Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a Stealth Platformer game developed by Sanzaru and published by Sony Computer Entertainment of America released exclusively on PlayStation systems. It was released on February 5, 2013 on both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. It is the fourth game in the Sly Cooper franchise being the sequel to Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.

It is the first Sly Cooper game not developed by Sucker Punch.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Sanzaru Games did a strong effort to maintain the Sly Cooper formula the way Sucker Punch did for the original trilogy, even down to the stylized cel-shaded graphics the series is known for. Also the graphics are more stylized and character skin more detailed than in the original trilogy.
 * 2) The graphics are really beautiful, and the game runs at 60 FPS for most of the time too.
 * 3) Facial animations are significantly improved, to the point that it actually looks good. Characters no longer just switch between facial animations like in the second and third games, they actually emote properly.
 * 4) Each chapter revolves around being sent to a different time period, freeing one of Sly Cooper's ancestors, then setting up a heist to beat up the person who locked up the ancestor in the first place to fix the timeline, and also retrieve the part required to go to the next time period.
 * 5) Unlike Sly 3 which had too many player characters, this game limits itself to only Sly, Bentley, Murray and Carmelita. Sly's ancestors are also playable but they all play the same as Sly only with a unique ability for each. Also unlike Sly 3, Carmelita now actively works with the Cooper Gang rather than having the other characters trick her into unknowingly helping them.
 * 6) Like Sly 3, jobs often have two or more characters taking control at different points.
 * 7) Due to the environments in this game being larger than those in its predecessors, a compass and mini-map have been added.
 * 8) The game introduces Sly Masks, a brand new collectible. There are sixty total masks to be found in the entire game, and certain intervals of masks unlocks cosmetic changes to the game, such as costumes or paragliders.
 * 9) The safehouse isn't just a place to swap characters and sell loot. It now has some new features, which include:
 * 10) * Treasure Wall – A display of every treasure the player has found and brought back to the safehouse unharmed and in time.
 * 11) * Costume Gallery – A display of every costume the player has gained so far, as well as the option to wear it in whatever episode the player is currently in.
 * 12) * Table Tennis – A mini-game that two people can play together.
 * 13) * Arcade Machine – A mini-game that two people can play together. It features the hacking mini-games.
 * 14) Disguises from Sly 3 have also returned, but they now have more features. Each of these new Costumes have one or two special abilities. The costumes that are included are:
 * 15) * Samurai Costume (Feudal, Japan) – Fireproof and comes with a shield ideal for deflecting projectiles, as well as prevents guards in Japan from noticing and attacking you.
 * 16) * Jailbird Costume (Cotton Mouth Bluff) – This costume is a simple black and white striped prison outfit, with a massive ball and chain attached to an ankle bracer. The ball is heavy enough to smash through weak walls and move massive objects with incredible forward momentum. Sly can also stand on top of, and roll around on the ball to move safely over hazards like a floor-mounted electric security-grid field.
 * 17) * Sabertooth Costume (Gungathal Valley) – This costume is a simple sabertooth tiger skin that makes Sly's movements slower, but also allows him to crawl in front of guards without them noticing you as well as making a leap across super-long distances and, by using said ability, allows Sly perform a one-hit kill on guards.
 * 18) * Archer Costume (Medieval England) – Allows Sly to fire arrows (whenever a bucket of arrows is next to him) that will allow him to create a rope line for him to walk across.
 * 19) * Thief Costume (Ancient Arabia) – Comes with a powerful scimitar, as well as an hourglass staff that can be used to slow down time.
 * 20) Several easter eggs for Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter.
 * 21) Clockwerk makes a brief appearance.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The controls lock on to an enemy character or object, and the character you control will suddenly strafe around that person or object, sometimes causing them to slightly move in a direction other than your intended one.
 * 2) Most loading times go to around a minute or more. It also has to load reload when you switch from the hideout to the episode location along with a panning to the door cutscene, unlike previous games in the series.
