Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

At its best, Sly Cooper is a formulaic, moderately entertaining action/platform game with some light stealth elements. As far as mechanics, it's nothing you haven't seen before in a previous console generation, and frankly falls short of its predecessors' expert implementation. At its worst, Sly is frustrating to play, with out-of-left-field one-hit kills, annoying checkpoint placement, and ridiculously difficult minigames (that you have to play to proceed in the game's story).

Playing Sly Cooper, it's clear that Sucker Punch had some good ideas. That's why I read up on the game's sequels to see where they went with it. When I saw that my precise complaints about the game were addressed, I up and bought Sly 2 and 3 - this was weeks ago, back when I was still at 35%. Aside from being dirt cheap, I have confidence in their ability to run with the foundation laid by this game.

At the same time, with a completion time of just under 6 hours (and leaving me fairly unmotivated to collect the extra stuff I'd need for 100%), Thievius Raccoonus feels like one you can skip. If not for the minigames, I'd rank it as a solid, middle-of-the-road 5/10, but they are just too goddamn frustrating to forget.

Progress: 73%, beat final boss