Sly 2: Band of Thieves

The Good
Some of the earlier levels are quite fun. Interesting design. Good backgrounds. The ability to use special moves to jump across wires, ropes and tiny platforms has thankfully been improved since the first game.

The Bad
This game switches between the tedious (roaming around looking for the locations of missions or for various objects such as herbs to intoxicate an elephant), the frustrating (being bashed around by gangs of coppers, rhinos, etc from which you have practically no defence) and the downright infuriating (trying to avoid being seen or heard whilst being bashed around as you attempt to reach and fire sleep darts into watermelons so you can send an enemy to sleep and steal something or other which I spend hours trying to locate and never managed to do so). The characters, despite being well-designed, have paper-thin personalities and the dialogue between them is so flat and tedious it could have been written by a machine.

The Bottom Line
Sly Raccoon and his gang (a brainy tortoise and a muscle-bound hippo) must make their way around various countries and complete the missions needed to find the pieces of the evil metal owl Clockwerk (sic).