(Note: The name I gave to this will-be-recurring segment is a G-Dragon reference that I will explain later...)
Ah, the Sly Cooper games... They may not be as difficult as other games, but they are incredibly funny. They may be about larceny, but it's...moral larceny, if that makes any sense; the gang only steals from bad criminals because "there's no honor, no challenge, no fun stealing from ordinary people. You rip off a master criminal, you know you're a master thief." (Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, 2002, Sucker Punch Games)
Back when I was little and following my older brother (he's two years my senior) around like a puppy-dog sister, I often watched him play video games on the Playstation 2; and he let me play a bunch of times, too. This was how I became interested in such video game series as Jak & Daxter, Spyro (though I haven't played any of this one since I was six... :( )...but most importantly, Kingdom Hearts and Sly Cooper.
Granted, when I was five, I never played past the first level of the first game ("The Tide Of..." *cue unnecessary and exaggerated creepy music* "...TERROR"!!!!!!!). However, I loved what I saw of the characters; there were lines spoken by the characters Bentley and Sly during that part that have stayed with me since 2002:
"Sly! Come in! Slyyyyy! Do you read me?" "Yeah. I read you. Loud and...very loud."
"Don't mention it - it's your funeral."
...This is just to name a couple. The same goes for some of the locations in that first level with the old, rich, and bratty frog who is only the first of many to insult Sly using a synonym of "bug".
Since I rediscovered the series by finding Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves for Playstation 2 (I still have and use the slim silver one my brother got around 2005-ish) in Gamestop in early August of 2011...the experiences I've had have been just...awesome.
Anyway, on to the soundtracks. I only have music from the third and fourth games, as those two actually released official soundtracks. However, the music is really good, in my opinion, although I personally prefer the OST for Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time (the game came out in February 2013, the soundtrack a couple months later).
This is one of my favorite songs from the third game: "Gauntlet of the Ancestors".
"Lemonade Drinking Contest" is a song during which Sly, Bentley, and Murray (the raccoon, turtle, and hippo, respectively) have a...lemonade drinking contest with a bunch of, uh...dingoes in Australia. It's a fun song, in my opinion, because it's just a dumb situation. :)
Bentley and Sly, while in Venice, Italy, execute a mission to sneak into the game's first-level boss's hideout for some "Venice Espionage". It's very...spy-like...? *shrug*
Now, some the songs in Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time get stuck in my head fairly easily. As such, it makes sense for me to include those pieces here. (Note: the main characters are time traveling in this game.)
Sly, Bentley, and Murray have journeyed back to Medieval England, and "Merry Olde England" is the field music in this area. It's a calmer, yet kind of pretty song...I'm trying to explain it. But I just really like the melody/variations of the melody here...
Sly is literally fighting in a "Bridge Battle" in this one; in Feudal Japan around 1601, he's fighting a Cuban tiger from the present named El Jefe (ha ha, I see what you did there, Sanzaru Games...). It's an energetic song in a...cartoon-y sort of way; my band director heard this song playing from my phone earlier this year and thought that it was from a cartoon. Grr...
Now we've ventured into the Wild West in what I think was the mid-1800s... Can I just say how much I really like the melody in this song, too?
I also really like this song. Seriously, I thoroughly enjoy this game's field music. In this part of the game, we're in Ancient Arabia with one of the best, most sarcastic old-timers I know. Seriously, Salim al-Kupar is just awesome when he is complaining to Bentley that he's too old to be climbing up ropes for these jobs when Bentley's just sitting at his computer for a while.
There's also music that plays when Bentley is doing his little hacking mini-missions, but I've included enough songs to give you an idea of what the music is like - at least in Sly Cooper: Honor Among Thieves and Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time. Although the songs I included for the former are less...loud (?) in terms of the use of the orchestra. I've just included a few of my personal favorites from both of the games.
Hopefully, even if you haven't played the games, the music somewhat interests you, and you can listen to it...although a lot of people may look at you funny if they see a raccoon holding a cane on your phone/iPod/mp3 screen when you're listening to music *shrug*
By the way, Peter McConnell composed all but three of the songs for the series; Michael Bricker created the songs that play during the computer hackings in Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time.
Oh, and I will be revisiting this series again at some point. I just adore these games and characters. O~O
-Pamela
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