A rule of thumb that should be expressed more often is that a lackluster sequel to a video game does not equate to a bad one. Sequels are a tricky thing across all mediums of art and entertainment. They are readily welcome under the right circumstances, but they are always a gamble because of their inherent nature of using the previous titles as a sort of reference. This is even trickier when the sequel is a continuation of the narrative elements of the previous titles, like the characters and the story. Video game sequels have a different nature to them than the sequels of other entertainment mediums. The first game usually serves as a template for the game's world and usually comes with awkward hiccups that come with formulating a new IP. The second game gives the developers a myriad of opportunities. The typical course of action is to either buff out the cracks of the first game or deviate from it entirely. The third game usually mirrors the first two games while adding only a few new features to make it discernable from the first two, but still shows that the series has run its course and the developers were short on new ideas.

The Jak and Daxter trilogy on the PS2 is a fine example of this series progression. The first game could’ve stood on its own as a phenomenal platformer that capitalized on the advancements the new console generation came with. The second game smoothed over the cracks of the first game that were noticeable comparably to the strengths of the sequel, namely characterization and story. It also managed to deviate significantly from the light-hearted tone and setting of the first game. Executing these directions fantastically makes Jak II the perfect sequel to the first game. Jak 3, similarly to other third entries in a franchise, does not deliver on the same ambition as the second entry. The setting and tone of Jak II are rooted in Jak 3, comfortably using it as a template. The radical shifts in tone and gameplay that catapulted Jak II beyond the confines of the first game were now merely the standard course for the series because we had seen them before. Jak 3 is not the achievement that Jak II is, but that does not make it a disappointing entry. It’s just as exemplary as the previous two games, with some people considering it the finest entry in the franchise. It’s not a sequel that excels by catapulting the franchise to new horizons, but one that arguably improves on the blemishes of the previous game for a more refined experience.

The third game does not begin with the standard, prophetic opening from Samos musing about Jak’s potential as a hero. At this point, the developers assumed that you were already aware of Jak’s heroism after two games. (Disclaimer: if you’re playing this game for the first time, the opening cutscene is shown before the main menu. If you skip it, you will have no idea what’s occurring or where Jak and Daxter are when you start the game). If you thought that saving Haven City would’ve granted Jak absolution from his status as a renegade (no pun intended), you’d be mistaken. The opening cutscene sees a flying Krimzon Guard van flying over what appears to be a desert. The aircraft lands, and Jak emerges from the back of it in handcuffs with blue Krimzon Guards surrounding him. He has been banished from Haven City and left to die in the hostile desert wasteland, a scapegoat to blame for the metalhead invasion of Haven City in the second game. This was a decision by Count Veger, the head of the city council who overruled Ashelin's executive orders to keep Jak. Ashelin gives Jak a beacon, and the aircraft flies away. Daxter and Pecker also decide to join Jak on his trek through the desolate wasteland. I understand why Daxter would want to go with Jak, but why Pecker? I wouldn’t want to walk through the scorching desert with both of them at each other’s throats, but that’s exactly what happens.

All three eventually collapse from exhaustion, and Jak has delirium-induced flashbacks about what happened up to this point after the second game. Apparently, defeating Kor was not enough for the metalheads to retreat from Haven City. The strongest ones survived and are now working with a series of Krimzon Bots to further the invasion of the city. Their allegiance is effective as they topple the Baron’s Tower, destroying several Haven City districts on impact. This devastating moment is a jaw-dropper for anyone who played Jak II. The metalhead invasion has reached a point of uncontrollable pandemonium, signified by the destruction of the Baron’s Tower. It was a symbol so formidable and so gargantuan that it made the Baron and his rule seem impervious. Alas, this is a changing of the guard and a fantastic segway into the next game. The beacon Ashelin gave to Jak alerts two men who stumble upon our heroes and shelter them from the storm. Jak and his friends are now in the sand city of Spargus, led by a wasteland warrior named Damas. Pecker becomes Damas’s new advisor, and Jak and Daxter have to prove themselves to Damas to stay in Spargus.

Immediately, the change in setting once again gives the player the feeling that we’re not in Kansas anymore. Instead of teleporting through a warp gate and ending up somewhere without any scope of the setting, it’s the somewhat nearby Spargus, a wasteland city built on the sand. It’s where the refuse of Haven City goes when Haven City casts them out. It’s sort of like Haven City’s Australia. In fact, the elements that make up Spargus are reminiscent of a certain Australian post-apocalyptic movie franchise. Spargus is what occurs when several people are forced out of their homes to survive in the hostile environment that was initially meant to be their tomb. The culture of Spargus revels in the survival of the fittest. The denizens of Spargus fight in a sparsely built arena surrounded by molten lava to keep their place in the city. It’s a rough place with an even rougher livelihood. Jak quickly acclimates to the culture of Spargus as it fits his rash attitude. Out of context with the story, roaming around the city as Jak makes it seem quaintly old-world. It’s a small area that looks like Tatooine if it was on the beach. Wind chimes can be heard at all times, and zoomers are replaced with Leapers, lizard-horse creatures that control just like the Flut Flut from the first game. It’s ironic that the rural setting of Spargus is a culture shock from Haven City, considering Jak and Daxter originally came from a rural setting.

A larger area outside Spargus in the desert wasteland that Jak was thrown into by Haven City. The wastelanders of Spargus often excavate the area for artifacts. Jak not only does that, but also races, disposes of different breeds of wasteland metalheads, and makes frequent visits to the Monk Temple north of the desert. Traversing the desert can be quite daunting, so Jak has many vehicles to choose from in Kliever’s lot right near the desert entrance. Jak will start off with the piddly little Tough Puppy but will quickly unlock some vehicles with different kinds of attributes and firepower. The Sand Shark is a speedy vehicle with machine-gun turrets. The Gila Stomper is a durable vehicle made for defense. The Dune Hopper, my favorite of these buggies, enables you to jump incredible heights, and it’s armed with a grenade launcher. There are also other buggies you can unlock in the menu with precursor orbs. The vastness and rough terrain of the desert wasteland make up for the compact size of Spargus. Combining these areas almost rivals the city-scape of Haven City from the second game. The wasteland frequently can be arduous to traverse due to the landscape being more compatible with some vehicles, matched with the constant marauder vehicles slamming into you to throw you off course. As often as I became annoyed with the obstacles in the desert, it is the essence of Jak 3 that separates it from the industrial cityscape that made up the foreground of Jak II.

Jak isn’t only limited to places in the sand. After the first act, Jak makes his way back to Haven City through underground passageways. Haven City is still the same rank, hellhole from the previous game, but it’s a little different. Due to the Baron’s tower collapsing and the passage of time, some of the familiar areas from Jak II are absent. The waterways, stadium, and the area with Mar’s Tomb have been destroyed by the tower's fall. Places like the bazaar and the field area are now a ghastly looking metalhead territory, arguably a worse fate for these areas than being crushed. Most of the sub-areas like the pumping station and Dead Town are totally gone. Areas like the docks, the industrial highways, and the slums remain relatively intact. The sewers make a return but are designed to be much grander in scale like the Lost Precursor City instead of the dark, claustrophobic pit it was in Jak II. Haven Forest makes a return without the Mountain Temple, but the land is a crisp, autumn brown instead of spring green. Whether that’s because it’s autumn in Jak 3 or the land is dehydrated from the corrupted influence of the metalheads is unknown. The only relatively new place is the ritzy, gentrified area where the water slums used to be. The oppressive tone of Haven City from the second game is no longer felt. Instead, the city is always on pins and needles because it is a battleground against the KG Bots and the metalheads.

Remember those rolling robots from that one mission from the second game? They are now a common enemy in Jak 3. The Krimzon Guards are no longer active. They’ve either disbanded as an executive order from Ashelin or color-swapped and fashioned themselves into Torn’s army against the invading forces. These guys are puppies compared to the pack of wolves that were the Krimzon Guards. They may look the same, but these guys will not retaliate if you hit them, and they constantly whine about how hopeless their situation is. Honestly, this is a sentiment that’s only felt by them. The hopeless tone from the second game just isn’t there. There is a new feeling of awe whenever you are near a familiar city area that was crushed by the tower. Picturing how the area used to be in the second game gives weight to the colossal impact the fall of the Baron’s palace had.

Haven City isn’t quite the urban playground it used to be. The setting of Spargus and the wasteland are present to deviate from Haven City to formulate a unique identity for Jak 3, and they both succeed by offering a different landscape. However, the small scale of Spargus does not match the grand scale of Haven City from the second game, and the desert, while on a bigger scale, isn’t comparable due to being restricted to traversing through it by vehicle. Haven City is supposed to be a shell of its former self this time, so of course, it’s not as wide and sprawling as it used to be. Individually, none of these areas are up to par with Haven City from the second game in an expansive singular world with branching paths. The strength of the world in this game is having both Spargus and the wasteland with the less expansive Haven City as two parts of one whole. If one area feels too restricted after a while, flying out to the other one will always feel comparatively fresh. The only problem is that this method of traveling between these two places via flying vehicle is the only time in the series where there are geographical inconsistencies. The main strength of the first game was that each level was seamlessly built between the individual levels. It was practically an open-world platformer. The second game shifted into an open-world game with the same cohesive world design even between the sublevels. The dig site was the only place Jak would fly to by aircraft, but the player could discover that the site could be accessed organically near the pumping station via the jet board. We have no idea how far Spargus is from Haven City because the only way to travel back and forth between the two main places is by KG aircraft, which is done through a cutscene. This is probably done to make Spargus seem well removed from Haven City, but it compromises the integrity of the seamless world-building the series strides in.

It’s a shame that something interesting the developers implemented to make the third entry fresher became a hiccup, but the less concise world-building isn’t all bad. Quite a few missions in this game, like the volcano trek and invading the floating KG factory, are some of my favorite missions. Jak only visits these far-off locations once, but these missions are longer, and more action-platforming focused. They even squeeze in plenty of time to play as Daxter in these missions, making the teamwork of the two during these missions give it a little more of a grander scope. It’s like the Mar’s Tomb section in Jak II, one of my favorite sections from the second game.

One common change a third entry will implement is a focus on accessibility. This is either a conscious decision by the developers to garner a wider audience, or it comes naturally with the ample opportunity to improve the gameplay mechanics by the third game. Naughty Dog took the incredibly steep difficulty curve of Jak II into consideration and decided to make the next entry a much smoother experience. The checkpoints during missions are much more liberally placed, Jak periodically gains armor that allows him to sustain more damage, and Jak has many more tools at his disposal. All of the gun mods from the second game return, along with two more mods for each of them. The scattergun gets a charged-up beam whose blast radius will take care of any small, grounded enemies and a grenade launcher with plentiful ammo. The additional blaster mods will ricochet off enemies a couple of times and launch a disc that will scatter about 50 blaster ammo at enemies. The Vulcan Fury comes with an electricity mod and one that spurts several tiny, blue homing bullets. The peacemaker has an anti-gravity mode in which enemies will float defenselessly in the air for a while and what is essentially a nuke that makes the RYNO from Ratchet & Clank look like a Playskool toy.

Dark Jak also makes a return with a few new features. Instead of releasing the Dark Jak power all at once for a short period, the eco is stored in a gauge and can be used with any amount of dark eco. Dark Jak can still use the bomb and wave to clear rooms of enemies. Dark strike and dark invisibility are moves that Jak obtains through the course of the story. They are mainly used in platforming sections outside of the hub-worlds. I think these moves were implemented because Dark Jak was so underutilized in the previous game. It gives the player more reason to use Dark Jak, but these sections feel shoehorned. An entirely new feature in Jak 3 is Light Jak. After visiting the monk temple in the desert, a precursor shines a light on Jak. He erupts with a burst of light, encapsulating him in a blue-hued, incandescent glow. Light Jak is angelic while Dark Jak is beastly; the ying to Dark Jak’s yang is further represented by the gauges in the bottom left corner of the screen. Light Jak is triggered by the same button as Dark Jak, but the L2 trigger coincides with another button to activate a specific Light Jak power. Light Jak can heal himself, briefly stop time, use an energy shield, and fly. Like Dark Jak, Light Jak is poorly implemented as they are only really needed for certain platforming sections. The only Light Jak move that is useful in most cases is the heal option.

These new features collectively make for a less aggravating experience than Jak II, but the game is far too easy. This might be because I’ve replayed Jak II a staggering amount of times, but I don’t find the game to be the grueling affair that some people make it out to be. It’s consistently a fair challenge that could have had a less sporadic difficulty curve. The water slums mission can still fuck right off, though. Having all the weapons available to you in Jak 3 sure would’ve been helpful during that mission. Being a little too helpful is exactly the issue in Jak 3. Twelve different weapons with plentiful ammo and a massive power range trivialize the combat. Each gun mod serves its unique utility in the second game, and it’s really all you need. All of these new weapons are a blast to use, but not very many of the missions really stood out to me because they were such a breeze to get through. A couple of shots from the bouncing blaster mod doubled with the spin kick are almost guaranteed to wipe out every enemy on screen in seconds. It makes me wonder why anyone would use the regular blaster or any other base mods from the second game here. Dark Jak is also rendered useless in combat because of these superweapons. I didn’t use Dark Jak very often in Jak II, but it was always useful in a pinch. Those hectic moments where Dark Jak would be useful can be resolved with any of these weapons. This is also keeping in mind that Jak can heal himself with any amount of light eco, trivializing the difficulty even more. Easing the difficulty of the previous game is a common point of accessibility that makes many sequels less savory. Some may argue it’s better than struggling with the missions in Jak II, but that struggle made the game far more engaging. Implementing these new features backfired on Naughty Dog as the dark and light Jak are still poorly utilized in combat. Besides the healing mechanic, I suppose introducing Light Jak is pertinent to Jak’s progression as a character.

Most of the familiar faces from Jak II return in the sequel exactly how they were in the previous game. Jak is still the angsty, motivated young man he was in Jak II, and Daxter is still the wise-cracking comic relief. The supporting characters are still the same, but some lead in different positions. Ashelin has replaced her father as the leader of Haven City, Torn is the commander of the squad of soldiers defending the city, and characters like Samos and Onin are doing what they can to support the fight to defend Haven City. . The only character that is different this time around is Keira. Apparently, her voice actor quit, so they hired Tara Strong to do her voice along with a new character. She isn’t her perky self in this game as she is relegated to coyly standing around in the background with a few arbitrary lines that remind us that she still exists, which is a real shame. Her lack of a presence in this game also gives way to Ashelin being the prime love interest for Jak, erasing any implied romantic connection she had with Torn.

Jak 3 does not treat us to an entirely new cast of eclectic characters like in the previous game, but it does manage to introduce a few new faces. Damas is definitely the most important new character in the game. He is a headstrong, disciplined warrior and a strict leader who rules his city fairly but with a swift code of honor. He is reluctant to bring in Jak and Daxter at first because they are from Haven City but soon comes to Jak after Jak proves himself worthy as a wasteland warrior. It’s very reminiscent of Jak proving himself to Torn in the previous game. Damas and Jak discover that they have a lot in common as they start to form a sort of father and son relationship with each other. A secondary character in Spargus is Kleiver, a prime warrior in the city and the curator of all of the wasteland buggies Jak drives. He’s quite portly, looks like he reeks of body odor, and looks at every threat the wasteland has with a chuckle and a grin. He doesn’t serve much purpose in the grand scheme of the story, but his banter with Jak and Daxter is entertaining. A more unique new character is Seem, an androgynous monk living in Spargus. Seem is a stoic, serious being that gives insight into the arcane precursor forces at work. He/she also underestimates Jak and Daxter at first but comes around to them like everyone else.

There is also a new villain stinking up the bureaucratic forces in Haven City. Count Veger is the head of the judicial council of Haven City and the man who sentences Jak to a dry, sandy grave at the story's beginning. We’re supposed to pretend like we’ve seen this man before as all of the characters seem familiar with him, but anyone who has played Jak II knows that this man was nowhere to be seen. Veger references past events involving himself in the previous games, so I guess he’s not a new official. His main goal is to find the ultimate precursor power hidden deep in the catacombs. He believes this power will make him a god, giving him the power to stop the war in Haven City and reform the world in his own image. He’s another egomaniac with a position of power in Haven City. However, he’s nowhere near as imposing as Baron Praxis was, or even Erol for that matter. The power dynamic has shifted in the favor of Jak and his friends that even a councilman doesn’t pose as much of a threat even if he has the authority to throw people out of the city. Ashelin even dissolves him of his position at some point which ultimately trivializes his role as a threatening villain. He more or less comes off as an annoying inconvenience more than anything else.

The more menacing villains of this game are the darkmakers who fit the role of the lurkers/metalheads as the enemy species Jak fights in great numbers. They only appear near the end of the game, and they are actually pretty formidable due to their shield that can sustain a lot of firepower and their dark orb attack that can do a lot of damage. According to Seem, darkmakers are corrupted, disgraced precursors with a lust for the destruction generated by dark eco. These anti-precursors come with their own set of technology and the most foreboding of which is their darkmaker ship. It’s illuminated in the sky with a purple glow and is the harbinger of doom for any planet across it. Jak’s mission in the game is to stop this ship from destroying the planet using the power of the precursors.

Like in Jak II, Jak 3’s story is divided into three different acts, each one with a different overarching mission making up a whole of the game. The first act is Jak’s banishment to the wasteland and his getting acclimated to the wasteland life of Spargus. At some point, Ashelin comes back and begs Jak to aid them with the war effort in Haven City, but Jak naturally feels betrayed by the city that threw him out like a piece of trash. After gaining his new light powers, Jak, Daxter, and Pecker make their way back to Haven City through a series of old passages designed by Mar. They encounter Veger at the edge of Haven City, who reveals that he destroyed the Baron’s palace to access the catacombs and used Jak as a scapegoat.

The second act is aiding with the war efforts in Haven City. Jak is back to performing odd jobs for Torn and unlocking parts of the city to get Torn back to HQ in the new part of Haven City. In the process, you learn who the real antagonist of Jak 3 is. After colliding into a dozen huge barrels of dark eco and meeting his untimely demise, Erol has apparently been resurrected like Darth Vader. He’s now part cyborg and hell-bent on destroying the planet. Somehow, he’s in control of the KG bots, the metalheads, and the darkmaker armies and is rallying all of them to further the destruction of Haven City and the entire world. I much preferred Erol as Jak’s sadistic rival in the second game than as a diabolical, inhuman world-destroyer in this game. His multi-faceted role is reduced to the common comic-book villain trope we’ve seen so many before, even in the first game with Gol and Maia. Perhaps Erol is using this position of unspeakable power as a means to match Jak’s new god-like abilities, sparking up the rivalry to a greater degree. Either or, Jak fights him at the end of the second act in the floating KG factory.

The third act is a race to the necessary units needed to unlock the path to the catacombs. On the way there, Jak calls Damas to escort him down the ruins of Haven City. A catapulted fireball hits the vehicle, and it flips over. Jak and Daxter are fine, but Damas is crushed under the weight of it. In his last dying breath, Damas tells Jak to find his son Mar in Haven City, where Jak realizes that he is referring to the young Jak from the second game and that Damas is his father. It’s a cliche moment, but it is touching given the relationship Jak and Damas formed throughout the game. It’s also given plenty of foreshadowing, making the revelation believable. Damas used to be the leader of Haven City. Up until the reign of Baron Praxis, the leaders used to be heirs of Mar, which we already knew Jak was. Veger catches up with them to tell Jak that he was the reason he was separated from Damas as a child and mocks this revelation like a total assface. They both race to the catacombs.

