Sly Cooper and the gang are back for one final chapter in this underdog series and it comes packed with just as much style and originality as when it first hit the scene in 2002. Fans of the original Sly Racoon know that Sly 2 mixed up the formula a bit; in fact I'd say it became the best game for people with Attention Deficit Disorder! Not only did you play as Sly, but you also took the role of his partners in crime Bentley and Murray, each playing completely different from Sly and tossing completely new challenges at you. Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves takes this and runs with it, making the game so distant from the original Sly that you may feel compelled to go back and play it once again.

The beginning of Sly 3 is the end of the game - almost, at least. As Sly and Bentley talk over their communicators, you realise that a big heist is being set up and your team consists of more than the usual three characters. You don't find out who else is with you, but you can hear their voices and get a good idea of what they're doing for the team. The level ends with a cliffhanger that has Sly looking back at how the gang got to where they are, which is where the game really begins. The introduction is an age-old technique also used in The Usual Suspects, where the end of the story is shown to us with many things left a mystery, then as you progress it starts to become clearer.

Sly has an ambitious goal to find out about his late father's one remaining secret - the location of the Cooper Family Vault, a huge passage that leads to all the Cooper family riches. He obviously can't do it alone, so with the help of Bentley he sets out to recruit a gang of new friends and old enemies to help. The first of which is obviously Murray, who left the group at the end of Sly 2, feeling that he was responsible for the events that led to Bentley being injured and ultimately confined to a wheelchair (just when you thought they couldn't come up with a character slower than a Turtle... they put him in a wheelchair). You'll recruit both new faces and old ones, some dating back to the original Sly game of 2002, so there's definitely some throwbacks to that title - but also some big departures.

The gameplay here is similar to Sly 2: Band of Thieves; the episodes are once again set up in environments that you're free to explore at your leisure and there is still a safe house where you can always return to purchase items from the ThiefNet or switch characters. I was a bit disappointed by this... I thought Sly 2 was a great game but making it less linear got rid of a lot of those great level designs that saw Sly sneaking through challenge after challenge and puzzle after puzzle. The non-linear environments still offered this but you wouldn't necessarily see all of the sections unless you were hunting out hidden collectables. I was hoping that Sly 3 would evolve the series and change the formula a bit more, giving us something completely fresh, but Sly 3 makes matters worse: now every city is set up so that almost every character you can play as (five in total) can get through them, making playing as Sly not nearly as exciting, because it needs to be accessible to everyone, not just him. It's great to explore the area while running on high wires and pick pocketing enemies from behind, but it isn't really needed. There are no hidden icons anymore, so there's no reason to search the areas like before and there's also very little reason to be careful, as the game isn't very difficult, you're not limited in lives and you also get a health-bar instead of having to hold a lucky charm horseshoe.

My biggest gripe is the fact that there are very few traditional linear platform sections of the game, where it's just a straight path level that challenges you with numerous platform puzzles, jumps, enemies and sections to let Sly pull off his fancy moves - in fact, the best level in the game is one of this nature near the very end, which is really the only one of its kind. This is what made Sly so great and there's so little of that in this game that it feels like wasted potential. Sly 3 does a great job of offering you new things to do constantly, in fact you're always switching between gameplay styles - so much that you may begin to feel like you're playing a mini-game collection. You're still pulling off heists in every episode and like Sly 2 you need to set the heists up in a number of ways, such as doing recon work, but they also don't seem nearly as cool and memorable as the ones in Band of Thieves. Since there are now so many more members of your gang, you find yourself playing as Sly a lot less than you'd probably like in the later levels, something I'm not too fond of.

As I mentioned the game constantly gives you something new to do, which is a great thing, but almost too much of a great thing. Bentley's wheelchair sections, Murray rolling into a ball and bouncing through the air, driving RC cars, flying airplanes, using disguises, paddling boats, possessing enemies, using Carmella to shoot enemies, deep-sea diving, hacking computers with a retro Centipede-like shooting game and even an entire section of the game dedicated to sailing in a pirate ship and attacking enemy ships in a way very similar to Sid Meier's Pirates, it's almost impossible to get sick of the gameplay because the gameplay never settles down and sticks to one thing. Playing as Sly is still the best part of the game, but his sections are fairly short usually and offer nowhere near the great platform moments that we had in the original Sly game, where you actually felt, well... sly.

That's not to say that the game isn't fun, because it's a blast and incredibly addictive. The way the team works together is often ingenious and the storyline itself is good and does a great job of bringing things to a meaningful conclusion for Sly and his family legacy. The fact that you're always changing roles and doing new things is a great element to have for a platform title; just don't go into the game expecting to relive all those great moments you had as Sly before, because they're few and far between. The game superbly captures a feeling of importance for each character however and you always feel like they really are working together - every member is equally important.

You won't find any of the usual level design suspects here, such as a lava world, ice world and so on. The first locale is beautiful Venice, complete with stereotypical enemies abroad. It's a great layout and the level fits the Sly world perfectly. Carmella Fox makes her first appearance here as well, complete with yet another new voice actress filling her boots. As you progress, you travel to a portion of Australia that's infested with evil miners, most of which are kangaroos who love to go down to the bar and have a big glass of lemonade. Yes, you even have a drinking contest with them... I warned you that the gameplay changes a lot!

