you're saying here, barring the "sequel hook" thing cause SP did aim to make it an open-ended potentiality thing (though maybe that was just an exaggerated sentence). As a kid, I wanted more of the things I liked and have them keep going years on end. Now though, I'm perfectly fine if something just... stops. Not everything _needs_ a continuation, as I've learned throughout my 23 years of life, having a set goal and storyline can and do coexist with franchises like Final Fantasy, Mario, or Sonic where you can easily create new ideas and creations cause of how those three are designed. I'm not saying I'm completely opposed to a continuation of a Sly game, per se, but I definitely wouldn't want it to repeatedly revolve around *this* Cooper Gang and Inspector Fox, since their story is done. You can create a new story with a new set of casts that could potentially link to those quartet, if that makes sense.
That said, I also think this goes double on the topic of gaming preservation. At the time of writing this, the only accessible way of playing these games is through the PS3, what with the -bungled- Trilogy HD collection and TIT being on there, or paying for a PS+ sub and going through those games via... streaming? I guess? Either that or you're emulating via PCSX2 and/or RPCS3, or buying up copies on eBay. This is another case on a long line of a serious topic about having modern access to play these old games, even on PC since Sony's now open to doing that lately. I'm not at all talking about remakes or remasters either, just some spruced up ports would do just fine.
Anyway, after replaying TIT last year, I'm on the same boat you're on; I never really acted like it's one of the worst things ever, but I always made sure that my distaste of it was known even to casual fans of the game. Now though, it's fiiiine. I don't like the gameplay nearly as much as the trilogy, and I also find the story to drag the game down a lot and I unfortunately cannot divorce myself from this considering how connected I am with these fictional anthro people, but it's far, _far_ from being a bad game. There's some nuggets of enjoyments to find for sure, like in the Ice Age and England levels. It's not at all for me, but eh, I can't really express too much hate on it anymore since I've gone through far worse games.
sly 2 was the first ps2 game i ever played. i remember the excitement of discovering the world and characters of every chapter. I would plan my own sly 3, wolds and villians. I loved the 3rd but barley remember the 4th. I’ve found myself replaying the 2nd game
I'm replaying Crack in Time right now, there are frame drops, but it doesn't feel much worse than Tools of Destruction and looks far better. At its worst it's dropping to 45ish and hovering around 55. Overall I find the performance very impressive for a PS3 game with that level of visuals.
I always liked how ACiT rendered smoke for some reason.
It's good to finally have a review back of a game you said you despised for so long since I began to watch you 3 years ago. So far so good your explanation and superposing of what the game represents for you is very good. I comment while I'm watching but since I feel I'd forget to tell what I think I felt I had to prematurely say it. Either way, great video, it's a mature step to you to grow up even more and a reason I love your "learning to love" videos. Cheers.
Another great video J. Very nice of you to put aside your hate and resentment of Sly 4 to review it in a calm and understandable manner. You played this review completely straight giving the game the credit where it's do and lambasting it for the criticism it's earned. I never knew much about Sly 4 before this video, all I had to go buy was video reviews and online scores. I was moved by your apology to Sanzaru. You understand as well making video games is not an easy process (and won't get any easier). I know you don't try to make these videos personal. Sly 4 is an overall well-made and polished game, it just suffers from being narratively and thematically misguided. Once again J, you are not in the wrong in disliking this game, it's great that you acknowledged its strengths, but you also have to recognize flaws. At the end of the day, Sly 4 is just another game that will unfortunately languish in obscurity.
You know, i respect the way how you handled this video and also how you looked back and decided to adress things and move on.
Not a lot of video game reviewers do that and honestly it makes you the most mature UA-camr we have these days.
Great job on this review.
On the topic of Sly5, not a remake but a follow-up - we can all be sure that if it happened NOW it would be a multiversum game (maybe creating some kind of rift in the fabric of the universe because of playing with time and all the paradoxes) with OG Sly as one character and TiT Sly as the other. Or just hints that those are different timelines. And there would be alternative versions of our known characters (most likely hyper-intelectual Murray, martial arts master Bentley, Le Paradox as a police chief or something), and a female version of Sly (not Carmelita, she would defenitely be turned from a cop into a private investigator or something like that tho) as some kind of his relative or just a variant. OR Carmelita from an alternative universe who's actually a master thief (you know to "subvert our expectations" with the first thing that came to creators mind, and everyone already wrote a fanfiction about.)
If it was suppose to happen in future, then I don't know, but I guess we are stuck with this trend for a while, but no racoon. Don't know which is worse.
