With many games heading towards ultra-realism these days, it’s very nice to see a game built in a fantasy world with no real connection with reality. This is pretty much how all games used to be, and now you rarely see them at all, as the majority of developer’s head down the recreating-reality path that is so popular with gamers today.

Sly 2: Band of Thieves is set in a fantasy world, with fantasy characters, painted with a fantasy cell-shaded brush, that plays in a fantasy way. You are Sly Cooper, and along with your friends Bentley, the brains behind the operation, and Murray, the brute of the team, you have to perform heists in various locations from around the world (okay, so it is set on Earth).

The game is split into eight episodes, and each one is set in a different country. The first place you visit is France, and you must infiltrate a nightclub owned and run by a dirty criminal, Dimitri. Below his nightclub is a large printing press, which spits out fake money. He is using the feathers from the Clockwerk on the machine, so you have to get into the club and steal the parts. This is the grand finale of the first episode, but before you can go in there you have to set the rest of the heist up. This requires various tasks such as bugging Dimitri's office, cutting off water supplies and pick-pocketing guards to get keys.

As you’d expect, the game is set in a third person perspective, and you can run, jump, and climb around the world. The movement and animation of the characters is incredibly smooth, and jumping onto telephone lines and climbing water pipes is slickly done as everything works together beautifully from one move to another – it’s lovely to see and even better to play. Attention to detail is great too, and Sly even puts his pick-pocketing hook tool into his mouth when he climbs posts where other games would have left it in his hand and had it clipping through the buildings. Sly tiptoes as he walks, and all his animation is very stealthy. You can make him jump down from buildings and land silently, and then sneak up behind guards and take them out without sounding an alarm. It’s like Metal Gear Solid, but without the fiddly controls.

You have an on-screen radar which starts to flash when an enemy is close, and the music then changes to a slow paced Pink Panther-style affair. If you get seen you can attack the smaller enemies, but the larger ones will kill you quickly unless you are Murray, so you have to evade the attacks and escape. Like MGS you can escape them and after a while the guards will give up searching for you.

Cinematics and in-game cut scenes are all driven by extremely well-acted voices, and although initially I would of preferred a non-human tongue with English subtitles, I grew to enjoy witty dialogue and actually care about the characters in the game.

Most of the tasks require you to get to a point and activate a switch, or collect items first (like keys) and use them on a lock, which will set something off. They are all fairly simple and straightforward, but the beauty of the game is how it plays and how much fun it is. I enjoyed this title much more than I did with both of the more realistic Splinter Cell games, and even Metal Gear Solid 2 and Twin Snakes to some extent. The game never hinders you with awkward cameras, or moves you have to perform, or fiddly button press requirements. I also never once felt cheated if I failed a mission or messed up with things such as not jumping far enough - If you miss you’ll almost always grab the ledge and lift yourself up, and even if you fall into water you can jump back out on to the edge again (clearly Raccoons are much better swimmers than certain Bandicoots). The whole game appears to have been geared towards enjoyment and not annoying people, or perhaps Sucker Punch just know how to make damn good, solid platform games.