Sly sneaks back into my heart.

Sly Cooper was one of my favorite franchises back on the Playstation 2, slightly edging out over Jak & Daxter, and just barely falling short of Ratchet & Clank as my favorite series of platformers. While The Sly Collection whet my appetite a little bit, it was the teaser for Sly 4 that made me giddy with excitement. Of course, like all other fans, I was unsure if Sanzaru Games would live up to the potential that Sucker Punch had done before.

One of the first things you will notice when playing Thieves in Time are the upgraded visuals. Sly and the gang have never looked better, employing a next-generation facelift in the usual cel-shaded style. The environments also look great, as the hub worlds are fully packed with all sorts of things.

As for the story, the game employs the usual time travel fare. While the gang is apart, Bentley notices that the pages of the Thievius Raccoonus, the Sly family's sacred book, are disappearing. So, he reforms the team and uses the time machine he was working on to go back in time to fix the anomaly. It gets the job done, but it's nothing special and it's been done plenty of times before, despite the one twist thrown at you later in the game. One thing that was missing was the back stories that were given to the main bosses you fight throughout the game.

Of course, everything else could be perfect, but if the game didn't play like Sly, it wouldn't matter. Thieves in Time follows in the footsteps of Sly 2 in its basic structure, with each episode of the game being separated into jobs that culminate in a final boss battle for that episode. There is something off on some of the episodes, as the jobs don't seem to meld together as well as they did in Sly 2.

If there is one thing Thieves in Time does right, it's the fact that there are a lot of other things to do besides do besides just the missions. There are three different kinds of collectibles, which are the returning Clue Bottles, Treasures hidden throughout the hubs, as well as Sly Masks that can be hidden anywhere. Besides that, there are hacking mini-games, a ping pong table and even the jobs themselves can be replayed.

One of the few things that detracts from the good things is the slightly long loading times. I'm not sure what went wrong, but it can take a good 5-6 seconds sometimes to get from a job to the hideout, then another 5 seconds to get into the next job.

Overall, Sanzaru did a great job with their first from-scratch game in the Sly universe (they ported Sly Collection). While a few technical issues might throw a few people off, the overall feel of the game stays true to Sly Cooper and is truly a great game.