Fun fact: I played the Vita version of this game on PSTV, and that's easily the best way to play. The six axis controls are entirely removed and put on the left stick, and I think the loading screens are faster, too. It's pretty great.
(I'm halfway through the review, so if you mention this later that's my bad.)
No way it's the best way when it isn't 60fps
Gotta say very glad you revisited this when I picked up the HD trilogy I also grabbed the Vita version of this to check out. Still have yet to play any of them but these videos got me one step closer to hooking up the PS3 (it's mostly already set up) or firing up the Vita and giving them a proper play through. This channel has definitely expanded my interests in series like this that kind of passed me.
Longest loading screens i remember are in Spyro enter the dragonfly (i believe).
Time travel in endgame:
Did ya know if you shrink yourself down SUUUPER small, you'll experience time much slower?
Well apparently at a rate that being sub atomic it would take five years real time for five minutes to pass for you... So of course that means If we tinker with shrinking ourselves down enough we can go backwards(?) And undo the last five years.
Ta-da!
Genius writing.🙃
Honestly, I think they should just release the lost dlc in the form of a collection for ps5 just to wrap things up and then start over, but that’s wishful thinking on my part. They have been teasing Sly making a return due to Sony’s references and the newly released anniversary merch and the Sly funko pop. Maybe he’ll soon make a comeback
HOLY SMOKY THAT SCREAM WAS TOP TIER!
You've got a pretty cool voice dude!
I love all the sly games. Story, characters and gameplay all seemed pretty unique, cant really compair it to anything else but itself. So i think the series should be looked at as it own thing, with its own highs and lows as a complete packedge was pretty fun for a broad range of ages. I wish there were even more of these games.
I really didn't think Thieves in time was a terrible game, actually enjoyed the game a lot, and even play through it every once and awhile still. Sly cooper definitely deserves a reboot. Every couple years they tease something, and than it ends up getting cancelled sadly.
Honestly one of the best Sly Cooper games to ever exist and 20 years later,This series is long overdue for a Comeback via Sly 5.
love your content its calming to just hear you ramble and babble about games their history, how to work and many other things about them, keep up the great work
Was just watching your last Sly 4 review last night while doing the dishes. And now, after going on UA-cam to find a video to watch while doing the dishes, I find this😂 Was wanting a new one from you too😂
You've played a game you hated more times than I've played games I love, you do you bro
HOnestly, I think no one would have a problem if they made a NEW Sly 4, like new story and such (maybe the matter of the Time Machine is becuase Bentley's lab was attacked and they stole his TIme Machine, then he learns that other member of the crew was attacked, SLy included, so he decides to contact them. SLy then decides it is time to reunite the gang and figure it out what was happening and if they were still in danger. Carmelita included, who he tries to keep in the dark while he travels with the gang, also because he is afraid to reveal to her his amnesia was fake, afraid to lose her because of it. At some point the Time Machine becoming a major plot piece, with the antagonist wanting to use it), or a complete remake Thieves in Time to correct some narrative and story issues, as well as gameplay and world improvements.
I like Sly 4, but they could have done SO much better in the matter of the story and characters. Sanzaru has potential. Hell, if they wish to work on a Sly 5 to perhaps correct this narrative and other issues 4 had, more power to them. If they want to complete reboot it, then I wish them all the best, as well. At the end of the day we still have the OG trilogy to remember as the best point of the franchise.
All I want is to be able to replay the sly cooper games. That is my dream, I pray for remakes in current gen more than any other remake.
This is Such a Great game.
However Penelope's betrayal Makes a lot of sense. But hey her betrayal aside. I FRIGGING LOVE THE MUSIC! HAPPY 2023 DOOD!
I might be the only Sly fan that never hated Thieves in Time aside from the whole Penelope thing
Same
I never even hated that! She was always self serving
my biggest issue with the story is that they had SUCH a missed opportunity by not seriously including Clockwerk in the story considering he terrorized the Coopers for centuries it would’ve made sense.
The biggest difference, the part of this game that hurts, it became a silly cartoon game. But it was previously a serious comic book style game.
I'm curious what J's reviews will be like 10 years from now, because I see him talking about how he watches the high dramas of HBO and such and that has allowed him to see how kiddish the Sly games are. But I've found as I've gotten older that a LOT of people come full circle on that where the high drama shows start feeling tedious and there is a renewed appreciation for kids media which, while more simplistic, are often infinitely more inventive and interesting than crime drama #865, historical drama #1738 or post apocalypse #100,000,000.