The following moment pisses off most of the fans, myself included. Jak, Daxter, and Veger all make their way to the depths of the catacombs to find the center of the precursors. All of this biblical pondering about these phenomenal beings for three long games and our heroes (and Veger) find out exactly what they are...three ottsels doing a Wizard of Oz routine. Yes. That’s exactly right. The most powerful beings in the universe, the gods who created the universe are three orange, scrappy rats just like Daxter. Apparently, turning into one was Daxter’s own heroic destiny explaining why the dark eco pool didn’t kill him, which is good to know, I guess. Veger also transforms into one after being “blessed” with the precursor's light. Is this supposed to be a joke? We’ve spent all this time marveling at the superbly immaculate technology and rich, magnificent lore of the precursors, and they’re all tiny rodents? Is this taking inspiration from The Holy Mountain, in which searching too deeply for spirituality and using it to transcend our being turns out to be a farce? Some fans are keen on treating this as a joke and think this reveal is brilliant, but I’m in the other camp who feels like I got slapped in the face. This reveals practically ruins all of the mystic elements that make the lore and background of these games interesting and unique. The precursor lore is tying the integrity of all of these radically different games together as a cohesive trilogy, and to just sweep the rug under us is just insulting.

Anyways, Jak destroys the darkmaker ship and has a final showdown with Erol, who is piloting a gigantic darkmaker walker in the desert. Jak uses the Sand Shark to blast off the kneecaps of the walker and then climbs it to fight face to face with it. It’s by far the easiest final battle of the trilogy, but the scale of it is so epic that it doesn’t matter. After destroying it, Jak and Daxter walk back with a confident stride as the desert sand blows on them. Jak also gets some well-deserved tongue action this time, but with Ashelin instead of Keira. The precursors hold a ceremony celebrating Jak and Daxter’s victory, and Sig has taken Damas’s throne as leader of Spargus. The precursors grant Daxter a wish for his coveted pair of ottsel pants, and Tess inadvertently gets transformed into an ottsel in the process. It’s a win-win situation for Daxter. Daxter and Tess try to kiss, but Jak cockblocks Daxter for a change (HA!) as he is off to see the universe with the precursors. He decides against it to stay behind with his friends. I never pegged Jak for the sentimental type.

The first Jak and Daxter game used inspiration from the platformers of the previous generation to make something that surpassed them in a myriad of ways. The second game was built upon the first with a radically new direction inspired by Grand Theft Auto to make a brilliant open-world and platformer hybrid. The third game merely uses the previous two games as its main inspiration, which is common when a series is set in its ways, and the developers have run out of ideas. Jak 3 is guilty of many common practices that third entries often use; accessibility in the form of easing the difficulty, reusing the same settings and characters, and wrapping up the overarching story hastily, in this case, a fucking joke at the expense of the integrity of the game’s lore. Jak 3 is still a great game because its backbone is set by two incredible games, but it’s a meager sequel because it doesn’t offer too much new content and a lot of it feels watered-down compared to the first two games. However, perhaps the way Jak 3 was directed was essential in wrapping up the series. If Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is a wide-eyed childhood, Jak II the bombastic teenage years, Jak 3 is the finer-tuned, post-adolescence adulthood. Jak II was rough, and Jak 3 did buff the cracks to make for a less jarring experience. I subjectively prefer all of those cracks from Jak II, but I can’t deny that Jak 3 did a great job with its refinement. Like the titular character, the game needed a beacon of light in the dark to achieve balance.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

“Punk’s not dead,” a phrase that is scribed on the opening logo of Grasshopper Manufacture, the developers of No More Heroes. This is obviously a reference to the phrase, “punk is dead,” popular sentiment in punk culture popularized in 1978 by the band Crass. This phrase is often used as a means of a self-destruct switch when punk music or punk culture strays too far from its underground, DIY roots. The rebellious and subversive nature of punk rock must not be compromised, or else it loses all of its identity and purpose. Claiming that “punk is dead” is a means of starting anew. Why is this inscribed on the logo of a video game developer? Because Suda 51, the head honcho of Grasshopper Studios, prides himself as a “punk rock video game developer.” One could argue that he’s out of his element here because claiming “punk is not dead” fails to understand the ironic reverence of the common phrase, and therefore, he is merely a poser. Perhaps he is an optimist, claiming that the era of radical ideas across any medium is still prevalent, or at least they should be. He can certainly bolster his auteur credentials, considering the studio's output. Killer7 is one of the most divisive games because of how bizarre it is. However, the phrase “punk is not dead” is not attached to the brand of Grasshopper Studios for Killer7. This is written on the logo of Grasshopper Studios for No More Heroes, Suda 51’s follow-up to Killer7. The reception to No More Heroes wasn’t as mixed as Suda 51’s previous title as it was generally well-received by most outlets. Let’s just humor Suda 51 for a moment and give him credibility as a “punk rock video game developer.” If Killer7 was made to be divisive because Suda 51 refused to sacrifice his uncompromising artistic vision, isn’t toning it down for your next project against the laurels of punk rock? Arguably yes, but there are plenty of elements in No More Heroes that still hold Suda 51’s merits as a subversive, punk rock video game developer.

No More Heroes takes place in a fictional American town called Santa Destroy, a town located in California given the Spanish name and beach shore with palm trees. The game immediately plunges into action as a tall, young man named Travis raids a luxurious mansion and lays waste to the hundreds of suited guards scattered around the place. In the pool area of this estate, an eccentric-looking older man named “Death Metal” muses with Travis about the subjective concept of paradise before he brandishes his giant cleaver and dukes it out with him. Death Metal loses, and Travis hacks him to bits ritualistically. A young Eastern European woman named Sylvia explains that Death Metal was ranked number 10 in a league of assassins, and Travis is killing all of them one by one to become the number one ranked assassin.

I need to make something clear; No More Heroes is not a game with a punk rock soundtrack, nor does it reference any punk rock artists (except for the title, which might be a reference to the song by ‘70s punk band The Stranglers). I am specifically comparing the artistic foundation of No More Heroes to see if it matches a punk rock feel and mindset. Punk rock isn’t just a genre of music or a fashion statement; it’s also an ethos. There is more to punk rock than just playing four chords erratically while bleeding on stage and piercing your genitals with safety pins. This ethos gives credence to the chaotic nature of punk rock. The purpose of it all is to fling a monkey wrench to the status quo, the conventional tactics and sensibilities of society, and the popular art that reflects it. Once punk starts to veer more into popular conventions at the point of Flanderization, “punk is dead” is a claim to start anew like a phoenix rising from the ashes. This mostly pertains to the genre of music, but this ethos can stretch to other facets of art and culture. The artistry of hip hop has always reminded me of punk rock. It comes from an urban environment, and it illustrates the decay of society and culture through subversive music. The punk group that made me consider this punk rock ethos was Suicide, an iconic ‘70s synth-punk group that was so subversive with their instrumentation and delivery that the punks hated them. What’s more punk rock than that? They showed me that punk rock meant more than just what the music was supposed to sound like.

The point of this review isn’t to claim that video games can have subversive qualities. Like any artistic medium, many video games can be categorized as going against the grain. The question is whether Suda 51 can claim “punk’s not dead” with this game. The presentation of No More Heroes is a stylish mesh of pop culture, borrowing from sources ranging from professional wrestling, gritty Frank Miller comics, anime, kung-fu movies, superheroes, etc. These elements mix well into the fabric of this game without being obtrusively referential, giving the game a lot of character. Mixing all of these pop culture elements seamlessly with the violent, degenerative background is reminiscent of work from Quentin Tarantino. Suda 51 is often compared to the famous director, and there are definitely similarities between the two. The blood-soaked lawlessness of Santa Destroy could remind someone of Pulp Fiction and the hoards of uniformed enemies being slaughtered by a sword-like Kill Bill. The characters also have philosophical musings with each other through a vein of pop culture modernity. I don’t think Tarantino is a direct influence of Suda 51, but both men have a similar habit of putting all of their passions in a blender and serving up their special concoction to us. Their eccentric influences tend to overlap. The pastiche nature of both creators reminds me of the make-up of post-punk, a punk rock subgenre that combined a cluster of different influences with a punk ethos. The prefix “post” might connote that it came after punk, but it was a contemporary form of punk at around the same time. The “post” in post-punk is more appropriately postmodernism, a complicated idea/movement in art and literature marked by a sense of subversiveness. It sort of connotes that all progression in art has been accomplished and has lost its relevance, so flippantly using a smattering of them creates something radically new. This is definitely the attitude conveyed in the presentation of No More Heroes. They even add other postmodern staples like breaking the fourth wall. Whether or not Quentin Tarantino is a punk rock director is a debate for another time.

Another subversive choice for this game was the decision for this game to be an exclusive for the Nintendo Wii. Just when the family-friendly console was starting to convince the older generation that video games weren’t machines used to turn children into violent hoodlums, No More Heroes came along to set things back a bit. Putting No More Heroes on the Wii wasn’t just a novel idea to give gamers a more mature alternative for the family-friendly system. The combat in this game fits the Wii’s controls like a glove which comes naturally when your character is brandishing a sword-like weapon. Fortunately, the developers restrained the motion controls for this game. Travis wields his beam katana with the A button, and the motion controls only come into play as an execution move that coincides with a directional swipe. Travis can also execute wrestling moves on stunned enemies as a finishing move. Each directional move for the katana swipes or the wrestling moves is unpredictable and easy to pull off. The developers had a fine grasp on the Wii’s controls and made it one of the smoothest controlling games on the console. In comparison to the shoddy port version for the PS3, the game faltered on a system that was more user-friendly in terms of more mature video games, so the Wii, strangely enough, turned out to be a perfect fit.

Besides being a likely reference to The Stranglers song of the same name, the title also might allude to a certain principle in punk rock. A part of the dogma of punk rock was that the musicians were only an equal playing field as the audience, a “no rock stars” rule. It was supposed to be a refreshing change of humility and authenticity from the popular stadium-filling, larger-than-life rock bands of the 1970s. Once the punk musicians became rock stars, the “punk is dead '' self-destruct switch was pulled, and something else was erected in its place. In No More Heroes, everyone is a degenerate scumbag. Travis himself is absolutely no hero by any stretch of the means. For one, he’s an assassin who makes a living murdering people, batting off any morally questionable incentives for what he does with a cocky swagger. His motivation to become the top-ranked assassin isn’t even for the glory of it, but to have sex with Sylvia. Travis is also a loser who lives in a hotel with his collection of anime figurines and doesn’t have any friends or tangible romantic prospects. He’d be an anti-hero if the hero part of that phrase didn’t give him too much credit.

Travis is just a product of the world he lives in because everyone around him is also a loser. The other assassins highlight this quite well as none of them are exemplary people, nor are they better off than Travis. The bosses in No More Heroes are by far the best aspect of this game as each of them is unique in character and in how they are fought. Destroyman is a caped superhero who moonlights as a mailman. Holly Summers is a bikini-clad woman with many explosives on her side to literally bury you in the sand. Speed Buster is a portly elderly woman who doesn’t technically fight you but blasts her laser cannon at you that is so gigantic that it gives the Death Star laser a run for its money. My favorite fight in this game is Bad Girl, the second to last boss who is Harley Quinn, if Warner Bros stripped off all kid-friendly connections to the Batman franchise. Everything from her conveyor belt that constantly eviscerates guys in gimp masks to her psychotic determination to defeat Travis is utterly deranged and leaves a lasting impression on you. She is also the hardest boss in the game by far.

Similarly to Travis, they are boats with a lot of character, but their roles in the grand scheme of life are ultimately rudderless. They are people who still lack the fundamentals of a prosperous life. Dr. Strange is singing his heart out in a baseball stadium, but the arena is vacant. His greatest longing is also to see his estranged daughter again. Harvey Volodarskii is a talented magician who puts on impressive, albeit morbid magic shows to an audience of only Travis and Sylvia. These bosses remind me of the individualism expressed in the music scene of punk rock. All of these creative, capable people who have the potential to become something larger than life are still undermined, leaning towards the underground subculture of punk rock to express themselves while still being pariahs in the grand scheme of things.

The unfortunate matter is that to unlock all of these spectacular bosses, one has to play through the other portion of this game. Progress in No More Heroes is made by earning money through odd jobs and smaller assassin missions assigned at two different places in the overworld. This portion of the game is incredibly grind intensive and is the majority of it as well. To get to these jobs, Travis has to travel back and forth to the job center and then drive somewhere else where the job is located. Each job, like picking up coconuts, pumping gas, erasing graffiti off of walls, etc., has unique mechanics. Still, their novelty wears off quickly because Travis will have to do these jobs around three to four times to earn enough money for the next boss. The assassination missions aren’t any better as they are brief and come in the same type of variation. I usually chose the mission where Travis fights 100 guys in five minutes because it nets you the most money, but even decapitating guys with a fluorescent bulb wore on me after a while. It doesn’t help that the overworld of Santa Destroy is incredibly drab and lifeless. Every building practically looks the same, and most of them are a standard brown. It’s not a joy to traverse in the slightest. Everything from getting to the sites in Travis’s tricked-out car that doesn’t fit the lay of the land to repeating the same tasks is the pinnacle of the grinding-intensive gameplay that I despise. I don’t even want to buy clothes or training moves for Travis because I know I’ll have to regain that money by doing the odd jobs again. Recalling the punk rock ethos, this might illustrate the DIY ethic that punk musicians grind to support themselves in underground bands. Everything is much harder when you’re sticking it to the man, but experiencing it in a video game is an unnecessary slog.

Once Travis unlocks the #1 ranked assassin, he gets a call from Sylvia’s mother telling him he’s been duped. Sylvia is a con artist who fabricated the league of assassins. To learn why she did this, Travis travels to a far-off land and faces the #1 ranked assassin Darkstar. Darkstar is then split in half by the real #1 assassin, who is none other than his sister Jeane. Apparently, Jeane has just murdered Travis’s parents, and Sylvia hatched the league of assassins as a convoluted revenge plan. Jeane is the final boss of the story and an underwhelming one as well, considering it comes after Bad Girl. Travis executes Jeane after her defeat and doesn’t score with Sylvia. Everything in this game up to this point was all for nothing, giving the player an empty feeling but with good intent. The darker side of the punk rock ethos tends to verge into nihilism, the fact that nothing matters in the grand scheme of things, and the punks illustrate this with their “fuck it” attitude towards the purpose of society. In the career of an assassin, it illustrates that killing is an art form that is soulless and ungratifying. Being ranked #1 at the end of the day didn’t propel Travis’s status in the slightest and didn’t make him invincible. He’s still the same loser he always was, and he’s easily ambushed by another assassin in a vulnerable position at the end of the game. If you collect every beam katana, there is a secret ending with the real final boss, Sir Henry, who robbed you of killing the ranked five assassins earlier in the game. He’s a great boss that capitalizes on your skill with the beam katana. The fight also makes up for fighting Jeane at the end, but it adds a bunch of information to the characters that don’t make any sense. Narratively, the original ending is much better at conveying a message.

If Suda 51 feels his auteur weirdness is ushering in a new wave of punk rock sensibilities in gaming, I think there’s enough evidence in No More Heroes to give him enough credence. Claiming “punk’s not dead” still seems like he’s missing the point, but he doesn’t miss the point with this game. No More Heroes is the ethos of punk rock coming to life in a video game. It accomplishes the nihilistic outlook of punk with the emphasis on individualism and subversiveness that comes with it. As a video game, it was a special gem on the Wii that utilized the console’s motion controls exquisitely and the bosses are consistently some of the best I’ve ever fought in any game. However, the absolute tedium of the open-world odd jobs cannot be forgiven, marring what could’ve been a great game instead of a good one with a unique narrative and characters.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Out of all of the new 3D platformer mascot trilogies on the PS2, Sly Cooper was the underrated one. It could’ve been because Sucker Punch was a new Sony developer with only one game on the N64 under their belts. It could be because Insomniac and Naughty Dog had better fission with each other and kept Sucker Punch out of their friendly, competitive brew-ha-ha. It could be because both companies had more air time with commercials than Sucker Punch (which isn’t true. I knew about Sly Cooper from watching commercials on Cartoon Network at the time, while I heard about the other two series from word of mouth). Sly Cooper didn’t seem like it was in the running against Ratchet and Jak as the supreme 3D platformer mascot at the time, but now we see it as a third of a holy trinity of PS2 series. I grew up loving all three of these PS2 trilogies and saw them as a collective, and that wasn’t just because I played all of them around the same time on the same system. The Sly Cooper trilogy, while not getting as much limelight as the other two series, had as much charm, character, creativity, and stellar presentation as the other two. This level of quality was what tied all three of these series together. I’m glad other people who played these games group, Sly Cooper, in with the other two series in retrospect as I always did. In saying this, one detriment to the Sly Cooper series compared to the other two is that it had the weakest first entry out of the three series. The first Sly Cooper game is not a rough prototype for the rest of the series to have built upon like the first Ratchet & Clank, nor is it a unique entry with its own strengths like the first Jak and Daxter. The first Sly Cooper game is different from the other two in the trilogy. Still, it’s not a case of the developers having to radically change their IP due to the first entry being too exemplary to recreate like the first Jak and Daxter. The first Sly game is a favorite to quite a few people, but I’ve always thought it slightly underwhelming.

A silhouetted figure is running across the rooftops of a city with a French flag and the Eiffel Tower to signify that it’s Paris. The figure shows himself to be Sly Cooper, an anthropomorphic raccoon with blue clothes, a red backpack, and a cane with a golden arch. Once you press start, the game catapults you into the action as Sly radios in his nerdy turtle friend Bently about their operation to steal a book kept in a police vault. The operation goes smoothly until Sly is ambushed by Inspector Carmelita Fox (she’s a fox and a fox. Get it?), who tries to take Sly into custody by force with her shock pistol. Sly makes a quick getaway in his team’s van and gives us some context to who he is and what he just stole. Sly is a master thief from a long line of master thieves specializing in stealing from criminals. The book he stole back is the Thievius Raccoonus, a relic from his family composed of thieving information each member puts in themselves. When Sly was a kid, a group called the Fiendish Five killed his parents and ransacked his house for the book, ripping vital sections for themselves. Sly and his two friends, Bently and Murray, must venture around the world collecting the missing pages of the Thievius Raccoonus and bring the ones responsible for his parent’s death to justice.

The second generation of 3D platformers sure wore their influences on their sleeves. As Jak and Daxter were influenced by Banjo Kazooie, Sly Cooper takes obvious elements from franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Crash Bandicoot. Sly Cooper is a franchise that mixes elements of stealth in the rooted base of a 3D platformer. In Sly Cooper, everything in the environment can be readily used to traverse or as a means of stealth. Sly’s nimbleness allows him to climb up pipes, perch himself onto spires, latch onto hook-like objects with his cane, etc. When he needs to be stealthy, he can sidle against walls, quickly cover himself behind barriers, and even make himself invisible. You can probably imagine Sly controls extremely well, considering all of these different moves he can pull off. If he didn’t control it smoothly, the game would be unplayable. Fortunately, Sly’s versatile move set is backed by buttery smooth controls with an excellent framerate to boost. This is certainly a must for any platformer, but how does it lend to the stealth aspects? Sly will often find himself encountering guards with flashlights that are meant to be snuck around because they have ranged attacks that will home in if he gets caught. There are also yellow security beams scattered everywhere, and if Sly comes into contact with one of them, he’ll trigger an alarm. The beams turn red, and Sly will be incinerated if he contacts them again. Smooth controls for being stealthy are entirely necessary because of these obstacles. Combining stealth elements in a 3D platformer was probably uncommon then, so I’m glad the developers managed to execute both firmly with the controls.