Beautiful Holland is loaded with giant windmills and villains wielding pitchforks, which is where most of the game's touted aerial combat sections take place. The heist you pull off here is easily the most memorable, where you and your team attempt to sabotage a dogfight competition that sees you framing various teams and sneaking through the heavily guarded and restricted town after dark to do your dirty deeds before the big fight the next day. Like I said, setting up and pulling off the heists is a lot of fun and makes for a great take on the platform genre, but expect the gameplay to move even further away from the original design of Sly's levels. You'll find yourself heading to China and a pirate infested reef that takes the game in such a different direction, where you and your team sail the seas and hunt treasure (with all new gameplay mechanics eight hours into the game) that it will be nearly impossible to put it down before seeing just where it leads.

Sly 2's ThiefNet once again returns and you have to buy moves that you unlocked in the original Sly. Some aren't worth it, some certainly are (such as slowing down time whenever you want - overused yes, but it sure looks cool), but you're only required to buy about five to beat the game, the rest just make it a bit more enjoyable. However, the downside is that because the gameplay changes so often, buying expensive moves just doesn't seem worth it because you hardly get the chance to use them.

The moves you purchase usually need to be assigned to one of three shoulder buttons (R1 is reserved for running, amongst other things). Also, since Sly can no longer roll up into a ball, the Triangle button is used for charging up an attack. After pushing it you need to wait a few seconds, then push square or circle to pull off a more powerful attack than the basic strike. These can also be upgraded to strong attacks in the ThiefNet. The combat in Sly is very basic and becomes a button masher at times, but I guess that's a reason to be in favour of the game's constantly changing styles. The battle sequences at least look fantastic, full of great animations, sound effects and even words like "THWAP!"

Like its predecessors, one of the very best aspects of Sly 3 is the presentation and great sense of style. The introduction movies are loaded with flashy animation, cheesy Seventies action sound effects and great episode names, presented like classic Loony Toons introductions, all of which flows right into the menus perfectly. The three voices for Bentley, Sly and Murray return and are better than ever; the characters have evolved and changed since we last saw them. Part of the addictiveness of Sly 3 lies in simply wanting to see the next animation sequence, the next character to join the team, the next storyline advancement and the next gameplay mechanic to be thrown at you. Sly 3 delivers big time in all of these departments.

The cel-shades of Sly have been upgraded as well, though they don't come off as impressive as they did a few years back. The game is bright and colourful, even in the dark areas, while the character designs and animations are rendered to perfection - they look like they're taken right out of an animated movie of the highest production values. That's not to say that the graphics are perfect all around; there are plenty of flaws and oddities (such as a giant dragon boss that looks like a paper-cut out folded together) but overall the game looks very impressive and the locations are all varied enough to keep it fresh. It's also worth noting that there are very few, if any, graphical glitches.

An odd feature is the inclusion of 3D glasses that can be used whenever you like. As you play you're prompted to use them for specific sections, though you can go back and play any challenge in 3D. It does work, just not terribly well; it quickly started to give me a painful headache and doesn't make the game look that great. In fact, the game looks pretty crap through 3D glasses and I highly recommend just enjoying the beautiful graphics as they are instead.

Compared to the original Sly, Honour Among Thieves has some big departures that may surprise those of you who go back and play the original title again. You're not limited to a specific amount of lives or a single hit to kill you, making the game a breeze and severely lacking in the difficulty department. All collectables and pick-ups outside of money have been removed, there are no sections where you hide inside of a barrel, you no longer have the ability to move the characters faces while they communicate via radio, there aren't checkpoints to find (the game uses auto-checkpoints frequently) and the enemies actually take a lot more than one hit to kill (and they don't fade away instantly either). The game may be very easy, but it does deserve credit for improving the AI and making the enemies tougher. They still may be pretty stupid when it comes to not detecting you as you sneak by, but it is aimed at children after all, which is evident by the game's habit of frequently over-explaining every situation and not once letting you figure out something for yourself. The writing also isn't quite as witty as it once was, but still it has its moments.

For good measure the developers have thrown in a few two-player modes for you and a buddy to kill some time with. The first has one player playing as Sly, stealing various items within town and the other as Carmella Fox hunting him down just like you see in the single player. The other mode, which is far more fun, is a two player version of the Bentley's computer hacking bits in the single player that are completely nostalgic for those who played games like Gladius or Centipede. They aren't great and they're not online, but they aren't bad for extras and can easily provide entertainment.

Sly 2 really nailed the sound and Sly 3 is no different. Those signature bass lines still come in anytime you're slowly sneaking up behind someone and your foot moves, the music quality is much higher in production and of cinema quality, all the characters have unique and exceptionally well done voices that fit the game perfectly and the sound effects are perfect and even surpass some animated television shows.

Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves is an ambitious sequel (and possibly conclusion) that refuses to allow you to get bored - so much so that it ends up being more of a bad thing than a good thing. The ever changing nature of the game will addict you and rush you through the six episodes quickly and since each one only lasts about two hours (if that) you'll be done with Sly 3 in no time, especially considering how easy and straightforward the game is. Each episode does have a set of expert challenges for those who want to obtain 100% but the incentive to do is slight compared to Sly 2 and the lack of clue bottles to search out is a surprising and disappointing removal from the series. If you're looking at Sly 3 because you're a fan of the first one - pulling off his signature moves in long, linear but smart level designs full of platforming goodness - then prepare to be a bit let down. However if you played Sly 2 and enjoyed the direction that game took then you'll most likely enjoy this one as well; the storyline is rapid fire and so is the gameplay, however good or bad that may be, there's no denying that Sly 3 is still a unique, unparalleled game for the platform genre and easily one of the most stylish and best presented games around - if you're in it to see what becomes of Sly and his gang then you're in for a real treat.

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).