Happy 10th Anniversary to Sly Cooper 4: Thieves in Time!!!🥳🥳🥳
I love Sly 4, I love all of the Sly games.
18:06 Galleth had a shield he could ram enimies with? i never saw that before
The stiffness and weight of Sly in this game really bugged me since day one and still does to this day. The weightlessness in the originals defined the gameplay for those games, I really think it was a terrible misstep to do away with that.
Sly 5 prologue could just be getting sly back to present day and just be down with time travel
I've always felt that the Penelope reveal in Sly 4 makes more sense than people give it credit for.
The signs of Penelope's ego and her growing bored were also there right from the beginning. Her entire backstory is her joining a competition that she was too young for, in disguise, because she just really wanted to at the and then getting to the point where she was tired of it. Bentley and the others recruiting her just gave her an easy out, though it's never explained why she didn't just retire, instead of being complicit in and helping with the murder of la rge number of her own employees. And while she is smitten with Sly at first, she moves onto Bentley pretty quickly after a heartfelt conversation about Bentley feeling overshadowed by Sly.
Remembering that plot point did help with the transition to her betrayal. She signed on for the biggest heist in history, and that cumulates in her and her boyfriend guarding the legacy of someone not on their level of potential in her opinion. She and Bentley are making amazing things that she clearly feels aren't really benefitting them, but Bentley loyalty and moral compass make him content to just stay where's he's at. So it makes some sense that her rash conclusion is that she needs Sly to have never been in the picture, despite all of the holes in her logic...like Bentley likely not developing into the guy she fell for without Sly.
Not saying it's a masterpiece in writing, but I was able to see the through-line for that at least. Tenn was hands-down the most enjoyable part of the game for me. That and Bentley continuing to be a jack of all trades, since he'll always be my favorite character.
At this point my main issue with The Twist is that there's no buildup or reasonable explanation for the sudden change of heart. It's not like Penelope _couldn't_ have been used - outside of your well put reasoning, let's take a look at the other candidates: Guru's whole thing is meditation and inner peace so he's immediately out, Dimitri is helping the gang out in the present so him doing a double cross is next-to-impossible, and Panda King's turned over a new leaf and is chilling in China so him just going back to evil is destroying his whole character arc. Now you look at Penelope, a new character that has just enough wiggle room to explore and expand her character for this game, and suddenly the twist is fitting into place. I also agree that people tend to look too deeply into the "but she already liked Sly first!" angle, considering it's not uncommon for one to fall in love, find someone else, and then notice the flaws of the other.
The problem, though, comes with communicating this sequence. If you try to disregard the scenes themselves, there's still the problem of the chapter being so, *so* blatant about it. It's the first time she's ever mentioned outside the opening, it's the most tech-aligned villain of the squad, which leads us to believe they could be the reason Le Paradox has a time machine to begin with something that Bentley and Penelope were working on, the insignias are riddled with the face of a rodent, Bentley's whole moping thing is suddenly brought back even though again it was dropped at the beginning, at this point the only thing missing are medieval flags just screaming who it is. I get that this is a family-oriented game and all, but I am highly curious as to how many younguns didn't immediately clue in Penelope = Black Knight. Her reasoning that Bentley was being held back and that he could've been using the skills to focus on weapons is just strange, cause that's never something he was that into, he was the gadgeteer while she was the RC and vehicle expert, and I feel like the mere creation of a *time machine* is a pretty fruitful use of a skillset after retiring from thievery. Her having a beef with Sly can make sense, but again it's sort of thrusted upon us with no real sense or reason, especially since he was the one that let everyone do what they wanted in life, selflessly giving up the Cooper Vault.
What I'm getting at is, aside from overhauling it to the point of using a different villain, either a new one altogether or doing what S3 did and reuse an old one - I've seen few bring up Raleigh which could probably work - Penelope's debacle could work by one of two ways: Firstly, Sanzaru could've placed more emphasis on Paradox's control of her. Either by a cop-out via Decibel's Hypnotism or more elaborate such as him finding out a dirty secret from her time as Black Baron that she feels just enough shame for to consciously deciding to work with him. Or, if we want to lean harder into how mysterious of a past Penelope had, take that last point, but center it so that _she_ was the one that came to Paradox about time travel, either because she fell into the trappings of egoism and wanted to do Bigger and Badder, or cause something happened and she lapsed into that BB persona again. Then, instead of having her exposed about 3/4 into the chapter giving Bentley a less-then-stellar turnaround (he gets benched for like, two and a half missions, which severely undercuts the emotional trauma), have the reveal be either immediate at the start, or two missions in, establishing enough time between decommissioned rut to the reinvigorated comeback at the heist job. All that's left is refactoring the conversation between him and her so that her final tone is either bittersweet, remorseful, hardened anger, or compromised jealousy.