One of the more outstanding aspects of Sly Cooper is its presentation. Sly Cooper is ultimately a franchise with a younger demographic in mind, but that doesn’t mean it has to be sickeningly cute. Sly is stylized as a cartoon with its cel-shaded animation and comic book-like presentation. The tone is rooted in film noir, a choice in the presentation to accentuate Sly’s role as a thief. The introductions of each chapter in this game highlight these presentation aspects wonderfully. Sly narrates the background of each Fiendish Five member like the narration in a noir film, presented with animated comic stills. The intro concludes with a title card with the chapter's name, similar to a noir film, and it could also be like introducing an episode of a cartoon. As far as the Metal Gear Solid influence, the influence isn’t entirely obvious, but it was the pinnacle of the stealth genre at the time. That, and the codex calls between Sly and Bently, talking heads jabbering about secret operations, are very reminiscent of the calls between Otacon and Snake.

The direction in Sly Cooper is more obviously inspired by Crash Bandicoot. Every level is a linear path to get an item, in this case, a key. There are approximately seven levels per hub world, but the hubs are far more intricately designed than the hubs in Crash Bandicoot. Once you get each key per level, Sly can access the area with the boss. Sly also dies in one hit like Crash but can take more damage if he collects a horseshoe that he wears on his red backpack. Sly can also upgrade to a golden horseshoe that allows him to take two hits instead of just one. Horseshoes are readily available in the levels but can also be acquired by collecting 100 coins. This health system is copied and pasted from acquiring 100 wumpa fruit to get Aku Aku as a protector in Crash Bandicoot. Also, the linear platforming levels naturally lend themselves to Crash Bandicoot comparisons. However, I do not think Sly Cooper executes this type of direction as well as in the Crash series. Linear 3D platformers were never my forte, and I’ve always preferred open-world-Esque 3D platformers. The areas of the latter type of games feel much more fleshed out and give substantial weight to the world. I didn’t mind it in the Crash series because everything about that series was simple; thus, the simple, linear level design was warranted. Sly presents us with so much interesting background about the character and his Robin Hood-like persona that it’s a shame the design of the game doesn’t match the same level of intricacy that the presentation does.

The linear level design of Sly Cooper also doesn’t work because the game is too easy. There are some levels in the Crash series that require several accurate maneuvers in jumping, defeating enemies, and getting past obstacles that will take a little while to get past and potentially have you farm lives for insurance. In Sly Cooper’s case, the environment and enemies are designed to be accessible for Sly, plus the more refined controls also help quite a bit. Sly might need one horseshoe to get through a level, but having the golden horseshoe almost guarantees that Sly will easily get through it. Areas that are more focused on stealth can sometimes be tense because Sly can only get hit once, but the game is still lenient with error. The strength of the levels is intertwined with the acrobatics Sly can pull off rather than presenting a substantial challenge. It’s still fun, but I felt much more entranced by the difficulty of Crash Bandicoot than I was by testing out the capabilities of Sly’s moveset.

The levels are still enjoyable because of the variety each hub world presents. Besides effectively catering to Sly’s range of movement, each main level takes place in a different area of the world. I can probably attribute my interest in geography as a kid to playing Sly Cooper because each area is different and geographically dispersed. Besides the obvious location of Paris at the tutorial level, each area is somewhat based on real-world locations. The Welsh coastline is a rainy, craggy graveyard of pirate ships. Mesa City is a discount Las Vegas centered in a dry canyon region of Utah. Haiti (no specific region) capitalizes on the country’s voodoo lore for a spooky level filled with ghosts and witch doctors. China is snowy and mountainous, and everything about this area, from the enemies to the architecture, screams orientalism. Using the unique geography of each of these places is how the developers get away with using the platformer trope of providing different themed areas to keep the game fresh.

Mesa City is a desert area, China is a snow level, and Haiti is a quasi-Halloweeny area. All of these are staples in the platformer genre, but the real-world elements give these areas a substantial identity not only between the levels in the game but in the Sly Cooper franchise. Mesa City has Sly jumping on roulette tables and climbing neon fixtures on rooftops. Haiti has Sly sliding across vines from mammoth-sized swamp monsters, all the while batting at ghosts made of purple ectoplasm. Crash Bandicoot may have offered more of a challenge, but Sly accomplishes something in its level variety. These levels are also encouraged to be searched thoroughly and played more than once because of the bottle clues, the game’s only collectible. Across most levels, around 20-40 bottles will be scattered about that amount to unlocking a code to a vault with a page of the Thievius Raccoonus in it. Many of these pages unlock special moves varying in usefulness, but this collectible gives the player an incentive to explore these levels, and they make sense in the grand scheme of the story as well.

The developers of this game should’ve better centered their focus on achieving variety through different level foregrounds instead of going overboard with it via gimmicky levels. Besides platforming levels, the developers implemented other types of levels in the vein of vehicle levels and mini-games. Some levels have Sly piloting a floating orange cruiser equipped with blaster turrets. The biggest problem with these levels is that there are so many obstacles in Sly’s way, so most of the levels will be tediously blasting away at the hard-wearing obstacles. The mini-game levels involve preventing crabs from stealing treasure, whacking chickens (this level is also a total upset of tone from the Haiti level), and lighting torches with the body grease of piranhas. These mini-games are quick and easy but ultimately pointless. Sometimes, Carmelita will show up and try to subdue you with her shock pistol again. These levels are designed exactly like any normal platforming level, only with pistol blasts in the background. Fortunately for Sly, Carmelita has the aim of a drunk Stormtrooper, so she never poses much of a threat. The absolute worst gimmick levels are the ones with Murray. He’s not utilized as much in this game besides being Sly’s friend and the driver, so I guess the developers implemented him in these levels so you wouldn’t forget about him. Considering what they did, I’d rather be ambivalent towards Murray than be frustrated with him. One gimmick level has Sly protecting Murray as he escorts him through a road with guards coming around corners to whack him. Murray is utterly defenseless, so Sly has a turret gun at the helm to protect him. The difficulty comes from how feeble Murray is matched with shooting Murray on accident. The even worse gimmick levels are the two races. The team van controls like dogshit, and winning is a matter of being fortunate that the CPUs don’t steal the boosts. Platforming as Sly is a strong aspect of this game, and it never gets tiring, so why did the developers overdo it with these gimmicky levels? They should’ve been confident enough with the platforming levels, but the gimmick levels here make it apparent that the developers weren’t confident enough that the platforming levels were enough. The platforming levels are by far the strength of Sly Cooper, and these gimmick levels never prove themselves as welcome additions to the game.

The simplicity of this game also doesn’t bode well with its characters. Sly is naturally the main protagonist being the titular character and all, but all of the other main players are so underutilized that it begs the question as to why they are even there. Bently is the brains of Sly’s gang and the technological master. He’s a man of extraordinary intellect, but we never really get to relish in Bently’s genius. He’s essentially a glorified tutorial as he nasally gives Sly directions to new obstacles the game throws at you (I must get this point out of the way now that it’s mentioned. Throughout every game in the series, Bently will tell you how to execute a move by literally telling Sly the button combination the player has to do. What to do isn’t presented as a text blurb briefly on screen. It’s a voiced line by the characters to “press the circle button” and what not to do a certain move. I didn’t think much of this as a kid, but it irks me as an adult. I can’t tell if this is endearing because of how silly it is or if it pulls me out of the immersion. Is this a fourth-wall-breaking element taken from the Metal Gear Solid series or something? All of these moves are told through codex calls, after all). Sometimes Bently’s cautious nature clashes with Sly’s daring attitude, which is entertaining, but it happens so often that Bently starts to get annoying. I’ve already explained in detail why Murray feels underutilized. Sly even refers to him as a part-time burden in the beginning cutscene, and I’m not sure why the developers decided to make him the player’s part-time burden as well. Carmelita has steamy romantic chemistry with Sly but doesn’t pose much of a threat. Her voice actor also did a terrible job giving her character the passion she’s supposed to have. The voice acting also is a problem for Sly for the same reason. Sly is supposed to be cool and confident, but his voice actor puts it on a little too thick, and he sounds emotionless. He approaches each Fiendish Five member so nonchalantly that it’s almost like they didn’t kill his parents or anything.

The members of the Fiendish Five are a colorful crew of baddies that are also each level’s final boss. Each offers unique fights and serves a unique purpose in the gang. Raleigh is a bourgeois frog turned pirate who is the tech worker of the Fiendish Five. Muggshot is the dim-witted, gangster-inspired muscle of the gang. Mz. Ruby is a mystical supernatural worker, and the Panda King is the disenfranchised demolitions expert. They are all also a bit underwhelming in certain aspects. They are presented like the bosses in Crash Bandicoot, animal bosses with their own gimmicks one has to exploit to defeat them. The bosses in Crash Bandicoot are fine because the game is so simple. Still, Sly Cooper introduces us to these bosses with so much exposition with their own levels surrounding their personas that their encounters feel so anticlimactic. All of these fights are also incredibly easy, with Mz. Ruby’s fight is an unexceptional exception due to the broken rhythm-game gimmick.

Then there’s the fifth member of the Fiendish Five: Clockwerk, a giant menacing, mechanical owl fueled by his hatred for the Cooper Gang. Unlike the other members of the Fiendish Five, ripping up the Thievius Raccoonus was directly motivated by relinquishing the Cooper legacy, or so he thought. The final act up to Clockwerk is all climax as Sly, and the gang utilizes their talents to their fullest. Murray drives up to the volcano's peak in the van with Sly, clearing explosive ordinances and debris off the path. He then clears away monstrous, volcanic blobs to get Sly inside of the heart of Clockwerk’s lair. Bently then has to save Sly after he falls into one of Clockwerk’s traps by hacking the mainframe. It’s nice that Bently finally gets to shine, but it feels uneven implementing something new in the game's climax. The player then plays as Carmelita of all characters and helps Sly climb further up the volcano to face Clockwerk. Clockwerk is not an anti-climactic fight like the others. He makes his gigantic presence known with more exposition, detailing his hatred for Sly and his family. His fight is in three acts without checkpoints, so you know this final fight means business. The first two acts involve shooting at him with Carmelita’s weaponized jetpack, in which Carmelita exposes weaknesses in Clockwerk’s armor with shock pistol blasts. The real struggle here is maneuvering the jetpack with inverted PS2 controls. As Clockwerk plunges into the lava, Sly has to get past tons of laser security to make it to Clockwerk’s head to deal the final blows. Once the fight is done, the remnants of Clockwerk simmer in the lava, and Carmelita foolishly gives Sly a five-second head start before she tries to arrest him. He uses that opportunity to cuff her to the molten rock and make a getaway with his friends. That’s a real dick move, Sly. The malevolent menace Clockwerk is dead, and all's right with the world...or is it? (there is a cutscene after the credits with Clockwerk’s eyeball flashing, indicating that he’s not dead. You’d have to see this for the full impact of what I’m alluding to).

The Sly Cooper trilogy on the PS2 was one of my favorite series growing up and was an exemplary new 3D platformer IP worthy of being grouped with Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter. As for the first game of the series, the aspects that underwhelmed me as a kid still persist into adulthood. The first entry of this series feels like an incredible premise undermined by its simplistic, Crash Bandicoot-inspired direction. Don’t get me wrong, I like Crash Bandicoot just fine. The simple elements of that series serve it quite well. However, I feel like the Sly Cooper series had more depth and intrigue with its characters and its story. What is presented here is a 3D platformer that plays well with some great, varied levels mixed in with some dumb gimmicks. It feels more rooted in the more rudimentary 3D platformers of the previous generation than progressing with the other second-generation platformers. The full potential of the series wouldn’t come into full form just yet, so the first game always feels like it’s a league below the sequels.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Adapting and interpreting the works of H.P. Lovecraft is very hard to do. The sub-genre of cosmic horror has been present in art and entertainment for well over a century now, but it doesn’t seem like too many people have a grasp on what it is. Cosmic horror is commonly defined as the “fear of the unknown”, incomprehensible terrors coming to light for mere, mortal beings like us humans. The form of horror frames man’s pitiful, insignificant existence by juxtaposing it with the grand scope of the horrific cosmic forces. It’s more in-depth than just presenting monsters as obstacles for the human protagonists to tackle. Perhaps adapting cosmic horror into other mediums is difficult because it’s difficult to convey in more visual mediums. The existential dread highlighted in the passages Lovecraft forces the reader to visualize the horror for themselves, causing the reader to experience feelings of insignificance by proxy. In a visual medium, the terrors are presented as scary, alien monsters with no context of what they are supposed to represent. Lovecraftian horror is more about presentation and direction rather than visuals. There have to be layers of substantial inquietude underneath the eldritch beasts on the surface. The medium of film has always had trouble conveying this because films are shorter than novels and have to present themselves more concisely. They can’t take the same time to develop the grand scale that Lovecraftian horror has. Video games, on the other hand, are a more visual medium that doesn’t have the same problem. Video games can take the time to establish the Lovecraftian tone and offer a richer experience that more thoroughly reflects the themes in Lovecraft’s works. Lovecraftian horror also tends to be more esoteric and ambiguous by nature, so what better developer to adapt a Lovecraftian video game than FromSoft, the creators of the esoteric and challenging Souls series?

Bloodborne is the fourth game developed by FromSoft since they started branding their own style of action RPGs starting with Demon’s Souls in 2009. Though it is not part of the Souls series, Bloodborne is so heavily intertwined with the Souls games that the franchise is now referred to as “Soulsborne” to include Bloodborne in the canon of Souls games. Bloodborne is essentially Dark Souls in a different setting with slightly different gameplay mechanics. There is something about Bloodborne that elevates its status from the other FromSoft games besides its aesthetic and technical differences. Bloodborne holds a special place in the hearts of many gamers, myself included. It’s a grand achievement in many aspects. It is arguably the best Souls game there is, it magnificently captures the essence of a Lovecraftian work in a visual medium, and it was the game that restored my hope for the video game industry.

I’ll start the last point with a little bit of context: for a hefty chunk of my life, I was a tad averse to modern triple-A titles. The new industry trends during the seventh generation of gaming, like the casual gamer market, the centralized focus of multiplayer, online experience, and microtransactions, left me disenfranchised with modern gaming. When the eighth-generation consoles came out, I was a bit apathetic. I was only interested in games from my childhood, experiencing older games that I missed out on, and modern indie games that either emulated elements from older titles or offered a less streamlined experience. I only bought a Wii U out of the obligation to get the newest Super Smash Bros. In 2016, I got a PS4 for cheap and laid in my room as a dormant paperweight for about a year and a half. In 2017, I started attending a university and got my own apartment with a roommate who also had a PS4 with about a dozen games. I brought mine up there to sample his titles, and one of them was Bloodborne. I knew the Souls games' reputation and was eager to try one. My roommate warned me about Bloodborne and its infamously high level of difficulty in a condescending fashion as if all I had played up to that point was Nintendogs or some shit. I confidently ignored his fair warning and ran head-first into my first Souls experience.

It’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly made me fall in love with Bloodborne to renew my faith in gaming. I remember my first experience with the game involved a fair bit of struggling, but not to the extent of what my roommate thought I was going to experience. The combat wasn’t the initial point of strain as I quickly became comfortable with my weapon and plowed through the corrupted denizens of Yharnam. The control in Bloodborne felt so organic that I acclimated to it very quickly, making it easy to kill the mobs of enemies. I never felt like the combat was extremely inaccessible to the player, nor did I get the impression that this game had a steep learning curve. Saying that the combat in this game was “tough but fair” is a cliche, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it. The combat demands a fair amount of skill and acuity from the player, but not to the point of using difficulty as an unfair novelty to see what the player will endure. Whether the Yharnamites were meeting their end with my blade or tearing me to pieces, I never felt like the game relished in sadistically brutalizing the player. On the other end of the spectrum, Bloodborne never held my hand across Yharnam like a fretting parent. It felt refreshing to experience a modern game with so much organic control that didn’t condescend towards the player’s innate abilities.

It wasn’t until I came across a bridge with two lycanthropes that the combat difficulty started to affect me. These two beasts were too menacing to deal with in that proximity, and I died numerous times attempting to get past them with a fight. It didn’t help that I expected to see another lantern in this level after a long trek through Central Yharnam because I didn’t understand how the layout of a Souls game worked yet. I kept enduring the lengthy path to get here just to die at the monstrous claws of the lycanthropes again and again. After being frustrated with the game, I decided there must be another way around this obstacle. In doing this, I discovered many brilliant things about Bloodborne’s level design. I found another passageway at the other end of the bridge obscured by breakable backdrop objects like coffins and wooden barrels. This took me to another area of Central Yharnam, seemingly removed from the path I was taking that led me to the bridge. It wasn’t a dead-end but a different route that took me to the first main boss of the game. I also found an elevator around the bend that took me back to the first lantern at the beginning, a heavy relief after attempting to trek all the way through the level without any respite. In discovering this, I was in awe of the layered design of Central Yharnam. It encourages players to meticulously explore the world and find solutions in places that don’t seem as obvious as the beaten path. The long, arduous expedition of Central Yharnam was rewarded by giving me a shortcut to the spawn point, feeling as if I unraveled the level. It felt much more satisfying than bolting through the level like a race to the finish. The game also presents the player with more than one route when an obstacle becomes too daunting to tackle. All of this is very reminiscent of a Metroidvania-like design philosophy which is one of my favorite methods of game design. It was nice to see that the developers took more from Castlevania than just an aesthetic influence. I was also incredibly impressed that they could execute this concisely in a 3D space, something seldom seen in gaming.

The enemies and bosses in Bloodborne were the icings on a cake that solidified my adoration for this game. In most of the modern triple-A games I was familiar with at the time, the enemies were carbon copies of one another, and bosses were either entirely absent or glaringly obvious to defeat. Nothing in Bloodborne is obvious, including the enemies and the bosses, another aspect that made the game so invigorating. While the game has some standard enemies like the gangly, pitchfork, and machete-wielding villagers, each area introduces new ones to keep the players on their toes. These enemies can range in size, power, numbers, etc., and in Dark Souls fashion, the unassuming foes can be as dangerous as the gigantic ones. The bosses in this game are a real treat. The inspiration of HP Lovecraft naturally gives the developers leeway to design some pretty intimidating, eldritch beasts. Some of these bosses proved to be quite challenging, but dying to them did not vex me because each of them was magnificent. I’d sometimes speed through a level just to get at the chance to conquer the next boss.

Since being impressed and enthralled by my initial Bloodborne experience, I have played through every other Soulsborne game (except for Demon’s Souls for a lack of a PS3). I now have the insight to compare Bloodborne to the other FromSoft games. Even though the first Dark Souls is my favorite due to its world design and game progression, Bloodborne is still a very close second favorite for me. I’d still argue that Bloodborne is objectively the best Soulsborne game due to its superior mechanics. It took the principles of Dark Souls and sanded out the rough edges without compromising on the substantial qualities of the series. Bloodborne is, in essence, a translation of the Souls series. It has the same properties as Dark Souls, but all of these have been shifted to fit the gothic foreground of Bloodborne. The change in setting is an obvious shift from the middle-ages-inspired Dark Souls, but plenty of other aspects have been shifted to make Bloodborne discernible from Dark Souls. Many of these aspects elevate Bloodborne from the rest of the FromSoft games.

