I rented a couple of games over the weekend, “Taz: Wanted” and “Sly Cooper” - both for the PS2 (obviously?)

Anyway, I’ll do a quick little reviewlet of each of them. First, “Taz: Wanted” - my thoughts upon seeing this were that the Taz game for the genesis was fun, so maybe this one would be too. I played the game for a grand total of maybe an hour and a half - not a good sign, right? Well, first off, the sound was absolutely terrible. The voice acting was all fine, but the actual sound quality was worse than listening to a radio call-in show. It literally sounded like the voice actors “called it in.” The game itself was interesting for about an hour, when the lack of new challenges, and frustration with the level of stupidity take over. I don’t know why exactly, but the game became boring quite quickly. It was fun at first though, being able to eat all kinds of strange things (park bench anyone?) and destroy large parts of the landscape. There wasn’t much more to it though, and some of the “puzzles” were of the “try everything, something has to work” variety. I’m not a big fan of that approach to platform games, since I usually end up spending large amounts of time essentially banging my head against a wall.

Sly Cooper, on the other hand, is tremendously fun. The storyline is that you’re a master thief, from a long line of master thieves, and your family heirloom, the Thevius Raccoonus, has been stolen. Your goal is to steal all the parts of the Thevius Racoonus back from the five evil villians. Of course, they’ve ripped it up, so you only get a page at a time, but each page contains some interesting little technique or ability that you can use to become a better thief. The graphics are awesome, but more importantly, they take a back seat to the gameplay. The controls are intuitive, and relatively easy to get a handle on. Each new technique becomes second nature, and at times, it’s amazing how simple it is to do incredibly difficult looking things. For instance, I was running along the rooftops, with a bazooka toting fox chasing me. I jumped off of a rooftop, not knowing where I was going to land, but managed to spot a hook in the sky, snagged it with my cane, and swung myself to another roof. All the while, running full tilt.

Sly is a fun game, but sadly, rather short. I think I’m at 85% after playing a little Saturday night, and a little more yesterday. I think I might be able to wrap it before I have to return it tonight, but if not, I’ll rent it again.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “‘Disembowler IV’: the game where condemned criminals dig at each other with rusty hooks.” - Bart