This game REALLY hits the nail on the head in terms of great storytelling. Picking up right from where the second left off, and continuing by introducing a new villain and adding a couple new characters, along with bringing back previous villains who find redemption and assist the gang. The gang dynamic is awesome. In terms of gameplay, this one basically repeats what the second game did right, and adds some new features to spice it up. Great level design and combat mechanics continue to be prevalent, and even more cool abilities are added, along with the ability to play as characters other than the three main gang members. It's a blast!

Return of the Jedi for sandbox games starring talking animals. It's a game full of selective improvements, like the more maneuverable hub worlds, despite the lack of stuff to find in them and absurdly high coin counts. There's slightly better boss fights, and more characters to break up the gameplay, some of which are interesting shake ups and others feel like wasted development with little use. The pirate ship stage in particular is a massive annoyance. In line with RotJ, the final stretch is amazing, an excellent culmination of the entire series up to that point; if only the series ended here...

What a great, nice bow of an ending. The way the developers allowed the story of Sly to finish in such a conclusive way is something that you seldom see nowadays in franchises of this size anymore. Added to that the sheer mechanical diversity of each stage and you're presented with something that, weirdly enough, seems to approach the sensibility of a graphical adventure that was very good at its arcade challenges. It's understandable that many games don't go this hard on presenting you with such a variety of options (I can't imagine how costly it is today), but the real merit goes to the fact that almost all of them are entertaining and enjoyable in their own right, and don't feel meshed together in an incoherent mix of content.

There are plenty more of all the things that made the second game so incredible. And of course, both in terms of gameplay and narrative, the third instalment is even more ambitious. This of course allows for such incredible levels as becoming pirates and sailing to various islands whilst looting other ships - almost a whole game in itself. There's also a multitude of new characters (and even returning favourites) which provide even more diversity in gameplay. My main criticism, however, is that the game feels a little bloated and somewhat unfocused when all of these elements are thrown into the mix, sometimes it works and sometimes you just want to go back to just being Sly and doing the Sly stuff!
Overall, it's a solid sequel and a well rounded finale to an intended trilogy. (I wouldn't say the fourth game is a total waste of time, it just doesn't have the magic of the Sucker Punch classics).

The end of an era. While Sly 3 ended up not being the last Sly Cooper game, it was the final one to be developed by Sucker Punch and as far as many fans are concerned, this is the "true" ending to the series. Once again you have the three main gang members to play as but you also have a good amount of new characters to play as as well, including some of Sly's old enemies! Once again there's a huge variety here gameplay wise and while I'm not really a fan of all the different segments, the ones I like are really great. Boss fights once again are really great and you still have the option of choosing which missions you'd like to complete and in which order.

The story this time around is that after the events of the last game, the Cooper gang has been a bit broken up as Murray left the team after blaming himself for Bentley losing his ability to walk. On top of that, Sly met up with this guy who ran with his father in the old days and tells him about "The Cooper vault", a huge vault in which the Cooper family has been hiding all their findings in for thousands of years, however upon arriving at the vault they discover that a new villain by the name of "Dr. M" has taken over the island and has built an enormous fortress to keep people out and has also been trying to crack open the safe for years but of course always failing. As usual I don't wish to spoil the game but the main plotline is that you go through the game, recruiting new and old members for the gang in order to have a team that's able to break into the Cooper vault. I won't say much but I do have to say that the final chapter in the game included some great character development between the 3 main protagonists and while the game makes it rather obvious that the series is over after this, it still ends on a high note in my opinion but still leaves itself open enough for if they ever decided to do a sequel (which they did, more on that later).