Bloodborne is a much more visceral experience than Dark Souls. No longer are we hacking up languished hollows and dragons. The ravenous villagers and arcane beings in Bloodborne are much more aggressive. You have to match their aggression to survive the onslaught of eldritch terrors. Your character can’t just wait to strike and block attacks with a shield. The game even gives you a wooden shield that shatters after using it once to lull you into a false sense of Dark Souls familiarity. It reminds veteran Souls players that this isn’t Dark Souls and Bloodborne has something new to offer that will take some time to get accustomed to. Your character in Bloodborne is much more agile, opting for a dash move instead of a roll to fit the swift combat. A new feature allows the player to restore lost health by striking enemies, which gives the player incentive to be more aggressive. The backstab move involves using a charged strike to put the enemy in a vulnerable kneeled position which is then followed up by what is referred to as a “visceral attack”. Your character plunges their hand into the enemy and then blows them back upon exiting, resulting in a pulpy, coagulated mess of blood. Another way to initiate this visceral attack is reposting Bloodborne's version of parrying. Using a shield is out of the question, so Bloodborne proposes that the player blowback the scourges of Yharnam with a gun. From a distance, you can use the gun in your left hand to time a shot when an enemy is about to attack, rendering him vulnerable in the familiar kneeled stance. Reposting is by far the superior method of blocking the enemy’s attacks. It’s much easier to do than parrying with a shield, but it still requires the same precision. I avoid parrying in Dark Souls like the plague, but reposting is second nature. Reposting also compliments the faster-paced gameplay Bloodborne offers.

If the enemies in Bloodborne don’t force you to be aggressive, the bosses certainly will. Dark Souls bosses will make you consider the best tactics to defeat them, but the bosses in Bloodborne will mop the floor with you if you don’t act quickly. I can’t imagine bosses like the frantic Darkbeast Paarl or the feral Blood-Starved Beast in a slower-paced game like Dark Souls. Their movement is so erratic that there wouldn’t even be a window to block their attacks with a shield. Bloodborne bosses also have second waves after downing a certain amount of their health. These are meant to throw you for a loop even after you pin down their unpredictable windows of opportunity. Every boss fight is a chaotic, heart-thumping duel that will have you exhausted by the end of it. While these bosses require more vigor to overcome than the calculated methods of victory in Dark Souls, Bloodborne offers the most consistent array of foes out of every FromSoft game. Each boss is totally unique, and they come in a variety of sizes and forms. These bosses were more varied than the tired, sword-wielding bosses in Dark Souls and better considered than the reskinned bosses littered in the Souls games.

I’d have a difficult time trying to determine which magnificent, eldritch beast I enjoyed vanquishing the most. Rom’s fight occurs entirely while walking on the water of a remote, gorgeous lake illuminated by the moon. The One Reborn is a grotesque pile of corpses that is quite literally shat out by the moon. Amygdala and Ebrietas’s designs are more reminiscent of the arcane monsters from the Lovecraft lore. My favorite fight is the Shadows of Yharnam, a gank boss between three ringwraiths at the end of the Forbidden Woods. This fight is as well-balanced as Ornstein and Smough from Dark Souls 1, with each ringwraith having different moves complementing one another. Their foggy entrance into the arena is also effectively ominous. The main criticism I have with the bosses of Bloodborne is that the difficulty curve of these fights is the most inconsistent out of every FromSoft game. Father Gascoigne is the first main boss of this game and his hectic swipes with an axe and relentless second form make him one of the hardest fights in the game. On the other hand, Mergo’s Wet Nurse can potentially be the last boss in the game, but she’s slow and predictable. The range of difficulty is dispersed so unevenly.

Bloodborne’s inspiration doesn’t stop at the Lovecraftian themes. The kingdom of Yharnam takes inspiration from a bevy of gothic influences. The city's architecture is towering and brooding with stained glass windows, pointed arches, and ornate decorations. The moon has a heavy presence at every point of the game, and its color even signifies the worsening condition of Yharnam. Cemeteries, cathedrals, and dark forests are common areas. The game is so gothic that the statues along the architecture are weeping, which I think is a little much. The game also retains a very Anglo influence like Dark Souls, but the influence stemmed from Mary Shelley and John Keats rather than Chaucer and Beowulf. Bloodborne isn’t directly set during Victorian England, but the gothic nature matched with the clothes and technology sort of leads people to assume that it is. The urban environments of Yharnam look like the foggy streets of London that Jack the Ripper used to prowl. Yharnam is utterly sublime and always has a foreboding, bewitching atmosphere. Yharnam may not have the same seamless world that won me over in Dark Souls 1, but there are still plenty of consistent paths that cross over each other. I was pretty impressed that a hidden route in the Forbidden Woods took me all the way back to Iosefka’s clinic. The strength of Bloodborne’s world is in the quality of each individual level. They are all intricate in their design and are discernable from one another. None of the levels suffer from seeming unfinished, nor do they piss me off like some individual levels in Dark Souls 1. The closest exception is the Upper Cathedral Ward, a calamitously dim area with incredibly narrow hallways littered with some of the worst enemies in the game. Invest in a torch. The stand-out level for me is Cainhurst, the be-all, end-all of gothic castles. The level is so grandiose that you need an invitation to go there, like attending a gallant ball in a Jane Austen novel.

Many of the names of familiar properties from Dark Souls have been shifted to fit the “blood” moniker of Bloodborne. Souls are now referred to as “blood echoes”, titanite shards are “bloodstones”, estus flasks are “blood vials,” etc. Homogenizing these properties with a singular word is probably used to distance the Dark Souls roots from Bloodborne. Still, it could also indicate simplifying some convoluted aspects of Dark Souls. The many builds and play styles one can use in Dark Souls are streamlined in Bloodborne as a singular hunter class, but this doesn’t mean the combat is limited. There are many weapons, including swords, axes, greatswords, and even whips (calling back a possible Castlevania influence). Instead of finding a smattering of different materials for these weapons, they all level up with bloodstones, increasing in size as the weapon gets stronger. The Victorian garb still has protective attributes, but I wouldn’t consider any of these clothing items to be like the armor in Dark Souls. You can’t upgrade the clothing, and none of it will weigh you down. The rare weapons can also be bought at the vendor in Hunter’s Dream instead of having to scrounge around for them. Some might argue that this more streamlined approach to character and weapon building is for cheap accessibility, but I choose to think of it more optimistically. Bloodborne translated these build aspects and filtered out the convoluted tedium.

Not all of these translations are exceptional. While Bloodborne excels in delivering a finer-tuned Souls experience, it also adds plenty of tedium that wasn’t present in Dark Souls. In Bloodborne, the bonfires have been shifted into eerily lit lanterns. The issue is that these lanterns do not function the same way the bonfires do. Interacting with these lanterns will automatically take you to an area called The Hunter’s Dream, an isolated realm covered with white lilies and crocuses with gravestones erected symmetrically along a paved path with a quaint, Victorian manor on the top of a hill. The Hunter’s Dream is similar to the Firelink Shrine from the Souls games in that it acts as a sort of comfortable refuge from the unrelenting world around you. Due to the sublime design and ethereal atmosphere, I’d say the Hunter’s Dream is the best respite area across all of the FromSoft games, next to the Firelink Shrine from Dark Souls 1. I would be confident with this claim if I wasn’t forced to visit The Hunter’s Dream so often during the game. The ability to travel between the lanterns is available right at the start, accessed through the gravestones on the right of the path that goes up to the manor. The problem is that The Hunter’s Dream is the sole passage between each lantern. You can’t rest at a lantern but only teleport between them through the gravestones in The Hunter’s Dream. I’d be more critical of this method of traveling if The Hunter’s Dream wasn’t the hub for everything in this game, giving the place a great deal of utility. Similar to Dark Souls II, a cloaked female character upgrades your stats after speaking with her. In Bloodborne, this figure is a pale doll that sits on a stoop at the bottom of the manor. The manor also has a workbench to repair one’s equipment and upgrade weapons. It fills its role as a hub splendidly, but I much prefer being able to teleport between checkpoints without going to a hub. It doesn’t help that the loading screens in Bloodborne are abysmally long, so traveling between the hub and another lantern can sometimes be grueling.

The health system has been changed to healing items called blood vials. These will restore about 40% of your maximum health, and you can hold up to 20 of them at a time. Unlike the estus system in Dark Souls, blood vials are treated as items the player has to accumulate by either pillaging them from enemies or buying them in the Hunter’s Dream. If you die or reawaken in another place, the number of blood vials will return to the maximum. This is only if you have a number over the limit as insurance. Blood vials are not a rare item as enemies like the giant executioners, villagers, and giant pigs will drop a number of them. Exhausting your blood vial count happens often, and rebuilding your blood vial inventory requires killing multiple enemies that drop them or farming for blood echoes. Either tactic requires a hefty amount of grinding, which I’m not particularly a fan of. One would think the blood vials wouldn’t be an item like the antidotes or pebbles because they are relegated to their own button, but they are just as finite. The healing power of the blood vials can’t be upgraded like the estus flasks, so you use quite a few at once. This usually results in having you grind every so often to restock on blood vials which is something I never enjoyed doing.

In The Hunter’s Dream, there is another array of gravestones located on the opposite side of the teleporting ones. These gravestones will transport you to the chalice dungeons, the most grind-intensive aspect of Bloodborne. In the chalice dungeons, Bloodborne adopts a dungeon-crawler approach as you’ll navigate maze-like, gossamer-filled hallways with a boss at the end. Some bosses are completely new, and some are harder versions of bosses from the base game. I’m told that these new bosses are some of the hardest in the game, but I can’t share their frustration because I decided to tackle the chalice dungeons on NG+2, and the difficulty of NG+ doesn’t stack in the chalice dungeons. I strongly recommend doing these on an NG+ run, by the way. Even in doing this, the chalice dungeons are a long slog. The sublime, sprawling landscapes of Yharnam are reduced to claustrophobic mazes which are tedious to the senses. Even more tedious are the rituals needed to conduct the means to enter these dungeons. The specific materials needed come with a long checklist. Some of these items are common, but the scarce ones will have you flipping over every nook and cranny in Yharnam like a madman. The relieving thing about these chalice dungeons is that they are completely optional. At the end of the last one, the Pthumerian Queen, who you might recognize from the base game, is a secret boss, and defeating her wins you a gold PSN trophy. Unless you are a completionist, don’t bother with the chalice dungeons.

The chalice dungeons are a great source of the game’s lore, but you wouldn’t know that just by playing through them. Bloodborne adopts the same subtle, esoteric method of telling its narrative just like Dark Souls. In fact, the narrative in Bloodborne is presented in an even more oblique manner than in Dark Souls. Bloodborne is not a melancholy journey marked by despair but a living nightmare marked by madness. The thin veil between dream and reality is never clear and becomes even more distorted as you progress through it. This veil is illustrated in the first cutscene as the player is greeted by a man in a top hat to sign a contract and begin a “transfusion” in a hazy stupor. This cutscene turns into a sleep paralysis terror as you are approached by a bloody lycanthrope and a group of small, boney creatures with shark teeth. Once you get to the Hunter’s Dream for the first time, the man from the first cutscene sits in the manor on the hill in a wheelchair. This is Gehrman, the creator of the Hunter’s Dream. He explains that you have been assigned to the duty of a hunter, a person responsible for ridding Yharnam of the scourge that plagues it like he once was long ago. You fulfill your duties on the streets of Central Yharnam, slicing up the corrupted villagers.

After venturing through the Forbidden Woods, you come across a remote college set along a tranquil lake. This is Byrgenwerth, a prestigious place of learning and the establishment where the madness started. Master Willem, the founder of Byrgenwerth, discovered traces of blood from god-like beings known as the “great ones” in the Pthumerian caverns below. He founded Byrgernwerth to further the research on the findings and gain insight into them. Another scholar named Laurence has different plans for the great one's blood. He felt that Willem was underutilizing the blood and that it could be used to not only cure diseases but transcend one’s being into a potential god. Laurence founded the College of Mensis to combat Willem’s ideals and founded the Healing Church to test his hypothesis about blood. Thousands of people came to seek the blood for ailments, and while it cured their diseases, it turned them into horrifying abominations. Once this got out of hand, hunters started gathering to purge Yharnam of the mistakes that Laurence made. You encounter Willem at the edge of Byrgenwerth, now a decrepit old man who doesn’t even have the strength to lift his scepter or utter a single word. His state of elderly decay makes an interesting point for transcending the human form. At least the beasts are mobile.

After defeating Rom under the lake in Byrgenwerth, the moon changes into an ominous, splotchy orange color to signify that the nightmare is only furthering. Once you arrive in Yhar’ghul, you get a taste of it. Beasts that look like Chtutulu are scaling the gothic walls, and the villagers are even less tied to their humanity than before. This is the true extent of the madness uncovered by defeating Rom. You then come across the School of Mensis, the rivaling college established by members of the Healing Church. This place grants access to two different places, the Nightmare Frontier and the Nightmare of Mensis. Both of these places are even further removed from the world of Yharnam and signify a further descent into the nightmare. The Nightmare Frontier is a poison lake on a cliff where you fight Amygdala, one of the aptly named creatures that appear after the moon becomes blood-red, signifying the more substantial fear of furthering the nightmare. The Nightmare of Mensis is the most harrowing place in Bloodborne. It’s a gothic castle along a cliffside that looks more sinister than the blood-red moon, and it’s filled to the brim with Winter Lanterns, enemies that strike terror in the hearts of every Bloodborne player. In this gothic loft lies Micolash, a follower of Laurence and the host of the nightmare, allegedly. His unconventional boss fight is supposed to signify his state of madness from tampering with the great one’s blood, but it turns out to be the most aggravating fight in the game.

Once Micolash is slain, you must make it to the peak of the loft to fight Mergo’s Wet Nurse. Mergos is allegedly the child of the Pthumerian Queen and one of the great ones, making him a vessel between god and man. The nightmare has been slain, and you are transported back to The Hunter’s Dream. Three different endings can occur here. The first and easiest one is for Gherman to kill you, ending the nightmare for yourself. If you refuse his offer to kill you, Gherman is the final boss (and a much better one than Mergo’s Wet Nurse). After you defeat him, the Moon Presence descends upon you and gives you Gherman’s role as the Old Hunter, a cyclical ending that mirrors rekindling the flame in Dark Souls. The third, true ending is the more complicated one. After defeating Rom, the blood moon impregnates Iosefka and Arianna, a prostitute taking refuge in the Cathedral Ward. These immaculate conceptions are apparently surrogacies for the great ones. You have to kill Iosefka, kill Arianna’s Eraserhead baby, and kill Mergo’s Wet Nurse to receive three umbilical cords, remnants from the unborn children of the great ones. To get the true ending, you must consume all three of these before fighting Gherman, something I did not know in my first playthrough. Doing this will trigger a fight between you and the Moon Presence. After defeating him, you turn into what is allegedly a great one, a cosmic reward for defeating what was likely the paleblood alluded to in the beginning. It looks like a fucking squid.

The story of Bloodborne is essentially madness. It’s much more convoluted and has way more branches than the story in Dark Souls. There are so many ties to the lore, and discussing them in great detail would become a word-vomit, clusterfuck. The lore of this game is so rich and multifaceted that FromSoft should issue something like the Silmarillion to make sense of every facet of the game. The base of the lore that explains the blood-fueled plague is a cautionary tale about playing with forces beyond our comprehension. Laurence played god, and everyone suffered because of it. It probably also alludes to a class division in Yharnam, with the educated, aristocratic types in Byrgenwerth callously experimenting on the lower class. The pandemonium catching up with them is like karmic retribution, telling how catastrophic the plague has become.

Bloodborne is not an adaptation of an HP Lovecraft story, nor is it a Lovecraft pastiche. There are plenty of references to Lovecraft’s stories, such as the surrogacies from The Dunwich Horror, but none of these are directly tied back to the mythos of Lovecraft. The paper-thin narrative in Bloodborne aids the subtle nature of a Lovecraftian tale. Still, I think there is something else even more subtle in Bloodborne that gives it more clemency as a Lovecraftian horror work. There is a minor mechanic in Bloodborne called insight. In the game, it functions similarly to humanity from Dark Souls in that you can use it to summon partners to aid you with boss fights, and it can be used as currency. Insight can be gained through a consumable item called a madman’s knowledge and by progressing through the game. As you gain more insight, you can find more esoteric items and the madness of Yharnam becomes clearer. Once you defeat Rom and the blood moon is revealed, your insight rockets to at least 40 more than you previously had. In Yarghul, there are tons of Cthulu-Esque monsters all over the place. If you lose the insight gained for whatever reason, many of these monsters are gone, alluding to the fact that they can no longer be perceived by you. Once you defeat Mergo’s Wet Nurse, you gain a colossal amount of insight and find the manor in the Hunter’s Dream is in a perpetual state of immolation. Once you maximize your insight, the madness encompassing Yharnam is readily transparent. It’s the fear of the unknown that Lovecraft tells of coming to life for the player in the most subtle and personal way possible. It illustrates that the forces at work are all-encompassing and impossible to overcome, which is a horrifying realization once we become privy to them.

Bloodborne achieves so much with its presentation, lore, and gameplay that I’d be hard-pressed to call it a masterpiece. It took the foundations of Dark Souls-like its gameplay and subtle narrative. It made something not only with its own concrete identity but something that arguably surpassed the already magnificent Dark Souls in many ways. The more aggressive gameplay was more invigorating, the more organized method of character and weapon building was less of a hassle, and its story managed to be even more complex and esoteric. It even accomplished presenting something in the vein of Lovecraftian horror in a visual medium, something that had rarely been executed properly. The upstanding quality of this game also rejuvenated my interest in the modern video game industry. It showed me that video games were now being treated more like art instead of as a means of commerce. Bloodborne is also arguably the most influential FromSoft game. After the success of Bloodborne, many imitators attempted to translate aspects of Dark Souls into different settings like science-fiction (The Surge), feudal Japan (Nioh), and even in the universe of Star Wars (Jedi Fallen Order). Many of these games borrowing elements from Dark Souls give credence to the “souls-like” genre it spawned due to its popularity. In terms of providing a quality translation of the Souls series, none of these games match up to when FromSoft managed to outdo themselves with Bloodborne.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I don’t think anyone would argue that Bloodborne isn’t a challenging game. However, The Old Hunter’s expansion makes facing the challenges in the base game look like a walk in the park. Even after you conquer everything the base game has to offer, you still might not be prepared for the horrors present in the DLC. Every single aspect of the DLC is a test of might and patience that is unparalleled by anything from the base game. The difficulty of the Old Hunters DLC might even be unparalleled by anything from the Soulsborne series. It’s a brutal affair. With all of this in mind, is it still worth the struggle? Absolutely. The Old Hunters rivals Artorias of the Abyss as the supreme FromSoft DLC output, and Artorias of the Abyss is an exemplary piece of DLC content. Like Artorias of the Abyss, The Old Hunters adds new levels, enemies, bosses, and weapons, and fleshes out aspects of the lore that weren’t present in the base game. While Artorias of the Abyss is difficult, it is not nearly as demanding as The Old Hunters. Every stretch of this expansion demands the player’s maximum level of Bloodborne prowess.

