Sly 2: Band of Thieves PS2

With the welcome return of Sly Cooper and company, PlayStation 2 gamers are once again treated to an exemplary action adventure that happily reaches the highs of the first game. And what’s more, Sly 2: Band of Thieves has a fair few new tricks up its sleeve too.

This time round, the task in hand is to locate the remains of boo-hiss baddie Clockwerk, which naturally enough have gone missing. This aim subsequently splits the game down into numerous locations, each of which present different challenges to Sly and his team. And thanks to a winning marriage of stealth, platforming action and puzzle solving, the challenges are hard not to enjoy.

What really adds to the fun is the game’s wonderful style. Borrowing clichés liberally from lots of heist movies, there’s a charming tongue-in-cheek approach to Sly 2. Furthermore, it’s also adopted a free-roaming mission structure that allows you to tackle its elements in the order you prefer. This certainly gets round the problem of frustratingly getting stuck in certain areas--now you can go off elsewhere and make progress, and come back to the tricky bits later.

With clever level design, a fair dollop of suspense and some genuinely engrossing gameplay, Sly 2: Band of Thieves is ultimately a very successful sequel. Whilst admittedly not straying too far from the winning formula of the original, it nonetheless presents interesting new challenges, a fair few new ideas and a whole heap of entertainment.