 * 3) Poor story and the characters are flanderized as if it was a poorly written fan-fiction, with lots of contrived moments, plot-holes, and reused imagery, story elements, and backstories.
 * 4) *Several times in the first three games, Sly would make sarcastic quips while still being serious, and at the end of Honor Among Thieves, he retired from the thieving lifestyle to be with Carmelita. Now, he's dumbed down to spewing out unfunny jokes most of the time, returning to his old ways because "the old itch came back."
 * 5) *Bentley's character arc, while not affected as much as the others, is reused from the second and third games. As described below, he discovers that Penelope is the Black Knight in Episode 4 and becomes devastated (rendering him unplayable for most of the rest of the episode), only to snap out of it for the final battle against her.
 * 6) *Murray is now "the fat one" who eats a lot, a trait that was not present in previous games. Although he was seen eating food and getting the Cooper Gang in trouble to get a snack a few times earlier in the franchise, his weight was almost never brought up.
 * 7) *Carmelita has been reduced to a few traits:
 * 8) **First, she's become Sly's angry ex-girlfriend. While yes, Sly hurt her feelings in the beginning, it still doesn't excuse the fact that she flirted with Sly's ancestors just to make him jealous, especially when he is trying to make it up to her throughout the game, only forgiving him at the end. She also realizes that they both fight for justice despite working on opposite sides of the law, something that was repeated from the first three games.
 * 9) **Second, she barely gets to do anything beyond the aforementioned flirting and being captured twice (first by Toothpick, then by Cyrille Le Paradox) for plot convenience, and the player is only able to use her in a whopping three missions throughout the entire game.
 * 10) **Third, her sexiness is exaggerated, as seen in the below-mentioned belly dancing scene, and her outfit in general. In previous games, she was a badass action girl who happened to be sexy, but this trait was taken to the extreme in this game for pointless reasons.
 * 11) *Perhaps the most egregious example is Penelope, who turned her back on the Cooper Gang because she somehow got greedy (you have access to an enormous sum of wealth in the newly built Cooper Vault, for crying out loud!) and Sly was "holding [Bentley] back" from his full potential to make billions of dollars in weapon design. Nothing in the previous game hinted at this, and the fact that she's the Black Knight was recycled from her tenure as the Black Baron in that exact game (which she did because of the tight age restrictions in the dogfighting competitions). Worst of all, it was never properly foreshadowed!
 * 12) In Episode 4, Sly's hook launching ability is hampered as he can't go as high as he can in other episodes, and he is launched away from the hook, this is to make the ancestor look like he has a unique ability when he doesn't.
 * 13) The ending is a cliffhanger, and it is very unlikely to be fulfilled.
 * 14) The final boss fight is mostly a quick time event sequence which you can easily beat without taking any damage.
 * 15) *Not only that, the final battle against Penelope is ridiculously easy as well.
 * 16) Lots of cringe worthy moments, such as when Carmelita Fox was forced to belly dance in a revealing outfit, and Murray commented on how he wanted to do the same before the gang decided that Carmelita should do it.
 * 17) A glitch occurs with one of Bentley's Bentley Tech videos at the end of the game, where it stutters and locks up momentarily when Bentley moves his hand on the screen, that happens even if your disc is not scratched.
 * 18) The treasure collectibles are not balanced. A single pickpocketed item can be worth significantly more coins than the most valuable treasure that must be sent back to the hideout with a time limit, when it should be the other way around due to the amount of effort required to get the treasure back to the hideout vs. just pickpocketing a guard.
 * 19) Since the PS3 doesn't read wired controllers' motions, you can't get past levels that use motion control unless you use a wireless controller.

Reception
Sly 4 received positive reviews and is often considered one of the best games in the series. Sucker Punch themselves stated that Sanzaru Games did a good job in keeping the series the way they used to. The creators of Sly Cooper at Sucker Punch Productions have expressed approval as well, stating on their Twitter account that they had "no problem handing over the Sly reigns to Sanzaru. Hope all enjoy it as much as we did."

Despite the strong positive reception and cliffhanger strongly suggesting a sequel, there's currently no confirmed plans for a sequel.