Sly 2

Well I finished the game last night. Amybear will be very happy about that. I liked it. If you have a PS2 and enjoy a good platformer Sly 2 is it. Plus it's on the $20 greatest hits list right now because Sly 3 just came out.

Sly 1 was good. In some ways it was a ring-tailed copy of other games like Spyro, the hub and spoke organization was similar. The levels were straightforward platformer stuff, but good straightforward platformer stuff. They tried to break up the Sly gameplay with shooting and driving mini games. To some extent it worked. But some of the levels were just incredibly hard and the master thief challenges were barely worth playing.

Sly 2 is great. It has a feel all it's own. The hub and spoke system is basically gone. Levels are organized into 8 hubs with missions set in each hub much as in GTA. Instead of the obvious mini games of Sly 1, the Sly 2 gameplay is broken up by playing Bently and Murray, Sly's cohorts who each have their own gameplay style. There are mini games, but they move you towards a goal with a much more seamless quality. Oh and the difficulty is tough, but not impossible like the last one.

In short I liked it. The only thing I really wish for is the ability to replay all the missions in an episode once you have beaten it.