Zodi Plays: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (Furry Crime Adventure)

[DataNinja]

Yay, more Zodi soon... but boo, vacation ending. Hopefully it wasn't too bad.

That sounds fine to me, but A) You're the expert, and B) if you need to stretch things out a bit while you get back in the groove, I wouldn't blame you.

[LaZodiac]

Oh hey by the way the art is in for the Zodi Game Awards! Let us all celebrate along with bird girlfriend!

Very special thanks to the artist, AbstractCactus, who you can find the information of here.

[DataNinja]

Ooh, that is indeed very nice. We need to pull out the good confetti for this.

[LaZodiac]

Change of plans, we're doing it all today!

Zodi Plays: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus [B1] Master Thief

Video Length: 1:20:05. You read that right.

So, as it turns out, making two basically hour long videos, one of which just shows me doing the Master Thief Sprints and the rest that show all the commentary, is a little silly since I don't actually have any footage to put under the commentary video. So I decided to mash em up together, where the commentary for each stage plays over the footage of it's Master Thief Sprint. This'll let you guys see some of my failed runs, to get a better idea of just how precise these things want me to be. And boy do they want you to be PRECISE as all heck, some of these are basically designed to be beaten with sub 1 second left, and there's not a lot that can be done to improve your time beyond just executing as machinelike as possible.

When doing these sprints, you do get to keep any Lucky Charms you find AFTER starting the trial, but any you get beforehand are removed. Additionally, when spotted by security systems not only does it activate their damaging state, it also makes your time start counting down twice as fast until the alarm is destroyed. In basically every instance this can happen, it's an outright death sentence for the run. There are a few where it happens and I'm able to eke out a win though. Other than there, there isn't really any mechanical difference between going through the stage normally and the Master Thief Sprint. It's just, as said, a high level of skill required to pass. Of all these stages, only two or three of them have "shortcuts" that are places you can skip some degree of level to go faster, and of these one of them feels like they basically require you to use it to get it.

So, what do we get for doing all of this? Well, each stage beaten gives us Director's Commentary for one. The commentary is...not so much a sequential series of commentary but instead a random assortment of people who worked on it walking about each level while playing through it themselves, but it's all audio so we don't get to see that, and only the China levels have clear signs of it being played by the developers. That said, they're fairly insightful to some of the things in Sly, and occasionally really funny. My favorite is the one in China, where Bentley's voice actor comments on the difficulties of getting into Serious but not too Serious character mode, when most of what he has to say is sort of generic tutorial stuff.

Of course, that's not all we get for clearing this challenge. For getting all the Master Thief Sprints done, we obtain the Making Of video, wherein we see a lot of old footage of the game (got imagine having to collect FIFTYish clues in each stage!) and see some concept art, while they talk about the game and sort of hype it up. The main highlight for me here is where they make a note that they do try to make the game accessible, but have challenges for even the most pro of pros. Given what I just went through, I can say they succeeded at this. And finally, for 100% clear of everything, we get access to those commercials I talked about. I love them, they're ridiculous, and also we get outtakes that are mostly the raccoon actor being difficult.

With that all said and done, that is the end for Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. Thank you all for joining me on this crime spree, and apologies for the month long vacation during it all. I had wanted to get it all finished before hand, but work was a slog. With that in mind, I'm gonna take a brief bit of time off while I prepare for the next one. So join us next Friday for the beginning of the next LP, Kirby's Dreamland 2!

[DataNinja]

Yay. This is a nice surprise to have up after two days of computer troubles. *grumbles uncomplimentary things about my toaster's battery*

This is all both really intense, and a really interesting reward. I always think it's pretty neat to see the behind the scenes stuff, and this really just seems to be a pretty casual one, rather than the pre-scripted ones you find in many games.

I do find it funny that they had to bleep out the names of other media, though.

[LaZodiac]

We're Kirby's now! Kirby's Dream Land 2!