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| Bentley in action on a mission. |
Murray also starred in his own mission in the demo. Murray will have nothing
to do with stealth outside of tiptoeing up to a guard before bashing him into
submission. How easy do you think it is for a giant pink hippo to sneak around
anyway?!? Murray can punch, kick, and otherwise make life miserable for guards
who think they’ve caught him. In this particular mission Murray’s job is to take
out alarm boxes scattered about the city. None of these boxes are easy to reach
so it’s not a simple matter of punching them into oblivion. In this case Murray
must find heavy objects that he can throw at the alarm boxes to destroy them.
Murray has a cool trick for finding throwable objects – when he gets near things
that look like they’d make nice projectiles he stomps his foot and causes the
object to pop into the air where he catches it and is then ready to throw it
when needed. The alarm boxes have a nasty habit of going off each time they are
hit, so there’s plenty of fighting action in this mission as well.
The game’s story opens two years after the end of the original game. With
Clockwerk out of the way, Sly and the gang have been doing quite well for
themselves while all the while staying a step or two ahead of Carmelita Fox.
Things have taken a turn for the worse though as the evil Claw gang has begun
collecting Clockwerk’s scattered parts in an attempt to rebuild the evil robotic
fiend. Sly and his Band of Thieves will need to travel the globe in an attempt
to get to the remaining Clockwerk parts before the Claw gang does, and to
retrieve the parts they’ve already collected.
Once again the game’s story will be related through cartoon and comic book
style cutscenes. If the demo is any indication, the quality of these scenes will
even surpass that of the cutscenes in the original game. Calling the game’s
cutscenes “Saturday morning cartoon quality” would be an insult to the game as
the game looks far better than any animation on television. The levels look
great as well, with imaginative settings, a top-notch cell-shaded look, and
great use of color. Band of Thieves will kick off the fall gaming bonanza when
it is released in September, and from the look of the demo it will be one of the
top games of the Holiday Season.
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