Sly Racoon (PS2)

If you like the idea of Metal Gear Solid but could've done without the 20-minute long cut-scenes, try Sly Raccoon, where platform games and stealth-'em-ups meet in cel-shaded heaven.

As anyone's mother will tell you, stealing is wrong. Anyone's mum except Sly Cooper's, it seems, because he managed to get born into a family of morally challenged thieves whose most prized possession is a book explaining how to execute all their various cat-burgling skills. Ironically, as the game starts the book gets stolen and it's up to Sly to defend the family dishonour and steal it back again.

Although the basic gameplay of Sly Raccoon is that of a fairly ordinary platform adventure, complete with linear levels full of bizarre architecture and fairly dim bad guys, things are livened up considerably by Sly's ninja-like thieving skills. As well as having to duck and dive between moving headlights, laser-beam gates and the like, Sly also begins to gain such enviable skills as being able to turn invisible and use banisters as slides.

The graphics in Sly Raccoon are excellent too: cel-shaded so they look like 3-D cartoons and very nicely detailed with particularly impressive cut-scenes. There are downsides, of course--the game's not terribly long and the stealthy bits take a back seat to more mundane platform sections a few times too many--but overall this is a classy adventure for platform, raccoon and/or burglary fans everywhere. --David Jenkins

Sly Racoon puts the player in the role of a raccoon named, oddly enough, Sly. On his eighth birthday, Sly is given the Thievius Raccoonus, an instruction manual passed down through the Cooper family for generations on how to be a great thief. But ruthless villains bust in and steal the manual, split it amongst themselves, and then vanish. Sly, along with his two friends Bentley and Murray, must embark on a platform adventure to recover the pages of the book and prove to the world that Sly is the world's greatest thief. Different skills, such as stealth tactics and platform jumping, are required throughout the game. You'll also pilot vehicles, play mini-games and fight bosses as you proceed.

Sly Raccoon is a vibrantly animated caper starring the charming, wry and charismatic thief Sly Cooper. Born into a family of the world's greatest thieves, Sly is given the Thievius Raccoonus, a family heirloom that is passed from generation to generation and contains all the best-kept secrets of thievery technique. On his eighth birthday five ruthless, mysterious villains break into his home, overpower his father and steal the Thievius Raccoonus. They split it five ways and each takes a piece of the legacy with them. Now, 10 years later, Sly is ready to steal it back and restore the family honour.