I understand my idea of a rewrite isn't perfect, especially considering you'd basically have to rewrite and reorient all the missions within this chapter, and perhaps the one before even, so that it makes the most sense, but it's an idea. All that said, I'm at least glad I got over my cringeworthy grudge against Sanzaru about this, cause now I look at this as an interesting point to ponder over, even if I still think the execution they had was rather trite.
@@blazingwaters7469 That was very nicely thought out. I definitely would have liked the idea of fleshing out her backstory and possibly her ego. She was my favorite of the new gang and I did feel like Sly did her a disservice in execution.
So many people have been on the bandwagon of the signs having never been there that I just wanted to point out that the issue with her writing isn't the betrayal, it's the lack of in-game lead-up.
In short though, I really enjoyed your comment.
@@FullMoonDeria It's probably from the shock of using one of the most well-liked additions combined with the overly analyzed failing of trying to use this twist in the first place that's gotten a lot of people, me and J included, to get really angry about it. I mean, it's already a tough pitch that a character you like could possibly be brought over to the villain's side, how'd it fair if the execution of it is botched?
Still I'm 23 years old now, I've learned a lot about writing between then, I've looked carefully into these sorts of things and try to rationalize how they're done, and like many things in this game I can feel Sanzaru has their heart in the right place, it just needed some fine-tuning. Although, now I just feel bad they're in the Facebook (I'm not calling them Meta) Mines, but at least they were able to help out with Spyro 3's Reignited remake.
@@blazingwaters7469 That's fair on all counts. Mostly just my mindset on twists like that come down to if I can look back at the franchise and see it coming. The rest of my opinion goes to execution after the fact.
I have a pretty mild to middling opinion on a lot of media, but I can understand the reasons behind how others react when I know them.
@@blazingwaters7469 Or better yet, why not add Clockwerk's Eye in the brainwashing bit?
Clockwerk's fuel by hate and his eyes can hypnotize people and can hate-inducing effects. Her hatred for Sly could've been something she secretly harbored, let's say, after the Cooper Vault job was over. She's mad because she thought that after the job they all would go on a ton of adventures and pull off more heists with her new friends. But because of Sly's retirement, the gang disbanded and she & Bentley were left to tinker away. To her she thought that she was just recruited under false pretenses and after it they all go home. Like, "You've helped me get my family's legacy back, thanks. Now go home".
She only kept it secret for Bentley's sake. She probably did feel like she and Bentley were wasting their talents trying to preserve the legacy and treasure of a retired thief when they could be out there pulling off more heists and gaining all of the world's treasures with their genius and engineering. But she didn't want to because Bentley wouldn't want that. She understood how much he loved Sly like a brother and how much preserving his legacy means to him. So, She wanted to support her the turtle she loves all the way. And that's where the Eye comes in.
I loved the Sly Cooper series. These games were my childhood. I also loved ratchet and clank, Jak and Daxter, and nfs underground 2
Ah yes. That game with that Ending That Shall Not Be Named (or Watched).
I gotta say seeing this played on a handheld in the tech demos felt like a dream. Though the game itself drops harder than it's predecessors, I dont inherently hate it. Though I'm more inclined in playing the collection on the VITA, than play thieves in time.
18:10 I LOVE hybrid weapons!!!
35:52 I've heard more screwed up kinks...
40:31 Eh...Honestly, (Story-wise) I think Sly 4 should just be retconned...
AAHH! this was my fav game as a kid 😭 i had a crush on sly
Thank you for making this.
As a long time Sly Cooper fan, it's nice to see someone who has gone through a similar arc as me with these games.
Learning to love Sly Cooper Thieves in Time. Character development for J lol
That poster of the sly 2 boxart is the coolest shit ive ever seen, where do i get one?!
It has been…A DECADE?!?!?!
The bad loading screens made the platinum trophy awful. ESPECIALLY the Navigate Like Drake trophy where you have to open your map in every single area.
I still have Sly 4 on the PS3.
Respect owning up to your mistakes
My internet decided to cut out and the video froze right as you said bad loading can kill a game, i thought it was a gag at first.
