Game: Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Platform: PS3/PS Vita

Publisher/Developer: Sanzaru Games/Sony Computer Entertainment

Genre: Platform/Stealth

Describe This Game in Three Words: Steals Your Heart

Plot Synopsis: Sly Cooper is a retired gentleman thief living the good life in Paris with his Interpol girlfriend Carmelita when suddenly he gets the old itch for the thrill of a heist. That's just when his old partner Bentley shows back up in his life to tell him that the ancestral book that chronicles the thief techniques of his family is being erased from history line by line. Sly reunite his gang to travel through time and set history right.

Up Up: If this is your first outing in the Sly Cooper series it's a fantastic place to start. Set up like a pulp story, even the totally unfamiliar will find themselves drawn right into the tale after the Disney-worthy recap that opens the experience. After that, it only gets better.

Sly is a thief, and that means that most of your missions are going to be won with stealth, not a massacre. You stay out of spotlights, glide with ninja-like precision from perch to perch, and pick enemies pockets with utter simplicity. Being a master thief feels as intuitive as being Batman feels in the Arkham games.

You can progress through the main story pretty quick, but the game, like the LEGO games rewards a dedicated search through every nook and cranny searching for hidden treasure. It'll be quite a while before you get bored exploring the various eras that you travel through.

More than anything though, Thieves in Time uses the power of the PS3 to tell an animated story the kind of which Don Bluth used to be amazing at. If they'd just made a movie then I wouldn't have complained.