A misleading mistake some players make when trying to tackle the DLC is based on how early you can access it in the base game. The DLC can be accessed as early as defeating Vicar Amelia in the first half of the game. When I purchased the DLC, I was eager to experience more from this game and was relieved that I didn’t have to play through most of it to access the DLC. Little did I know, I’d have to level up enough in the base game not to get annihilated at every point in the DLC. Prepare for the DLC like you would prepare for a final boss. Immediately, the bizarro Cathedral Ward area known as The Hunter’s Nightmare proves to be a substantial endeavor. The place is crawling with saif hunters, hunters in the DLC that look like Gehrman and fight like him too. These enemies are similar to the hunters if they were built like club bouncers and had their tenacity. You will encounter one at every step of the way in The Hunter’s Nightmare, making getting past each one the biggest obstacle in this first level. Reposting is practically mandatory for these enemies. The Hunter’s Nightmare is also home to some of the most ruthless standard hunters in the game and the area as you trek through this without encountering a new lantern for quite a while. I stuck my proverbial toe in the water that is the Old Hunters DLC and got stung by a proverbial jellyfish. I learned that the DLC content was not to be treated as a lark and prepared immensely afterward. I didn’t get to the next lantern in The Hunter’s Nightmare until beating The One Reborn in the base game.

Once you overcome the odds and discover the Nightmare Church for relief, you are in good standing to fight the first boss, Ludwig. Along with Gehrman, Ludwig was one of the first hunters. He’s obviously seen better days as he’s transformed into an abominable horse creature the size of a house. To give you a scale of what the Old Hunters have to offer, Ludwig is not the hardest boss in the DLC. He is, however, harder than any of the bosses in the base game. His movement is incredibly erratic, and he is the hardest boss to find a window to attack. He caught on to my backstab strategy implemented on most giant bosses in Soulsborne games and launched me across the room with his hooves. His landing move is difficult to time because he plummets so quickly, and he’ll even emulate a train to run you down and deplete most if not all of your health bar if you get caught in it. The saving grace of this fight is it’s much easier if you summon an NPC hunter to help you given that Ludwig will be distracted half of the time. His second phase is triggered by a cutscene in which Ludwig gets on his hind legs and brandishes a lurid green greatsword. This phase is much easier because Ludwig’s backside is finally vulnerable, but his sword slam attack will kill you even at full health if you get caught in it. If you thought Ludwig was a hectic fight that tested your full abilities, he’s merely a sampler for what is to come.

After scouring a long, dark prison hall and riding the heaviest elevator known to man, you will arrive in the Research Hall. It’s an architecturally interesting area with a winding spiral staircase towering in the center of the building. There are about three or four levels in this place with many rooms on opposite sides of the staircase. The Research Hall is the living quarters of Iosefka’s patients, forlorn abominations created due to failure. They look like humans in hospital gowns but with a gigantic, hideous growth like a blotchy scrotum protruding from their heads. Some of them are even reduced to being sentient blobs. They constantly throw tantrums like toddlers to defend themselves because they have little control over their senses and faculties. You’ll find many of them in the side rooms of the Research Hall crying out in anguish, resting on sodden beds in total darkness. Some are even restrained in chairs. It’s a genuinely disturbing site. What’s even more disturbing is that they cry out for help from Iosefka, the person who put them here in the first place. The large door in the hall's center takes you to the Lumenwood Garden, where you’ll fight the Living Failures, more cases of Iosefka’s medical catastrophes. Their fight is like a bulkier version of the Celestial Emissary, except that the Living Failures have a collective health bar and magic attacks.

The next boss is at the center of a clock tower right next to the garden. You approach a woman sitting in a chair in the center of the room when she grabs you unexpectedly. This is Lady Maria, another hunter in the league with Ludwig and Gherman. The doll in The Hunter’s Dream is also modeled in her image. She fights in the same fashion as the other hunters, swiftly dodging your attacks and waiting for a chance to strike while dual-wielding cutlasses. After a certain point, she adds blood and fire as collateral to her sword swipes. Lady Maria is my favorite fight in the DLC, and it’s not because she’s much easier than the other bosses (except for maybe the Living Failures). The ease in this fight is a testament to your proficiency with reposting. If you don’t repost or you suck at it, Lady Maria is a formidable foe. If you have practiced the art of reposting up until this point, Lady Maria will be at your mercy. I experienced a fair amount of difficulty when I couldn’t repost but was proud of myself during my last playthrough when I eviscerated Lady Maria with countless visceral attacks.

The next boss in The Old Hunter’s is the bane of my existence. I do not lose hope and give up easily on a boss in any video game, including Dark Souls. However, the countless failures at the hands of this boss matched with the cyclical monotony of running back and forth between the lantern and this boss time after every defeat was starting to drive me insane. The numerous failures made me fall to my knees, and I felt like I couldn’t beat him. He was relinquishing my confidence as a gamer. He is my Achilles heel, my kryptonite, my dark star. To this day, I still feel a sense of dread and intimidation with this boss, like confronting an abusive stepfather.
...No, I’m not talking about the Orphan of Kos. I beat that ugly shrimp on my third attempt (although I was not so lucky with him upon subsequent playthroughs). I am referring to none other than Laurence, the first Vicar, the only optional boss in the DLC.

Laurence is obviously an incredibly important figure in Bloodborne’s lore, essentially the creator of the scourge that plagues Yharnam. His importance makes it imperative that he’s actually present in the game, and his boss fight certainly reflects his role. After scrounging up a few key items, you’ll return to the mirrored version of the cathedral where you fought Vicar Amelia in Hunter’s Nightmare. You’ll see Laurence resting upon his throne, a wild beast after imbibing the blood of the great ones and a reflection of his folly. If you’re a determined completionist like I am or batshit crazy, you’ll wake him up. You may notice that Laurence looks like a flaming version of the Cleric Beast, the first boss in the game. If you think that this fight is going to be a cakewalk because the Cleric Beast was an easy foe, your naivety will be your downfall. Laurence is incredibly unpredictable. The frames to attack him are wider than Ludwigs, but failing to properly time them will punish you more severely. Laurence has about fifteen different ways to strike at you with his hulking stature. All these are aided by his fire AOE damage that will stagger you if they hit. Keep in mind this also if don’t kill you in one hit, even at full health. Laurence also likes to combo his moves, so if the first one doesn’t kill you, the immediate second or third swipe will. He’s also a giant damage sponge. The middling damage I do to him matched with the rare opportunities I have to hit him without being punished for it severely grated on my patience. Once you think you’ve finally got a hold of him, his second phase throws you for another violent loop. Laurence loses the lower half of his body and crawls around the arena with his giant arms. His backside is no longer a vulnerable spot because it’s constantly gushing molten lava at every waking moment, so the windows to hit him are even more narrow during this phase. The lava that falls out of his backside becomes a stage hazard, and it will always be present during this phase, so you’ll have to work around it instead of directly avoiding it. Laurence will also vomit lava at some points as if the constant expulsion of lava from his ass wasn’t enough. His arms are as long as redwood trees, and will use them to chase you down the entire perimeter of the arena. If that fails, he’ll slam his arm down on you that, you guessed it, it's hard to avoid and will kill you at full health. Like Ludwig, you can summon an NPC hunter to help you, but it won’t do any good. The first phase is slightly easier, but the NPC is guaranteed to die soon after the second phase starts because he doesn’t have the sense to avoid the lava. This leaves you by yourself with a more durable Laurence for about half of the fight, giving you a total disadvantage to fighting him on your own. After failing against Laurence several times, I went back and grinded to level up in the base game. I felt like Rocky in Rocky IV, training for his rematch with Ivan Drago. Eventually, once I beat Laurence, I still did it by the skin of my teeth. Bloodborne is all about nightmares, right? Well, Laurence, the First Vicar is my fucking nightmare.

Upon defeating Maria, a new location is revealed behind the opened clock tower arms. This rainy, dilapidated place is the Fishing Hamlet, a location inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft story, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. Mutated fish creatures of all sizes make up this fishing hamlet, and just like the ones from Lovecraft’s story, they worship a deity that lies at the shore of this area. This is the notorious Orphan of Kos who is the dark secret kept in the Fishing Hamlet. Apparently, the hunter’s killed the Orphan’s mother, who then cursed them, marked by the dark moon that lights every corner of the DLC. I’d feel more sorry for the Orphan if he wasn’t such a bitch. This boss is said to be not only the hardest boss in Bloodborne but the hardest boss across the entire Soulsborne franchise. He’s another unpredictable boss with a large array of moves, but as I mentioned previously, I beat him on my third attempt when I first played this DLC. Once I played this DLC again, he kept kicking my ass. I’m unsure how to explain this, but becoming better at Bloodborne made me worse at this boss. Playing passively worked wonders when fighting Orphan of Kos on my first playthrough when it didn’t work so well with other bosses. The Orphan of Kos punished me for being more aggressive, and that aggression made other bosses more manageable. Fortunately, the Orphan gives you plenty of opportunities to attack, and he can be easily staggered. He also gives you plenty of opportunities to repost. His second phase is a lot more chaotic, but I managed to find clear windows to attack him. Once you beat him, the DLC is complete, and you have a gorgeous shore view to look upon as you marvel at your achievement.

The Old Hunters DLC follows the same direction of descending deeper into the nightmare just like in the base game. This time, your journey uncovers the horrifying truths kept secret by the essential figures of Bloodborne as you venture onward. It’s a bit of a linear excursion, but I didn’t mind in this case because the progression is excellent. I felt as if I was diving deeper into the rabbit hole, resulting in a satisfying dead end at the shore. Everything in this DLC made me feel like I was being pummeled by four mack trucks coming at me from all sides, but I appreciate it for presenting such a stark challenge (except for Laurence. Fuck that boss). For some reason, I think The Old Hunters DLC is the most substantial part of the whole Bloodborne experience. While the levels and bosses in the base game are consistently enjoyable, there’s something special about what’s presented in The Old Hunters. I don’t know if it’s the level design, progression, or bosses that make this so, but it’s something that is definitely felt after overcoming the excruciating odds. Artorias of the Abyss feels removed from the base game of Dark Souls and supplementary to the whole experience, while The Old Hunters feels like getting to the core of Bloodborne. Experiencing The Old Hunters DLC feels mandatory. When the DLC almost eclipses the base game, you know it’s worth every cent.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Sucker Punch must have taken a great deal of influence from the other Playstation exclusive studios when considering the sequel to the first Sly Cooper. Namely, Naughty Dog’s direction when developing Jak II, a radical shift in tone and direction from the first game. While Jak II was drastically different in many ways, it still retained all of the essential elements from the first Jak and Daxter. The melding of new and old elements created something surprisingly nuanced and unlocked the potential of the Jak and Daxter franchise that we never knew it had. The Jak and Daxter franchise needed to evolve because the first game practically perfected the 3D platformer game and couldn’t have been topped. In the case of Sly Cooper, the franchise needed to evolve because the first game wasn’t substantial enough. Sly Cooper’s potential was obvious, but it was undermined by the first game's simplistic nature. The presentation and characters had way too much charm, pizzazz, and narrative complexity to be relegated to a bare-bones 3D platformer. The Sly Cooper franchise needed to evolve and adapt to fulfill that potential and not become a faint memory amid the stagnating 3D platformer genre. Sucker Punch took an extra year in development just like Naughty Dog did with Jak II to make a game that fully realized the potential of the Sly Cooper IP. Sly 2: Band of Thieves is what came of this long development period, and it wasn’t a radical overhaul like in the case of Jak II. The familiar elements like the comic book style presentation and the smokey, noirish tone of the first game were still present. Sly 2 takes a similar approach to Jak II in that it mixes in open-world elements in a 3D platformer, making a hybrid that allows the characters and narrative to become more involved. With this direction, the Sly Cooper series, once a bud, bloomed into a beautiful flower. All it needed was some richer soil.

Sly 2 illustrates this extra level of involvement as early as the prologue. In Sly Cooper fashion, the introduction involves silhouetted figures running across the rooftops of a bustling city skyline. That's right, I said figure(s). Sly’s got some help on the field. Sly slides down a rope into what looks like a museum and surveys the grounds. He gets a binocucom call from Bentley and treats Bentley’s wariness from being out on the field for the first time with light-hearted mockery, telling him to lighten up. Yes, Bentley is no longer just a glorified tutorial constantly giving Sly swimmer’s ear with his nasal whine. He’s front and center in the action and uses his technological skills to turn off the museum’s security system. If three figures were running across the rooftops and Bentley was one of them, could the third one possibly be Murray? As Sly moves forward, he hears a “THUNDER FLOP” from above as Murray crashes through the glass ceiling. This time, Sly doesn’t aid a helpless friend. Murray returns the favor by lifting an iron gate and smashing another by impressively lobbing a bust at it from far away. Sly makes it to what looks like the center of the museum to find that what he was looking for has already been stolen. Carmelita and another officer jump out of hiding to arrest Sly when the other officer, Constable Neyla, suggests that perhaps Sly didn’t steal the Clockwerk parts. She suggests that there’s evidence that a group of criminals known as the Klaww Gang made off with the parts, but that doesn’t stop Carmelita from chasing Sly and his friends with her trademark shock pistol. Sly and his gang get away in the van, and Sly explains the set-up. Clockwerk, the leader of the Fiendish Five and the final boss of the first game, has somehow survived the unfathomably scalding temperatures of sitting in molten lava. His parts have been exhibited in a museum in Cairo for some time. The insane excavator who found and moved these pieces out of the mouth of a volcano is never revealed. Sly feels reasonably discontent that Clockwerk is relatively intact and seeks to destroy those pieces for good measure. After all, he did kill Sly’s parents and harbored a grudge against his family that lasted a millennium. Alas, all the pieces were stolen by The Klaww Gang, and Sly must travel the world bringing those pieces back and finally end the legacy of his nemesis.

If you couldn’t tell from the prologue, the level of involvement present in Sly 2 is apparent in tons of different aspects. The presentation in the first game was colorful, and the comic-book quality of it gave it a certain level of charm, but what’s presented here in Sly 2 makes the first game look rough and amateurish by comparison. Everything involving the presentation here looks much more refined. The character models look more pronounced and fit much better with the cel-shaded backgrounds. Sly’s bottom jaw no longer looks like it’s trying to remove itself from the rest of his head when he talks like it did in the first game. The illustrations in the comic-like intro/outros are better outlined, and everything from the characters, and backgrounds, to the slight movements in the animations, are impressively defined. They look far more attractive than the splotchy illustrations from the first game. The presentation here upholds a higher standard of professionalism which can probably be attested to the long development period. They took the time to put a much-needed sheen over the aesthetics and made them look much more captivating.

The attention to detail in the presentation is certainly delightful, but that’s not the level of involvement everyone often associates with Sly 2. A more literal sense of involvement is the inclusion of both Bentley and Murray doing fieldwork with Sly. Their roles might be a bit misleading, judging from the prologue. Both aren’t here to assist the player when Sly comes across something out of his element. Bentley and Murray are both playable, and not in the same sense of conveniently popping up once in a while like Clank and Daxter. Bentley and Murray are in the limelight almost as much as Sly and are as readily playable. Sly may still get top billing here, but the “Band of Thieves” subtitle sort of connotes that the game involves a group effort instead of simply supporting Sly whenever they are needed. Sly’s “band of thieves” are like the Attractions to his Elvis Costello: supporting members who have their own unique functions that make up the whole of the band. While Sly gets more precedence, his role is no more vital than his teammates. After all, pulling off the jobs in this game requires a considerable group effort and a smattering of unique talents working together.

Sly is still the same nimble, agile thief he was in his first outing. He has retained most of his physical thieving abilities from the first game, namely spire jumping, climbing up pipes, swinging off of hooks, etc. that help him traverse through an area with ease. He has also adopted some new moves like the sneak combo, where latches onto an enemy while their back is turned and slams them to the ground. This range of movement is also assisted by the impeccably smooth controls that transfer from the first game. He’s still incredibly confident and devilishly charming, leaving his trademark calling card at the crime scene and flirting with Carmelita even when she has her shock pistol aimed right at him. Sly’s character is essentially the same as he was both in terms of physicality and personality. The evolution of his character comes with translating his thieving prowess into the new foreground of an open-world design. Sly’s moves aren’t a means to traverse obstacle course-like levels with a concrete finishing line anymore. Fortunately, these new spacious playgrounds accommodate Sly’s array of thieving acrobatics quite nicely. I don’t think there is a section in any of these areas where Sly can’t climb or use his cane as a tool for traversal. He may be visiting these places inconspicuously, but they seem to be curiously designed in his favor. Sly’s translation into the more open-world format is similar to how Naughty Dog transferred Jak. A platforming character is introduced into a new setting that strangely allows him to transfer all of his innate platforming moves without any inconveniences. Their varied movement makes the often rigid open-world protagonist feel much more comfortable to control. Sly’s voice actor also does a much better job this time as he projects Sly’s confidence more clearly instead of mumbling his lines.

Bentley’s more proactive role in Sly 2 is a progression of his character. In the first game, he monitored Sly from a distance, and this wasn’t because Sly only needed him for quick points of advice. Bentley was too cautious for his own good and fretted at every danger point. In Sly 2, Bentley rips off his bowtie and dons a safari hat, signifying his more dynamic role in Sly’s gang. While he is willing to leave his comfort zone for the job, he can still be hesitant to act, especially if he’s on his own. As the game progresses, Bently’s prudent nature in the face of danger will be tested to its limit. Bentley is the least versatile and physically weakest of the three main characters, making the stealth aspects more of a means for survival on the field. Fortunately, Sucker Punch didn’t leave Bentley in the dark, or so to speak. Bentley is more than capable of holding his own out there in the face of adversity. He is armed with a crossbow, and it’s not for pinning guards against the wall. He uses it to fire sleep darts which incapacitate guards for a short period. He can then plant bombs to subdue them, timed or detonated with manual control. As the least intimidating member of Sly’s gang, his method of combating the guards is the most cold-blooded. Bentley can also initiate hacking minigames involving a green tank shooting security bots in a top-down perspective. They are sort of like the one section in the last area in the first game except much more realized, and they look less like a 1982 arcade game.

On the other hand, Murray in Sly 2 is a total revitalization of his character from the first game. He is no longer deadweight like he once was. Sly even makes a point to introduce Murray as “the brawn” in the prologue as if he’s always been the powerhouse of the team since day one. Really, Sly? You’re telling me this isn’t the same fat, pink doofus who couldn’t pull his own weight from the first game? Either or, Murray has shifted from being burdensome to Sly and the player to being my favorite character. This Murray is confident in his abilities and even refers to himself as “The Murray,” which signifies his newfound boisterous attitude like a frat boy. His new persona more or less comes off endearing like a kid playing superhero. I felt it was more endearing because it made me wanna hug the big guy, only if he wouldn’t inadvertently crush my spine in the process. Speaking of crushing spines, that’s Murray’s specialty on the field. The stealth aspect of this game goes right out the window with Murray, as he can mow down swarms of guards with little effort. He can also pick up most objects and throw them, including most of the enemies. Playing as Murray is a little cheap because he breaks the stealth foundation of the series. A hippo running loose in the streets is about as subtle as...well, a hippo running loose in the streets, so stealth is out of the question. I can’t fault this too much because playing as Murray is too much fun, and at least his approach to combat feels totally different from Sly and Bentley.

