Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus can be classified as a platform game, but within a few minutes of play it quickly becomes apparent that it is not your run of the mill platformer.  Instead of forcing you to rely on the split-second timing of your jumps, Sly Cooper emphasizes stealth, and you can make it past many enemies simply by sneaking around them.  Take this unique style of play and add to it some of the most gorgeous cell-shaded graphics ever to grace a console game, and you have a game that is a joy to watch and play.

In Sly Cooper, you take on the role of the game's namesake, a raccoon thief from a long line of raccoon thieves.  Sly's not an evil thief, but rather focuses his larcenous escapades on relieving master criminals of their ill-gotten gains.  When Sly was a child and about to come of age, his father decided to pass on to Sly the family treasure, a book known as the Thievius Raccoonus.  The book contained all of the knowledge gained by Sly's ancestors, and was a cookbook of stealth and trickery.  Unfortunately, the book was far too great a temptation for a league of master criminals known as the Fiendish Five.  They broke into Sly's house, stole the book, and kidnapped his father in the process.  Sly was cheated out of his legacy and was forced to grow up in an orphanage.

Fast forward to the future, and Sly is now a fully grown raccoon looking to take back what is his.  Along with his two lifelong friends that he met at the orphanage, Bentley and Murray, Sly must travel to the hideouts of each of the Fiendish Five to retrieve all of the pieces of the Thievius Raccoonus.

The five hideouts serve as five different worlds in the game, each designed to match the personality and style of its owner.  For example, you will need to penetrate the lair of a mechanically-minded frog which is filled with boilers, contraptions, and libraries for his studies, and the haunted swamp of a voodoo witch alligator.  Each of the hideouts is further divided into a number of levels that must be cleared in order to obtain keys that are used to unlock the final area and the hideout's boss battle.

Most areas also contain a number of "clue bottles."  Collecting all of the bottles will reward you with the combination to the area's safe.  Most of the safes contain individual pages of the Thievius Raccoonus from which Sly can learn a special move.  These special moves sometimes add to Sly's arsenal of attacks, such as using his hat as a timed explosive or gaining the ability to make a rolling, electrically charged attack.  Other moves are not offensive, but help Sly to get through the levels, such as the ability to slow down or speed up time.  While increasing Sly's number of moves certainly proves useful, it is not really necessary to obtain any of them to complete the game.  The moves that you'll be required to have are automatically awarded after you defeat one of the Fiendish Five and complete a level.

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