In hindsight, I also didn't hate Sly 4, but i did when I played it. Yeah it wasn't as good as the others (This still stands). But that doesn't mean it wasn't a good game. The game was fine, the characters very expressive, with many different and varied set pieces. The levels were a bit too streamlined and simple, I thought they could've done much more with this idea, but after looking back to it, it was fine.
This is the last time I'm ever going to play Sly 4: Thieves of Time- J (2016)
And look where we are, now the game is a decade old and you are two plus and counting and actually pretty competent so yeah this is NEAT
I think the biggest flaw in this game is the dialogue. Sly 2 and 3 had a great mixture of childish/witty comedy, while Sly 4 dialogue felt like childish comedy trying to be witty. But you do make some excellent points about the visuals and production value.
I had a lot of memories with this game with my brother when i was little 🥲
The overall story and Le Paradox's "Brilliant plan" was BEYOND stupid!
I can name NUMEROUS media franchises that uses time travelling as a theme in their stories and it'd STILL make more sense than this hot mess Sanzaru wrote! At least the whole idea of "Time travelling" and how it works was better than what Thieves in Time came up with!
Heck, using the idea of time travelling based on the ones from Harry Potter, DragonBall and Sailor Moon sounded way better. Even the time travel gimmick from Crash 4 sounded more plausible than THIS!
And as for Le Paradox's plan? He wants to be the "Master Thief" with a family legacy like Sly's and became jealous of that, so he tried to have the Cooper line erased....BUT he suddenly decides that he ALSO wants to "Take over the world" by making forged documents in the past.
Ok, so here's MY question to the writers...
WHICH PLAN DO YOU WRITERS WANT LE PARADOX TO HAVE IN THIEVES IN TIME!? Erasing the Cooper Family or to rule the world!? This just went from a hot mess to a landfilled garbage dump with burning tires strewn on it!
Clockwerk's plan to take down the Cooper Family was WAY better than the skunk's plan, and he's a HUGE ROBOTIC OWL that looks like he couldn't fit into a house! I mean, HELL I'd even accept Neyla's last minute plan of being Clock-La for whatever reason over THIS "Idea"! It made Le Paradox sound like Yzma from the Emperor's New Groove for when she explained her plan to try and kill Kuzco off, but accidentally turned him into a llama!
On top of ALL of that, the writers at Sanzaru, for WHATEVER reason, decided to make Penelope as a "Plot Twist Villain", aside from Carmelita acting like the petty, pissed off angry ex-girlfriend who won't accept Sly's explanation or whatever. (She knew he lied, but lied to herself that he changed WITHOUT getting the reason WHY he did that...Pathetic...)
Penelope was one of the best female characters to be written in the Sly series, and is a perfect match for Bentley, but the writers just ignored the story in Sly 3 and decided to make her a vindictive villain with a "Sly's stolen Bentley's potential! We've could've been BILLIONAIRES with our inventions!" BS, when there's been NUMEROUS POINTS on WHY Penelope being changed to a villain is a BAD idea!
Sly's given his gang the Cooper inheritance after the events of Sly 3, Bentley and Penelope are the guardians of the Cooper Vault, Sly and his gang basically helped her escape the endless Black Baron shtick cycle, she's got Bentley as a BF and friends, she's free to do whatever she wanted and even spend time with her BF.
HOW and WHY would Penny ever decide to be a bad guy and toss EVERYTHING I've just pointed out away like yesterday's garbage!? For fan service? Because that's about right to some of us!
I also wanted to point out that she was planned to be a playable character, until the writers changed their minds at the last minute for whoknowswhatever excuse. The fans had better explanations on WHY Penelope would become evil: Kidnapped and brainwashed, influenced, threatened to work for the villains.... My theory is that Penelope has a twin sister who's the complete opposite of her and tried to use Penny's identity to frame her and cause a shift of mistrust with the Cooper Gang.
If Sucker Punch ever decides to rewrite Thieves in Time, which I HOPE actually happens (But not holding my breath), I hope Penelope and Carmelita's character/story writing is completely fixed. We seriously need our favorite inspector to form some kind of bonds with the rest of the Cooper Gang, mostly with Penelope.
I can actually imagine them having a special Girl Bond and talk things out between each other, especially having Penny help Carmelita sort out her feelings for Sly. There ya go, I JUST came up with a plot idea for Penelope and Carmelita, your welcome!
But seriously, out of everything that needs to be fixed in Thieves in Time, story, plot and character writings should be one of the top priorities here.