Carmelita returns, fulfilling her role as the dedicated cop who ambushes Sly occasionally and fails to bring him to justice. She is essentially the same as in the first game except with a new voice actress. This new voice actress brings a more passionate delivery which was needed from the totally wooden one from the first game. It’s still unfitting that this new voice actress decided to give Carmelita an American accent instead of a Latin one. Carmelita’s aim with that shock pistol also isn’t any better. The returning supporting character that ironically has more of a presence is Clockwerk. Clockwerk himself never makes an appearance in Sly 2, rather his body parts are the main focus of the story. For some reason, Sly illustrating how menacing Clockwerk is in the first animated cutscene brings more intrigue to Clockwerk than his role as the final boss in the first game. This one narration heightens Clockwerk as a gigantic threat to Sly, making the main goal of destroying his parts of dire importance. This level of intrigue is elevated as Sly describes the power of his individual parts in each chapter. When the sequel makes the final boss of the first game seem more foreboding through simple presentation even when he’s not actually present, you know you’re dealing with a whole new level of quality here.

The Klaww Gang is also much more of a formidable unit than the Fiendish Five were. I always understood that the Fiendish Five were retired and settled nicely in their respective strongholds, just minding themselves. Sly’s mission was to seek them down at their homes as a means of revenge for killing his parents and stealing his property. Sly was checking off their names like a hit list. The Klaww Gang is still an active force, conducting an illegal spice operation using specific Clockwerk parts for their unique properties. The members of the Klaww Gang also have their own roles in the spice operation, more realistic ones in a criminal gang rather than the vague set of skills each member of the Fiendish Five offered. Rajan produces the spice, Jean Bison ships the spice, and Dimitri deals with the spice. Arpeggio acts as their leader and specializes in creating and maintaining the technology they use for their operations. The Klaww Gang members also seem to admire Clockwerk, giving Clockwerk this legendary status as an immortal criminal instead of just a menace to the Cooper clan. They did seek out his parts and are utilizing them for maximum efficiency (except for Dimitri, who is using them to copy money). I also felt Sly’s interactions with each member of the Fiendish Five were unfittingly nonchalant for dealing with the people who murdered his parents. With the Klaww Gang, it’s just business. Sly can exude his smarmy attitude towards these people as there is nothing personal between them. Their strongholds are nothing more than layers of adversity that keep Sly from quickly nabbing the parts.

Sly 2 is also much more inspired than the first game. The new source of inspiration that has molded the concrete identity of the series is heist films. Heist films aren’t necessarily synonymous with film noir, but the genres tend to overlap at times (The Killing, The Red Circle, etc.) due to both being heavily stylized crime subgenres. The more complicated set-ups of heist films better complement the noirish tone of Sly Cooper. They also give much-needed depth to the gameplay. Sly is no longer collecting simple, Macguffin platformer items like keys to access the area’s boss. Progression in Sly 2 is in the form of mission-based objectives, which are standard in the open-world genre. Every area has six or seven different missions divided fairly evenly between Sly, Bentley, and Murray. The first mission will always involve Sly sneaking into the Klaww Gang member’s base of operations and taking reconnaissance photos. Once he does this, Bentley puts together a slideshow detailing the tasks needed to be done before they can steal the Clockwerk part. There is often the second phase of operations in the same area that is also presented in its own slideshow presentation that details even more tasks.

Once all of these tasks are completed, Bentley will detail the heist in yet another slideshow, naming the heists as “Operation: X” to signify the grand scale of the main operation to steal the Clockwerk part. Each of these heists is so grand that they require the efforts of every character. For example, in the first India chapter, Murray has to lift the heavy Clockwerk wings suspended by a rope on a winch. Bentley blows up a bridge to distract Rajan’s guards while Sly dances with Carmelita to distract all of the patrons in Rajan’s palace. Murray then carries the wings to the van while Bentley covers him from the air with his remote-controlled chopper. While the regular missions are brief and usually involve repetitive tasks, they are necessary for leading up to the electrifying heist. Every task Bentley has you do is always air-tight, thanks to the writing in this game. Nothing you do ever seems like grinding or busy work. Even in playing the most forgettable of missions, the heist at the end of each area always pays off.

In contrast to the vast cityscape of Haven City in Jak II, Sly 2 shows a little more restraint with its free-roaming playgrounds. Sly can’t seamlessly travel around the world in the team van at his leisure, as ideal as that sounds. Each area coincides with an episode like in the first game, now presented in the main menu like selecting an episode of a DVD menu. The areas are free to roam with any of the three characters once they survey the land and conjure up a multi-step plan to steal the Clockwerk part. Admittedly, the areas accommodate Sly’s range of movement more than the other two, but Bentley and Murray aren’t completely helpless. Murray can execute a charged super jump, and Bentley has a jetpack to get to the same heights as Sly. Playing as Bentley and Murray never feels like a handicap in terms of traversal. Whether it be a city or a more remote location, each place is beaming with its own unique geography, tone, and layout. Most places even have inside areas that are usually accessed during missions. These missions can be revisited anytime and can range from clubs, hotels, crypts, log cabins, etc. There isn’t much to do in these areas outside of the missions, but the fact that these are just a part of the whole level gives them more depth. Each area also has a safe house where you select to play as one of the three characters. There is not much else to do in the safe house, but it’s sometimes interesting to spectate the gang just hanging out in the area in the background. The hubs of the first game were so lackluster and were just placed as a center for all of the levels. The open-world foundation of Sly 2 organically breathes more life into these levels and makes running around in them all the more engaging.

In Sly Cooper fashion, the areas of each episode center around a member of the target criminal gang and are based on a real-world location. Except for the first and final chapters, each country or city is represented in two separate locations for two consecutive chapters. The second consecutive chapter may be in the same country but in a totally different geographical setting, like the Indian city in chapter 2, followed by the Indian jungle in chapter 3. Like the areas in the first game, all the areas in Sly 2 take place in totally different geographical locations with their own cultures and climates. The three types of guards are also animals that more or less represent the country. For example, the guards in Paris are frogs, rats, and pigs (Haha. I just realized how offensive that is.), and the Canadian guards are moose, ducks, and rams. King cobras will pop out of holes in India, and Canada has caves with hibernating bears. The open-world aspect elevates Sly 2’s areas above the areas from the first game. Still, it’s nice to see the level of detail the developers put into making each level discernible through cultural and geographical differences.

Sly 2 also puts a bigger emphasis on stealth and thievery. Every mission involves escaping plain sight (except playing as Murray) and stealing items from enemies. Sly will often steal keys, sneak through hideouts in a barrel, sidle past buildings with visible enemies walking around, and crawl under tables to avoid being seen. Sly can also pickpocket the guards of their money and valuables. These valuables can be sold on the internet with Bentley in the safe house. There are also valuables found throughout each area supported on a plinth that can be taken back to the safe house and sold as well. Thirty clues bottles will also be strewn across each level, and collecting them will grant you a code to a vault with a powerup inside. This emphasis on stealth and thievery gives the game more credence to the stealth genre and Sly’s role as a thief. It’s also far more enticing than using stealth as a circumstantial game mechanic while platforming.

In the first game, stealth was necessary not to alert the guards or trip the security because Sly would die in one hit. In Sly 2, each character has a health meter in the top left corner of the screen. The amount of health you lose upon being hit depends on several variants ranging from being hit by guards, security lights with bullets, lasers, and falling in water (which makes sense for Sly but not for Bentley and Murray. You’re telling me that neither the turtle nor the hippo can swim? I understand that this is done for consistency, but the irony is too rich). The most common threat that Sly and his gang will have to watch out for most of the time is the guards. These guards are aesthetically different per area (different animals by country), but the three types of guards remain constant. The smaller guards will attack you lightly but alert more guards by blowing a horn. The medium guards will attack you more often, and they scale the most ground. The big flashlight guards are the ones to fear. Their light gives them the widest range of sight, and they are the sturdiest of the three. They are also the only type of guards with firearms. These guards are constantly on patrol in the streets, on top of buildings, inside buildings, etc. While the levels act as big playgrounds, Sly and the gang always have to be vigilant so as not to be seen by them. However, the consequence of getting caught by the guards is never that severe.

Sly can fight the smaller guards with ease and may only sustain minor damage from fighting a flashlight guard. Murray can KO a flashlight guard with two hits and obliterate the smaller guards with a single blow, making him practically indestructible. The only character who has to worry is Bentley, but Bentley can run away all the same. In fact, the characters can just run away, and the guards will forget about them in seconds. My main criticism of Sly 2 is that it’s too easy. I would say this game is more lenient with error, but there are constant checkpoints during the missions, and the bosses all have predictable attack patterns. They certainly didn’t take note of Jak II in this case.

The most important level of extra involvement that vastly elevates Sly 2 from the first game is the story. With all of the refinements to the presentation, the more in-depth, open-world, platformer hybrid gameplay, and the emphasis on thieving, the story is the aspect that shows Sly Cooper’s full potential. The story is tense, complex, and heartfelt and will drop surprises on you when you least expect it. It is the centerpiece of this game.

The first heist sends the gang to Paris to steal the Clockwerk tailfeathers from Dimitri, a lounge lizard (har har) who owns a nightclub in Paris. Sly and the gang topple the giant peacock from the front of the club, and Sly confronts Dimitri from inside. Dimitri ends up being nothing but a clueless peon who talks like someone who is trying to use hip lingo to desperately sound cool. Sly has no trouble taking the clockwerk feathers from this guy. India is the next stop as the Klaww Gang’s spice producer Rajan is the next target. Rajan is a pretentious egoist who goes to great lengths to exude his high status, but it’s all a ruse to mask his peasant upbringing. He presents the massive Clockwerk wings as the centerpiece of his throne inside his extravagant palace, where he hosts dignified ballroom dances. Once Sly and the gang take the wings literally while his back is turned, a disgraced Rajan goes into hiding in the dense Indian jungle, a humbling reminder of where he came from. It’s here in these jungles where chapter 3 takes place. Rajan’s hideout is the heart of the Klaww Gang spice production (no pun intended), where he uses the unending beat of the Clockwerk heart to continuously pump spice. He’s also carrying the other half of the heart on staff as another symbol of power. Bentley decides the appropriate course of action is to flood Rajan out by breaking the dam over his hideout, reminding Rajan of the virtue of humility by reverting him to his primal, cat-like instinct of disliking water.

The first few operations in Sly 2 are executed smoothly with little to no blowback. They are probably anti-climactic to situate the player into the new method of progression and to prove that the three characters can execute jobs of a higher caliber than just collecting items and beating the boss. These first few chapters are adequate, but after the third heist is when the game becomes interesting. I’ve been very careful not to spoil too much about the middle section of Sly 2 because it’s spurred by a twist that happens during the heist mission in the third chapter. This moment sets the precedent for the rest of the game. I cheer for these guys when the job goes accordingly, but it’s all the more invigorating when it goes horribly wrong. After all, what would Reservoir Dogs be if everything went hunky-dory?

During the first few chapters, Sly often has a spontaneous rendezvous with Neyla, a police officer who is supposed to apprehend Sly and his gang like Carmelita. Instead, she acts as a renegade cop who aids Sly in getting a leg up on infiltrating Klaww Gang hideouts. One would think her helpful disposition and knowledge of Klaww Gang secrets would be suspicious, but Sly doesn’t think twice about it. Methinks Sly was thinking with his tail, if you catch my drift. During the third heist in the jungle, Neyla traps Sly and Murray in a giant hollow basin, leaving Sly injured and Murray to fight Rajan. The Contessa, a high-ranking police officer, takes them away, and Neyla even accuses Carmelita of being in league with the Cooper Gang, resulting in her arrest. Her reason for accusing Carmelita is that she danced with Sly during the ball. It doesn’t make sense, but we soon learn that’s not the real reason she’s arrested. It does make you consider something about Carmelita, however. Sly’s “disguise” during that scene in the ballroom was as convincing as a monkey wearing a Groucho Marx mask, yet Carmelita didn’t seem to notice. Did she know it was Sly the whole time and pretended she didn’t know so she could dance with him? Neyla also points out how persistent Carmelita is with attempting to catch Sly but never seems to bring him to justice. Does Carmelita have feelings for Sly? Is her fixation on Sly motivated by affection and not honest police work? It really does make you consider their relationship.

The fourth chapter, “Jailbreak!” isn’t the best in Sly 2. However, it is the most important chapter for several reasons. It’s the turning point of the game where the Cooper gang’s mission takes a back route, but it’s something much deeper. This chapter is the reason why this game is considered the optimal Sly Cooper experience and the reason why I favor this game over the others as well. The chapter deeply explores the rich chemistry between Sly, Bentley, and Murray, not just as teammates but as best friends. While Sly and Murray were taken into custody, Bentley got away by hiding out from a distance. He realizes that this means he’s on his own now, which is something that greatly discomforts him. While the situation is grim, he decides to face his fears and press forward to save his friends, no matter what stands in his way. Bentley finds himself in the center of The Contessa’s rehabilitation center located in the city of Prague. This dark, spooky place is the perfect area for Bentley to overcome his fears. While on his own, Bentley learns about the insidious truth about The Contessa. She’s a secret operative in The Klaww Gang who specializes in hypnosis. The worst aspect of this is that she’s not using the hypnosis as means of rehabilitation but brainwashing criminals into telling her where they’ve hidden their loot. Considering the thieving reputation of the Cooper Clan, saving Sly and Murray proved to be urgent. Bentley breaks Sly out first, a sweet moment of gratitude from Sly to Bentley, endearingly referring to him as “the wizard” as a callback to the prologue. The rest of the chapter is a joint production between Sly and Bentley to rescue Murray. Once they break into the prison, they find Murray being tormented with a combination of eating spices and being hypnotized. This sends Murray into a drug-induced rage which they use to their advantage to bust him out. Murray calms down, and they have a confrontation with the Contessa, but she gets away on a blimp.

It’s obvious from the first few chapters of this game that these three guys work spectacularly as a group of thieves. How else would they have been able to flawlessly execute those first few jobs? Their unique talents work incredibly well together. However, these characters are more than just their unique roles on the field. While Sly is acrobatic, he is also courageous and charismatic. Where Bentley is tech-savvy, he is also pragmatic and clever. Where Murray is strong, he is also sweet and passionate. Their unique talents don’t just make up a formidable team, but their different personalities are the components of a strong friend group. We know about the background between these characters from each game’s prologue, but “Jailbreak!” is when the game proves that they are great friends and not just teammates. Bentley had to get his hands dirty in this chapter and did some uncharacteristic things, but he persevered because Sly and Murray meant so much to him. He also inadvertently completed his character arc, showing his friends and himself that he had more strength in him than he ever knew. When they all reconvene after the chapter, they don’t immediately start formulating another plan. They all are overjoyed to be with each other again, joking and laughing all night long in the team van. This chapter shows that you can find other people to do a job, but you can’t easily replace a friend. It’s at this point where you really start to care about these characters and want them to succeed in their mission.

The gang isn’t quite done in Prague just yet. After outing herself as a secret member of The Klaww Gang, The Contessa is on the outs with Interpol, and Neyla has waged a war at her stronghold in Prague to apprehend her. She is also in possession of the Clockwerk eyes, which she’s been using to hypnotize people. When Sly climbs her tower to take reconnaissance photos, he sees Carmelita strapped down to a gurney and being subjected to The Contessa’s hypnosis. It’s a pretty unsettling scene, made even more unsettling by the aghast reaction Bentley has to the machinery The Contessa is using for hypnosis. Looks like the gang has another objective other than retrieving the eye. Real-life Prague is filled to the brim with gothic architecture, but all of these gothic features are amplified here to the point where it looks like an area from Bloodborne. However, the gang is too determined to be afraid of this haunting place as they capture ghosts, ransack coffins, and explore ancient Czechoslovakian tombs while carrying highly sensitive explosives on their backs. This all results in my favorite heist in the game that doesn’t go exactly as planned, much to Bentley’s chagrin. Sly has to chase down Neyla for one eye, and Murray has to shoot Carmelita down with a tank for the other. The heist is incredibly tense, but the tank is one of the worst things I’ve ever had to control in any video game. The gang makes off with the eyes, Sly makes a getaway with Carmelita, The Contessa is arrested, and Neyla is even promoted.

The next location is a breath of fresh air from the last two chapters. The gang makes their way up to the icy northern regions of Canada to steal a whopping three Clockwerk parts from Jean Bison, the distributor of the Klaww Gang. Jean Bison is introduced with an interesting backstory. Apparently, Jean Bison is a prospector from the mid-19th century who was frozen in a block of ice and thawed out 150 years later. Since then, he’s become one of the most successful train barons of the 21st century but has found himself twitterpated by the crime world. The folksy foreground of this area mixed with the gang’s underestimation of Jean Bison makes for a more breezy chapter compared to the eerie setting of Prague with the cruel, malevolent Contessa. Everything goes a bit too smoothly for my liking, but this chapter is too damn fun for me to care. However, this chapter goes far too smoothly for a reason. The gang lets their guard down after overcoming Prague, and so does the player. The story’s conflict does not peak in the middle of the game. It gets much worse for the Cooper gang.

The gang travels north to Nunavut Bay to Jean Bison’s logging site. This is where he’s using the Clockwerk talons as a makeshift ax for deforestation, something he started in the 1850s that he has decided to continue in the 21st century. He puts the talons up for a prize in the annual lumberjack games but doesn’t plan on competing fairly. The good news is that Sly and his gang don’t intend to either. The heist is the gang cheating their way to victory in the lumberjack games, enacted like a comical Marx brothers routine. Once Jean Bison catches wind of their shenanigans, he knocks them all out. They all wake up in a daze to find themselves held up somewhere, and only Bentley can escape through a tight hole. He confronts Jean Bison, who has ransacked the safehouse and shipped every single Clockwerk part they had to Arpeggio, including the talons, giving him every single piece of Clockwerk. Jean Bison then exposes some prejudices about turtles which is expected from someone from the 19th century. Bentley beats Jean Bison in one of the most unorthodox fights in the game, and the gang heads inside a battery being carried to Arpeggio’s blimp. The comic outro of this chapter is one of the most devastating moments in the game. Remember what I said about the game doing a stellar job of making you care about Sly and his friends? Well, the crestfallen impact of this moment is felt by every player in this game. Everything was going so smoothly for the gang, and to think they would be thwarted by the least assumed member of the Klaww Gang is just an added insult to injury. All of their hard work until this point was about to be squandered. You feel the hopeless feeling of failure with the gang. You might even shed a tear with Murray as the team van floats away on a block of ice.

