The Sly Collection - PSVita

With the massive success of Sucker Punch's inFamous, Sony has decided to dust off another of the developer's works – the Sly trilogy. Now remastered in HD , the entire trilogy is leaping onto the PSVita!

So, let's start at the beginning...

As the story goes, there's a new thief in town by the name of Sly Raccoon. A charming, wry and charismatic thief at that. Born into a family of the world's greatest thieves, Sly is given, on his eighth birthday, the Thievius Raccoonus, a family heirloom that is passed down from generation to generation containing all of their best-kept secrets and thieving techniques. Unfortunately, this book is soon stolen by a gang of ruthless villains and subsequently split five ways, lost forever. But fret ye not, as the game starts ten years on, with the cunning thief embarking on a quest to steal it back. Hurrah!

Essentially a 3D platformer, Sly Raccoon places quite an emphasis on stealth, with players sneaking around the richly detailed, toon-shaded environments as they attempt to prove they are the best thief ever. You need to keep your wits about you as you sneak through the day and night, get caught up in rooftop chases and dodge security guards.

Next up is Sly 2: Band of Thieves. Word is out that Interpol has excavated the robotic remains of Clockwerk - Sly’s sworn enemy and arch-nemesis of the Sly clan. However, parts of this monstrous beast have luckily been deemed missing, and so Sly and his well-humoured sidekicks Bentley and Murray embark on a fresh adventure to recover the lost parts, ensure Clockwerk isn't reassembled and lay your enemy to rest for all eternity.

Building on the success of the original game, Sly 2 is filled with a witty story dialogue that brings fellow thieves Bentley and Murray in to the foray as the brains and brawn behind Sly's adventure. Where Sly's friends took a backseat in the first game, they are introduced here as fully playable characters, thus adding two fresh playing styles to the proceedings.

Last but not least is Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves. Sly the master thief returns, as do Bentley the Turtle and Murray the Hippo, but there are plenty of other playable characters to try out, too, including the intractable Carmelita Fox, the Interpol officer who was never far from Sly’s striped tail in the other two games.

The storyline sees the trio trying to unlock the secrets of the Cooper family vault. You see, Sly is only the latest in a long line of master thieves. Orphaned as a young raccoon, Sly never had the chance to find out about the family vault. A depository for the wealth amassed over years of thieving, the vault can only be unlocked by answering questions and finding clues, and these are heavily slanted so that a true Cooper should be able to make short work of it. Discovering the vault’s existence, the trio make for the island it is situated on without delay. But a mysterious fellow known only as Dr. M, aided by four bizarre henchmen, already knows about the vault and has set up shop on the island, increasingly frustrated after years of trying to unlock the secrets of the vault. Sly wastes no time in recruiting a team of super thieves – each with different skills – as he tries to achieve what his new enemy has failed to do for years.

That's hours and hours of platforming action! more