The last chapter of this game takes place on Arpeggio’s blimp located high in the sky somewhere over Europe. From a certain standpoint, this is my least favorite chapter in the game. The mechanical layout of the blimp does not match the geography of the other areas, but this chapter carries a sense of dread that others do not. Sly takes immediate action once arriving on the blimp and tries to retrieve the Clockwerk parts from Arpeggio. The hairs stand up on the back of the gang’s necks when they discover that Arpeggio has already been reassembled but not fit to be operated just yet. After attempting to tear Clockwerk apart by reversing the polarity of some magnets, he accidentally completes the bird. Arpeggio arrives and commends Sly for doing his work. Sly also finds Neyla here and learns that she’s been secretly retrieving Clockwerk parts for Arpeggio because he didn’t trust the other members to give them up to him when the time was right. Sly readily assumes that Arpeggio wants Clockwerk to be a vessel for him because of his small stature and inability to fly. However, Arpeggio reveals his true incentive with a convoluted plot involving making himself immortal by generating hatred from the people of Earth who have consumed spice by hypnotizing them with the northern lights, and the hatred fuels his immortality. It’s pretty Machiavellian for a little parrot. Once he’s about to step inside, Neyla tips him over and jumps into Clockwerk herself, killing Arpeggio and becoming the second incarnation of Clockwerk (with a stupider name). Even though Sly’s mortal enemy lives on, the gang doesn’t give up. They pull off some group jobs by deactivating the blimp’s engines and hire Carmelita to help Sly shoot down “Clock-La”, engaging with a mutual enemy. The first phase of the “Clock-La” fight is a rehash of the Clockwerk fight from the first game, but the second phase is an intense climax where Sly paraglides over the wreckage of the blimp and fights “Clock-La” with his cane 10,000 feet in the air. The gang crash lands in Paris and realizes Clockwerk’s mortality lies with the hate chip. Bentley dissects the hate chip from “Clock-La” but cripples himself. “Clock-La” explodes, but the pieces remain intact. Carmelita arrives and destroys the hate chip, disintegrating the Clockwerk parts and ending the immortal Clockwerk. She also tries to arrest all of them, but Sly negotiates to let Bentley and Murray go after what they had been through. Carmelita clears her name by taking Sly into custody, and they ride out of Paris, or so they think. The last moment of the game corroborates my theory about how Carmelita truly sees Sly. They have a first date on the chopper, with small talk and champagne. I don’t buy that Carmelita didn’t notice the ploy set up by Bentley and Murray. She just wanted to get some alone time with Sly, and her final words as Sly paraglides away are even flirty. It’s a total “a-ha!” moment and a sweet way to close the story of this game.

I feel exhausted retelling this entire story, but I felt it was necessary to illustrate how spectacular it is. The level of improvement over the glorified checklist that was the story of the first game cannot even be expressed with words. The story started seemingly as another checklist with different items but throws the player through so many loops as a process of deviating from simple goals completed just by playing the game. This is a story so good that it garners a sense of empathy for the characters and their mission. How many video game stories can say that, especially one from a game whose target demographic is children like Sly Cooper? I can’t think of any.

Sucker Punch needed a guiding light to fulfill the full potential for the Sly Cooper IP. I’m convinced they took inspiration from Jak II to make this happen, considering Sucker Punch combined the platforming elements from the first Sly Cooper and projected them into the open-world genre just like Naughty Dog did with the sequel to Jak and Daxter. It was through this direction that Sly Cooper could relish in heist missions, which complemented the noirish tone of the series and gave the gameplay much more depth than the standard platformer. All of this was complete with a knockout story with one of the most likable ensembles of characters across any video game. Sucker Punch needed to transcend the first game to make the desired impact they wanted Sly Cooper to have, and they accomplished this without any question in mind.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

The third entry in a video game trilogy always pales compared to the second one. The second entry usually stands as a fully realized version of the potential of the series. The developers take the time to renovate the series in the second game, using the first game as a reference on what to improve upon. The second game can either act as a fine-tuned version of the first game or radically change the direction entirely. The latter is either to offer something new after an unsurpassable first entry or to flesh out the characters and world of the series with a more complementary gameplay style. After achieving this with the second entry, the developers are left wondering what to do with the third entry. More often than not, the third game is a more streamlined version of the second game which often falters due to not being as substantial in comparison. The properties that made up the second game are all usually present but are comparatively underwhelming due to repeated from the second game. Any changes prove insignificant in the big picture. This was the case for Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Jak 3, solid third entries that still felt as if the inspiration from the developers ran fallow due to these games using their previous titles as a crutch. After both of these PS2 trilogies were finished, fellow PS2 platformer mascot series Sly Cooper still had another entry to round out the series as a trilogy of games. In 2005, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves was released to conclude the Sly Cooper series. One would expect Sly 3 to experience the pratfalls that come with a third entry, but this was not the case (for the most part). By some miracle, Sly 3 managed to be on par with Sly 2 and arguably surpass it as the optimal Sly Cooper experience.

It's a little difficult to explain how Sly 3 achieves this on a surface level because it looks and feels precisely like Sly 2. Retaining the platformer elements with an open world, the mission-based direction is just as imperative here as it was in the second game. These missions involve the talents of two or three different characters, and all of these missions accumulate to a final mission, ending the chapter thusly. These missions are enacted in a real-world location and designed to be accessible for the characters to easily traverse through. Sly 3 is just as guilty of using the previous entry as a crutch just as much as the other franchises. However, Sly 3 gets away with this without seeming painfully derivative. In many aspects, Sly 3 is a refined version of Sly 2. The franchise wasn't necessarily in desperate need of these refinements, but its presence in Sly 3 gives it an edge over its predecessor. In saying this, Sly 3 still has some detractors that are either unwelcome additions, or the returning aspects were stronger in Sly 2. This is why this game isn't the unanimous favorite of the franchise. I still have difficulty deciding whether Honor Among Thieves is better than Band of Thieves.

The most notable improvement is the refinement of the graphics. Once again, Sucker Punch takes the time to improve the visuals with each subsequent Sly Cooper game. The transition from the rough animations in the first game to the more polished, defined ones in the second was essential for the evolution of the series. In Sly 3, the graphics are the same as in the previous game but are displayed much better. The colors in the cel-shaded graphics are more vibrant, giving them much more pop. It makes you notice how murky the graphics could be in Sly 2, especially in the darker areas. It's not to say that the graphics in Sly 2 were ever jarring, but there's no doubt that the more lively graphics in Sly 3 are objectively better. They even make the game look more comic-book-like, supporting this concrete aesthetic influence the series has always had beyond the intro/outros to each episode. Every other graphical aspect is the same as it was. The comic-book-styled intros/outros to each episode still look fantastic, and the characters move like marionettes. The latter aspect might look awkward and dated, and it probably could have been improved in Sly 3. However, I've always thought it was a charming aspect of the series, so I'm glad they left it alone.

The writing in Sly 3 is also much sharper than it was in the previous game. I am not necessarily referring to the story writing, but the dialogue between the characters is consistently more effervescent. The second game had moments of comedic banter between all of the characters sprinkled into the dialogue, but Sly 3 is brimming with comedic wit. Sly 3 is far more dialogue intensive than Sly 2 was. It's no more cinematic than the previous game, but the cutscenes are generally longer and more frequent. It never becomes distracting from the gameplay as the humor of Sly 3 is elevated by an incredibly tight script. The more humorous moments of Sly 2 are amusing at best, but there are some moments in Sly 3 that are uproarious. Besides the dialogue in the cutscenes, my new favorite mechanic in Sly 3 that showcases the power of the script comes with the new "negotiation mechanic". Frequently in the missions, the characters will try to either bargain with someone for a deal or relay other possible outcomes with a few options of dialogue presented to the player via a thought bubble. The game won't penalize you for choosing a less ideal option (except for the pirate insult competition one), and thank god because you'll want to exhaust every option to see how it will turn out. Some of these moments are the funniest Sly Cooper has ever been. There is even one of these with the Panda King in chapter 4 that is surprisingly profound.

Where there are new features that elevate Sly 3 over Sly 2, some aspects are either lacking in comparison or removed entirely, resulting to Sly 3's detriment. Do you know what element of Sly 3 is lacking as a whole? Thieving. The most integral aspect of Sly's being and a pertinent gameplay mechanic from the second game has been greatly reduced, with some thieving aspects omitted entirely. The clue bottles that were a staple collectible in the first two Sly games are no longer strewn across the level, clanking and clattering to indicate their presence. Naturally, this means that there aren't any vaults to crack either. The closest to this is a new feature in which Sly occasionally cracks a vault-like opening of a school locker in a mission. It's not the same as earning access to the vaults by finding all clue bottles. The exorbitant artifacts Sly and the gang can take back to the safe house to sell on the "Thief-Net" are also gone. Pickpocketing is still a central mechanic, and Bentley and Murray can even pickpocket guards this time, with a magnet and by hoisting up guards and shaking them, respectively (I don't think I have to tell you which character does which here). However, each trinket you receive from the pockets of the guards is immediately liquidated, which doesn't make any sense. The Thief-Net is still active as Sly and friends can still purchase moves and upgrades, so why did the developers choose to eliminate the selling portion of it? I'd argue this decision was made to streamline Sly Cooper, a common practice with third trilogy entries, but the selling aspect was already so simple. I just can't seem to fathom why they would do this.

While the levels are still designed like open-world playgrounds, the absence of these features makes these levels feel more barren and lifeless. It also diminishes the identity of Sly Cooper as a thief and the noirish inspiration that was present throughout the entirety of the second game. The smokey, noirish tone of the second game is heavily reduced here. Most levels are even in broad daylight, for god's sake. Instead, Sly 3 focuses on the cartoony, comic-book aspects of the series in both aesthetic design and direction. These aspects are readily apparent across the entire series but are amplified to a greater degree. I suppose they complement the humor and the higher energy the game presents, but diluting the film noir influences makes for a less inspired game. There are already so many humorous platformer games with cartoons and comics as their primary influences. They might not hold the same caliber of charming characters with a stellar narrative in an open-world environment as Sly Cooper, but their influences are all cut from the same cloth. The film noir influence is what made Sly Cooper special. The noir influence wasn't just dabbed into the mix as a means to accentuate the tone. The heists in the second game matched with the ultimately doomed Clockwerk mission showing that the developers understood how to effectively integrate these darker noir influences in their game while balancing their more light-hearted influences. Without this balance, the tone and direction of Sly 3 aren't as substantial comparatively.

Every level in Sly 3 also feels much less inspired. Each level in Sly 2 was the stronghold of one of the Klaww Gang members, and the levels more or less reflected their presence and personas. The Contessa was creepy and had a sinister presence, so the gothic foreground of Prague was perfect in reflecting this. The same could be said for the old-fashioned, rustic Jean Bison, whose persona was reflected in the folksy regions of Canada. The villains in Sly 3 are just circumstantial to the foreground instead of being the core of it. The only exception is Octavio, who seems to have a looming presence over the area he occupies in Venice. The different animals that make up his guards are pigeons, cats, and wolves, reflecting animals common in mobster slang. The other areas had cracks in them that irked me. For instance, Australia has so many unique marsupials, and yet the developers chose to use two types of dingos for the guards? That's just lazy. The gang returns to China after the first game, breathing more life into this country with the open-world direction. Still, I can't help but consider that this is the first time the series has repeated a location, and feel as if this is another point of the developers getting more lethargic as the series progressed. The most inspired chapter is the fifth one, a pirate adventure in the Caribbean. Pirates were the one thieving aspect absent in Sly 2 amongst the archetypal heist jobs explored in Sly 2 like a demolition job, bait, and switch, train robbery, etc. Finally, the gang explores another thieving staple, but this chapter is practically ruined by the second half. The series may have translated well into the open-world genre, but not as a high-sails adventure on the seas. The ship controls terribly, and the player cannot adjust the trajectory of the wind ala The Wind Waker, so sailing to a mission will likely be at a glacial pace. Worst yet, the gang will constantly be ensnared by rogue pirates and will be forced to do battle with them. If one-half of your ship is destroyed during these battles, it counts as dying, and you will be forced to return to the starting point where the middle mission of the chapter took place. This is not only the worst section of Sly 3 but arguably the worst section in the series.

The other arguably worse section of Sly 3 is the Hazard Room, a tutorial level after the prologue that is supposed to refresh the player on how to navigate the areas and use Sly, Bentley, and Murray's movesets. Bently has rented out a warehouse in an undisclosed area and uses a series of boxes and ropes to simulate the foundations and traversable obstacles in the areas. For the most part, Sly 3 does an admirable job at not streamlining the series, but this area is just a gigantic, patronizing slap in the face. The controls and layout of Sly Cooper are already easy to learn in a matter of reminding the player ever so slightly in the first real area as they did in Sly 2. Plus, not too much is different here from the previous game, rendering this area useless. The agonizing aspect is that the first real chapter after the prologue is locked until you do the tutorials here with Sly. I wouldn't have bothered mentioning this area if it was optional. For some reason, it is optional for Bentley and Murray and unavailable for all the new characters who introduce us to new movesets. Why did the developers even bother? Was the area forced to be implemented here by Sony executives on some accessibility quota? This is the third game, guys. This was the first Sly game I played, and I still didn't need this tutorial level. I really wish all video game developers would stop doing this.

Because the more refined noir influences aren't as present, the missions are also affected. The missions are far less restrained than in Sly 2, and they feel much more roundabout. They still culminate in a grand final heist at the end of the chapter, but I'd be reluctant to use the word "heist" to describe these final missions as nothing is stolen. The plans of execution for these final missions are circumstantial to whatever the main conflict is in the chapters. These final operations are also sort of less poignant because the missions leading up to them tend to be grandiose themselves. Most of them involve more than one objective and involve playing more than one character as well. A good number of them will also deviate into an objective that wasn't planned by the gang. For example, Sly has to bomb a series of advertisements in Venice to sabotage Octavio's comeback recital. After bombing all of the ads along with Octavio's visage on the top of a tower, Octavio kidnaps Bentley and Sly has to chase him all over the city, similarly to chasing Neyla in Sly 2. In the Australia chapter, the gang challenges some miners to a (lemonade) drinking competition. Like with any altercation in a bar, it erupts into a brew-ha-ha. The mission is reminiscent of the mission from Sly 2, in which the player plays as Murray fighting off hordes of guards from attacking his friends. The surprise comes with the game having the player fight these miners as Sly, Bentley, and Murray instead of just Murray, the person in the gang who specializes in fisticuffs. Was simply playing as Murray too direct for the developers? In addition, this mission escalates into a surprise boss fight. Gone are the days of surveying the land with reconnaissance photos and lurking in the shadows while executing the plan. Every mission in Sly 3 has to make a big scene. Even the first job in Venice taking reconnaissance photos involves Bentley dismantling a Ferris wheel.

The saving grace is that these more chaotic missions are more fun than the more meticulously executed missions in Sly 2. While the first few heists in Sly 2 are essential in establishing the new open-world, mission-based gameplay, they are a little dry compared to the exhilarating heists later in the game. Sly 3 capitalizes on the entertainment factor of the missions and the final operations and provides the player with consistent thrills. Every final mission in Sly 3 also has a habit of going awry, which was always an aspect of my favorite final missions from Sly 2. It's all killer, but I'm not so sure there is no filler. There are many missions presented in Sly 3 that prove to be irrelevant in working up to the final operation. In Sly 2, each mission, no matter how minuscule, was never insignificant in working up to the main mission. It wasn't all killer, but there was no filler. I always lamented that there wasn't a mission select option in Sly 2 after finishing the chapter. Still, now I consider that some missions in Sly 2 aren't worth replaying individually. Sly 3 has this feature, and I replayed practically every mission in the game ad nauseam as a kid. However, I still think Sly 2's missions are more substantial.

Sly 3 also improves upon my one main critique from the second game. The difficulty was far too forgiving, especially in the case of being caught by the guards. Each character could get away quickly enough and or fight their way through them to the point where getting caught seemed trivial unless the characters (namely Bentley) found themselves in an unlucky position of being ambushed. In Sly 3, the guards are much more durable and persistent. The smaller guards won't dissipate comically when knocked off of a rooftop. The guards in this game will fall and jump right back up to apprehend you. The flashlight guards also take way more hits to take down, even than Murray. A hit from the guards will deplete around a fourth of your health instead of a seventh of it, forcing the player to be more cautious around enemies. It's ironic considering that Sly 3 is the game between the two sequels that has less of a focus on stealth. Sly 3 also drastically improves on the bosses. The bosses in previous games had incredibly predictable patterns and weren't very tenacious. Some bosses even repeated the same attack for the duration of their fight. The bosses here will change their attack patterns and even come in different phases to throw the player off, making them far more engaging than the fights in both previous Sly Cooper games.

As one could probably assess, everything in Sly 3 acts as a means to make the franchise bigger in scale. Sly 3 seems to have more to offer than Sly 2 does, for better or for worse. Not only is Sly 3's initiative to expand the gameplay elements, but to expand the Cooper gang as presented in the overarching story. Sly 3's is a Seven Samurai-Esque tale of venturing worldwide to find enough talent to take on their most ambitious mission yet: the opening of "The Cooper Vault". Sometime between the second and third games, Sly encounters an intimidating-looking walrus named McSweeny who apparently used to be a member of the previous Cooper gang with Sly's father. He informs Sly about the vault, which is said to possess an unfathomable fortune that makes Scrooge McDuck's gold vault seem modest by comparison. Excavating the vault is also deemed a rite of passage for any member of the Cooper clan. The vault is located on an island in the pacific but surrounded by seemingly impenetrable security put up by a man named Dr. M, who has been trying to violently crack the vault for some time now. He's made himself a stronghold on the island with every type of security measure and with an army of horrifically mutated guards whose genetic material consists of two or three different animals (does the "M" in Dr. M stands for "Moreau" by any chance?) The game begins at the point in the story where Sly and the gang are executing the Cooper Vault operation. Besides Bentley, the other members are silhouetted on the other side of the binocucom to not give away their identities. Some of the voices are unfamiliar, one of them should be obvious, and two of them should ignite a sense of deja-vu. Sly gets to the vault, but the operation goes awry, and Sly finds himself being slowly crushed under the palms of one of Dr. M.'s genetic abominations. The story of Sly 3 is told in flashbacks as Sly's life flashes before his eyes, working its way up to the prologue.

Before I talk about the myriad of new playable characters in Sly 3, I have to make a slight mention of the old ones. A lot has happened to our old friends since the devastating end of the second game, and the fallout of those events has affected them drastically. This is not particularly true for Sly, who is the same as he always was, but Bentley and Murray are the most war-torn. Murray left the gang due to being in a state of overwhelming guilt over what happened to Bentley. His feelings are understandable, as any good friend would feel bad about witnessing a friend getting mortally wounded. However, Bentley is now permanently bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, coupled with the fact that if you notice carefully, Murray could have prevented this by prying open Clockwerk's head while Bentley was under there, makes his grief even more gut-wrenching. Murray then seeks spiritual guidance from a wise mentor and travels worldwide searching for enlightenment like Kane from Kung Fu. You happen to meet him in Venice, where an opera singer turned mob boss Octavio is planning a comeback recital. This is to make his presence as a star again and punish those who have forsaken him due to changing musical tastes. He plans this by flooding the waters of Venice with tar and planting a bomb under a landmark as an explosive encore (no pun intended). He's a menacing villain with a lot of character, snarling at his cronies and speaking with an emphatic vibrato. He roughs up wheel-chair-bound Bentley, and the sight causes Murray to get a chance to redeem himself for the accident last game by beating Octavio. Once you get Murray back on the team, he washes off his tribal makeup, dons the mask and the gloves, and becomes "The Murray" that we all know and love.

Bentley, on the other hand, is the only main character that is radically different. Even though he is confined to a wheelchair, he does as much if not more fieldwork than he did in the previous game. The wheelchair has an accessible hover feature and is equipped with the same sleep darts and bombs. Bentley has also become my favorite character in this game, not just because he's fun to play. To compensate for being crippled, Bentley has shed his geeky, hesitant nature and is now a cold-blooded tactician. He's like a green paraplegic Tony Soprano now. Some of his finest and hilariously fiendish moments are dueling vocal feats with Octavio, having Murray feed guards to a crocodile, siccing a giant wolf on the guards, and uttering one of the most savage "your mama" jokes to the face of a man who is big enough to eat him. Sly and Murray constantly comment on how devious Bentley has become and are in both shock and awe of his plans. He was in training wheels in the second game, but now he's in the Tour de France. He's the man now.

Another familiar series character that is now playable is Carmelita. No, she does not join the gang, even though it's Sly's star-crossed fantasy, I'm sure. The gang (meaning Bentley and his devious deeds) often has Carmelita support them by having her take out some kind of big threat through guided manipulation. She is equipped with her trademark shock pistol and a kick move at short range. She can also leap over buildings with a jump move. The shock pistol has a target system making shooting very smooth and accurate. Yes, the only way to manage Carmelita's poor aim is to have the player do it.

The chapters in Sly 3 are presented much more episodically than in Sly 2. The Cooper vault job is still the end goal, but not as emphasized as the overarching plot like collecting the Clockwerk parts was. Each chapter feels much more contained and involves executing a favor for a new potential Cooper Gang member before they can join. After hearing about the mystical powers Murray's teacher, "The Guru," possesses, the gang takes an interest in him and travels to Australia. However, parasitic miners excavate the land, and The Guru can't join until his homeland is purified from miner influence. In doing this, they unearth an evil mystical force known as the "Mask of Dark Earth," the dumbest villain in the series. It's a sentient mask that randomly latches onto unsuspecting people as they become irrationally angry and grow to gargantuan size. This eventually happens to Carmelita, and Sly has to climb her (another dream come true, no doubt) to pry off the mask and destroy it. It's an entertaining final operation, to say the least. The Guru is my new favorite character as his mystical gibberish is amusing, and his unique move set is a blast to use. The only problem with him is his blatant hypocrisy, preaching non-violence while manipulating people to propel themselves into dangerous machinery.

Bentley then discovers he needs a mechanic and pilot with skills that surpass his own. He finds a Dutch mouse named Penelope who can offer her skills to the team if the gang wins a prestigious piloting dog-fight competition in The Netherlands. The competition is curated by "The Baron," a formidable pilot and Penelope's boss. This chapter is my favorite in the game because Sly and the gang go to great lengths to cheat. Any section that involves the gang being sneaky and duplicitous is a winner in my book. Like the log games, the host cheats, and Sly confronts him for it. After battling the Baron, it's revealed that Penelope is under the mask and has been posing as the Baron because of the Ace's Flight Competition's "strict age requirements." C'mon, Sucker Punch. This is an obvious glass ceiling scenario. The player doesn't get to play as Penelope (except for one boss fight) but plays as her toy box of gizmos like the RC car and the RC Chopper.

One could argue that Bentley could just fulfill this role just as well, but being the team mechanic is not Penelope's real role in the gang. She's a love interest character for Bentley, a situation in the gang that we haven't seen play out yet. Even though she's obviously the perfect match for Bentley, Bentley has competition for her affections. You can't tell from behind her thick glasses, but she's giving Sly the "fuck me eyes" throughout the fourth chapter. One mission in chapter 5 highlights this elephant in the room as Bentley reveals his frustrated feelings about Penelope's affection for Sly. However, this is the same chapter where Bentley brilliantly wins her favor. Penelope gets captured by the vicious pirate Lefwee as she is forced to be his bride. Knowing that Lefwee is onto them and he is very clever, Bentley hatches one plan he willingly knows that Lefwee will catch onto and a "plan B" to throw him off and rescue Penelope. He has Sly enact the first plan and fuck up on purpose, thus making him the hero of the day by rescuing Penelope himself. This plan makes him seem more capable than Sly and Lefwee to Penelope. After this, Bentley gets the girl. Sly probably knew about Bentley's crush on Penelope and threw him a bone like the bro he is. After all, Sly obviously only has eyes for Carmelita anyways.

The demolition man for the big job is a shock for Sly and the player. The gang goes to China to convince none other than The Panda King, a boss from the first game and mortal enemy of Sly, to join their gang. Sly is understandably apprehensive about this plan, but Bentley can't think of anyone better for the job. Since the events of the first game, The Panda King has become a monk amid the humiliation of losing to Sly and being separated from his daughter. For him to join the gang, they must halt the forced marriage between his daughter and a ruthless Chinese general named Tsao. The third game may have been my favorite chapter regarding the missions, but this one is my favorite in terms of narrative. The tension between Sly and The Panda King is palpable, being that he was one of the people who murdered Sly's parents. They come to a point of cooperation and forgiveness once The Panda King makes a deep effort to try to forget the past and become a better person, literally by communicating with the reflection of his old self. I said that revisiting China was slightly disappointing because of repeating a geographical location, but this chapter shows the total growth of the series. It juxtaposes the setting, narrative, and characters to the rudimentary ones present when the gang last visited China. This also includes the villains, as General Tsao is not only vastly more heinous than The Panda King but also the most heinous villain in the series. He's a villain so arrogant that not only does he love the smell of his own farts, but he'd be offended if you didn't love them too. During a fight with him (the best fight in the series), Sly even tells him that he's one of the worst people he's ever met. Don't worry; the wedding is stopped, and he gets his just desserts. Murray is also reunited with the team van by coincidence during this chapter.

Dimitri is the last new member to join the gang and is the narrative reason for the pirate chapter. In chapter 3, Sly deals with Dimitri for leverage in the Aces Flight Competition. In return, the gang goes to Blood Bath Bay to retrieve Dimitri's grandfather's scuba gear. Once they find it, Lefwee captures Penelope, making the gang hold off on declaring Dimitri as a member just yet. With his new scuba gear, Dimitri acts as the team's frogman, which heavily involves swimming. I'm glad Dimitri is back in Sly 3 because his nonsensical "hip" vernacular is always entertaining, but his underwater missions are convoluted as all hell to control. Fortunately, he joins the gang so late that you only have to play as him twice.

After assembling the gang throughout five chapters, the events come back full circle to Sly in peril on Kaine Island, thus starting the final chapter of the game. As he starts to lose consciousness, he reflects on his life and starts to have regrets. It's at this point where he considers leaving his thieving career behind and starting a real relationship with Carmelita instead of just flirting with her while escaping her shock blasts. At the last moment, Carmelita acts as Sly's guardian angel and subdues the creature with her shock pistol, freeing Sly. After regaining consciousness, Sly and his team do their best to retrieve Sly's cane and get Sly into the Cooper Vault.

Let me make this clear distinction: the ending to Sly 3 is great, but the final chapter of Sly 3 is not. It's another linear, gauntlet-style chapter similar to the final chapter in the first Sly game. I had wondered if the final chapter in that game was this way because of a rushed development period. Considering that the second game is the only one where the final chapter isn't a gauntlet and has a longer development time, I know this was the case for Sly 1 and 3. The missions involve putting the abilities of each Cooper Gang member to the test, but the problem comes with a lack of familiarity. Some of the missions are way too difficult due to only having a little bit of exposure to their gameplay styles, especially with Dimitri and the biplane. It doesn't help that Dr. M has been completely forgotten about through the course of the game due to each chapter being more contained with its own villains. It doesn't help matters that Dr. M is an incredibly weak final villain. It's revealed that Dr. M was the Bentley in Sly's father's gang and Mcsweeny was the Murray. Apparently, Sly's father was very callous towards Dr. M and undermined his team, taking all the glory for himself. He's supposed to be a sympathetic villain but is laughably unconvincing. All we've seen him do is act like a violent maniac who spits so much vitriol at Sly and his family that you'd think HE was the one who killed his parents. After this exchange, Sly is guilted into inviting Bentley and Murray into the vault with him. Unfortunately, Sly is the only one who can proceed into the chamber. As Sly ventures into the glorious Cooper Vault, Bentley starts to converse with Murray about if Sly treats them like underlings. Murray deflects this by saying that "Sly is cool," but I have a better rebuttal: How, especially at this point in the series, can you question the relationship between these three? They've been through so much together at this point for so long that their relationship shouldn't be up for debate. They've broken each other out of jail, Sly turned himself in so he could let his battered friends go free, and Sly even risked his life to secure a girlfriend for Bentley. The dynamic between these three is one of the strongest points in the series, and it cannot be adulterated by some lunatic who doesn't even give us any insight into his own experiences with Sly's dad. Of course, Bentley and Murray stop Dr. M's goons from bushwhacking Sly in the vault because that's what you do for a dear old friend. Sly has a final duel with Dr. M as Carmelita arrives unexpectedly. Sly takes a shot for Carmelita and fakes amnesia as an opportunity to start over with her as they escape the crumbling vault, with Dr. M marveling over the treasure in his last moments. Months pass, and Sly is nowhere to be seen. After some time, they all go their separate ways. Bentley catches up with Sly to find that he is in a relationship with Carmelita, finally getting a chance to settle down with her as he has always desired.

I commented on my Sly 2 review that the story was the game's strongest aspect. Compared to the ebb and flow of Sly 2's story with rich themes such as betrayal, loss, and failure, Sly 3's story doesn't quite deliver on the same scale. The more confined chapters are all entertaining in their own right, but the lackluster final chapter shows that they all fail as sums to the story's foundation. The added number of players in the Cooper Gang also lessens the impact of the dynamic between Sly, Bentley, and Murray, which was one of the best aspects of Sly 2. However, the finale, where Sly's character arc is fulfilled and the series concludes, is very satisfying and bittersweet. It doesn't make up for any shortcomings in the final chapter but doesn't diminish it all the same.

The main objective of the developers was to make a more indulgent Sly Cooper experience to cap off the trilogy. Sucker Punch's initiative was to damn all subtlety and offer as much as possible with one final entry like one final hurrah. Everything about the second game has been magnified exponentially, such as the number of playable characters, the humor in the dialogue, and the more frantic missions. Sly 2 may be more mature and refined, but Sly 3 is so much fun to experience. I still can't decide which one is better, and I guess it's all up to subjective choices rather than objective quality. What Sly 3 is that Sly 2 isn't a great conclusion to one of my favorite franchises in gaming.
...
There's also another aspect of Sly 3 that is present outside of the narrative. Sly and the gang will use "optimizer goggles" in a few missions to see the levels more clearly. This references the 3D paper-thin glasses from the game's manual that you use for a 3D effect. This extra feature may have been fun when I was a kid, but I cannot see in 3D due to having only one eye. These levels would have just been a nauseating blue for me. Thank god using this feature is always optional, or else Sly 2 would have been the clear victor over this game.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

The peculiar history of the American Super Mario Bros. 2 has been well documented for decades, garnering the status as the red-headed stepchild of the Mario franchise. In short, the real Super Mario Bros. 2 was considered too difficult by American standards. Considering the content in what we in America know as Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, they might have had a point. Instead, America was treated to something completely foreign to all of the foundations presented in the groundbreaking Super Mario Bros. Sometime later, it was revealed that the American Super Mario Bros. 2 was a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic, masquerading as the sequel to Super Mario Bros. It was a case of Doki Doki Panic wearing Mario’s skin with only a few familiar properties to make it marginally discernible. “Super Mario Bros. 2” turned out to be a fraud. This never would have stuck with today's internet-savvy gamers, who would’ve caught onto this as quickly as the wind. In the pre-internet days of 1988, the radical changes to Super Mario Bros. 2 didn’t even raise one skeptical eyebrow. The Mario franchise was still in its infancy, and the elements that make up a Mario game weren’t as concrete. They were too busy enjoying the game to care. Nowadays, people fervently try to discredit the American Super Mario Bros. 2, labeling it as a “fake Mario game,” retrospectively noting that the game sticks out like a sore thumb. Nintendo has paved over the reskinned anomaly that is the American sequel to Super Mario Bros., but they have not erased it from the Mario canon. Nintendo has kept several properties from this version of Super Mario Bros. 2, becoming staples in the Mario universe.

Immediately, something about Super Mario Bros. 2 should ring suspiciously. The player chooses between four characters instead of being catapulted into the action as the titular red plumber. Mario is one of the selectable characters, but who wouldn’t be intrigued by the new options presented here? The other playable characters are Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool/Peach, a few recognizable characters from the first Super Mario Bros. The selection here seems appropriate enough, but I can’t help but think it was slim-picking back in 1988 before the Mario universe expanded. These were the four characters from the first game that weren’t enemies or Bowser. Doki Doki Panic offered four different playable characters, so Super Mario Bros. 2 had to follow suit, I suppose. Each character also comes with their own unique abilities, something also copied and pasted from the Doki Doki Panic source. The recognizable Mario characters are painted over the characters from Doki Doki Panic with the same attributes. Mario is the balanced character with a reasonably high jump radius, Luigi jumps higher but is harder to control, Toad can’t jump as high but seems to be the strongest, and Peach is the wildcard character with a gliding motion.

The moves that Mario characters have here are directly intertwined with their DDP counterparts, but the dynamic between each character has carried over into future Mario games. Luigi was essentially just “green Mario” in the first game with no unique attributes. His swapped color pallet signified that it was the second player’s turn. Luigi was the same as Mario to keep both players on equal standings, but Super Mario Bros. 2 doesn’t offer multiplayer. Here, Luigi’s differences help formulate him into a character that is entirely removed from Mario. In the direct sequels, Luigi is reverted back to a reskinned Mario for the second player. Over time, Luigi formed his own independent personality and moveset. He was the taller, more air-bound younger brother, exactly how he was in Super Mario Bros. 2. The plucky cowardice of Luigi’s personality came later. Toad is confined to an unplayable in subsequent Mario titles, which is a shame because he’s a favorite character in this game due to his strength. One could argue that his inclusion in this game is only due to having a minor presence as an NPC in the first game, but this game proves that Toad can be fully capable of the action. Princess Peach’s character here isn’t implemented much into the main Mario franchise due to her obligatory role as being more catchable than chlamydia at a Vegas whorehouse. The traces from Super Mario Bros. 2 are not lost as they carry over into Peach’s role in Super Smash Bros. Peach can glide in the air for a short time and pull a vegetable out of the ground to use as a projectile. If that’s not enough of a Super Mario Bros. 2 easter egg, plucking from the ground as Peach will net you a bomb on rare occurrences, a happenstance from Super Mario Bros. 2

Nintendo may have carried over different attributes introduced for the playable characters, but the most important inclusion is all of the staple Mario enemies introduced in this game. Unlike the playable characters, these enemies are directly from DDP, so the Mario franchise has adopted these enemies directly from the main source. It’s unbelievable how many recognizable enemies are in this game. The Shy Guys, Pokies, Ninji’s, Bob-omb’s, and even the androgynous Birdo debut here. These are all Mario enemies that have a presence in the franchise, practically to the same degree as Goombas and Koopas from the first game. Yet, they all would have been relegated to an obscure Japanese game if Nintendo hadn’t decided to repaint DDP as a Mario game.

If you start to consider a few things, these enemies more or less fit more appropriately into the lore and background of Doki Doki Panic than any Mario game. The Mario series is inspired by sections of Japanese culture and mythology, namely the villains like the shiitake mushroom-shaped Goombas and the Koopas. Doki Doki Panic is heavily inspired by Arabic mythos. There are many desert-themed levels in Super Mario Bros. 2, and the magic carpet rides are a dead giveaway. The playable characters from DDP that were reskinned as Mario characters are wearing turbans and other middle-eastern garbs. The only aspect of DDP that allows it to be absorbed by the Mario universe without seeming totally unfit is the element of vague psychedelia. The first Super Mario Bros. and Doki Doki Panic take place in a colorful world with a myriad of strange creatures to dismantle their oppressive regime, a rabbit hole of an adventure similar to Alice in Wonderland. The only difference is that DDP opens with a cutscene that explains the story's premise better. The world takes place in an Arabic storybook, and two children have been pulled in and captured by Mamu, or Wart as he is known in the American Super Mario Bros. 2 and the four characters have to rescue them. In Super Mario Bros. 2, there is absolutely no context to the surroundings until the very end.

Besides the enemies and the backgrounds, the most radical shift in the American Super Mario Bros. 2 is the gameplay. I remember playing this game for the first time as a kid and wondering why the enemies weren’t defeated when I jumped on their heads as I rode on top of a Shy Guy for two minutes. The trick that I soon became privy to is that everything in this game is defeated by either picking it up and throwing it or throwing something at an enemy. Every enemy can be easily hoisted up and disposed of, making the game's difficulty always manageable in terms of combat. Some vegetables can be used as projectiles after rooting them from the ground. Mushrooms are not found in boxes but through doors that teleport you to a nocturnal, parallel space to the surrounding area. The mushrooms are not from DDP but a staple item to make the reskinned game feel more like Mario. Many of the more distinctive aspects of DDP were translated to fit the Mario universe, like Koopa shells instead of shrunken heads and going through doors instead of genie lamps. The sound design in Super Mario Bros. 2 is also leagues better than the ear-piercing effects from DDP.

One thing from the original DDP that isn’t translated more effectively into Super Mario Bros. 2 is the difficulty. My biggest grievance is the game’s arcade-style difficulty, in which you go back to the beginning when you get a game over, but I could say this about any game with this direction. Super Mario Bros. 2 has other difficult aspects that make me wonder about the quality of this game. The movement in Super Mario Bros. 2 is very loose and flighty. This may just be because I primarily play as Luigi, but I found this to be the case playing as the other characters as well. Jumping on a foe to pick them up can be inaccurate at times resulting in unfair damage done to the player. Ironically, my biggest gameplay gripe comes with the game demanding too much precision. In the underground sections of the game, the player has to pluck the bombs from the ground and use them to blast open areas in solid dirt barriers to progress. Unfortunately, the bombs have a blast radius of a tepid fart, so the player has to be incredibly accurate to blow up the barriers. The player has a finite number of bombs, so the player will have to restart plenty of times. The dirt-digging sections suck, and while the key chase sections are tense and harrowing, that mask is way too fast for anyone’s convenience.

The biggest improvement from the first Mario game, reskinned from another game regardless, are the boss battles. Getting to the end of Bowser’s castle eight separate times got incredibly stale very quickly, but Super Mario Bros. 2 offers many different, formidable foes at the end of each world. Mowser is a bomb-throwing rodent that will test your bomb-cooking abilities, Tryclyde is a hydra creature that will test your throwing abilities, and Clawgrip is a crab that will test both. Between all of these bosses are the Birdo encounters where she will spit eggs at you to throw them back at her. These occurrences happen at least 15 different times, but Birdo alternates her color and her attack patterns to prevent her encounters from becoming stale like Bowsers. Wart, the final boss of the game, is a portly toad who is defeated by every fat person’s true weakness: healthy food. He’s not more difficult than the other bosses but takes a few more hits to take down. After he chokes on too many garlic cloves, Wart is defeated, and the player rescues some fairy creatures trapped in a vase. All the player characters celebrate, and Wart is dragged off and disposed of by the serfs of the kingdom. The entire game is then revealed to be a dream that Mario is having.

Unbelievable. The game’s premise is one of the most cliche endings any narrative can have. This is the best they could do? After some consideration, however, the American Super Mario Bros. 2’s existence is like a weird fever dream. It’s a reskinned version of an obscure Japanese game with almost every property kept with Mario’s persona at the helm. It holds a bizarre place in the history of gaming’s most iconic franchise, and its further recognition in the Mario canon naturally draws some ire from fans. It doesn't seem as if Nintendo is ashamed of this game. However, as many properties from DDP have been adopted into the Mario universe, such as the enemies and character abilities. The four playable characters in the more modern Super Mario 3D World are the same as they are here, an obvious tribute to Super Mario Bros. 2. It was an interesting idea that people only have discrepancies with retrospective insight. The players in 1988 didn’t care because it was a solid successor to the first Super Mario Bros., and the fact that it was copied from another game didn’t matter in the long run.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com