Sly Cooper 2: Are You Ready to Play Again?

Sly Cooper was an action-adventure stealth platformer and developed by Sucker Punch Productions. When I was younger, I loved Sly Cooper.

It was one of my favourite games from my childhood. Sly Cooper 2 being my favourite game out of that series, the two characters I liked were Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox and Constable Neyla, too bad she died. Unfortunately, I had a bad habit of not taking care of my games when I was a kid. I left the discs out instead of putting them back in their cases, causing them to get scratched or damaged.

Most of the games I have are still in perfect working condition.

However, some games are too glitched out or unreadable to play on the PS2, and Sly Cooper 2 was one of those games. As I got older, I started to take better care of my games and replace the damaged ones. I was starting a video game collection and decided to replace my damaged copy of Sly Cooper 2. My Grandma owns an antique/pawn store, and my Mom would go there to help her with the store because of her old age, I would go there, so I had something to do. My Grandma's store had the stuff typical in an antique store, old clocks, old furniture, and even some miscellaneous items. Rarely, she would have something more modern like video games from the 90s or 2000s such as an original Xbox. Recently, I went there to do some store work. I moved some stored items from the back of the place when I came across a copy of Sly Cooper 2.

I checked the disc and It didn't have a scratch on it. Not even a single smudge. I asked my Grandma where she got the game and replied that she didn't know, the old stuff she gets in her store come from donations from charities or other places, occasionally, a truck comes by to deliver the antiqued goods. She doesn't know exactly which delivery the game came in or where it even came from, eventually, I asked her if I can keep the game and she said yes since nobody ever buys any of the old games in her store.

When I finished, I went home with the game with me. Once I arrived back home, I fired up the PS2 by pressing the start button. It loaded the all too familiar black void with cubes floating, with the tall white structures floating in this infinite space, with stars moving back and forth. It was beautiful when I always looked at the startup screen. It reminded me of a city, a city that was alive with life. I proceeded to press the eject button, the mechanical whir faintly screeched, as the tray slowly moved forward and stopped. I took the Sly Cooper 2 disc out from its case and gently placed it on the PS2'stray. Before pressing it again to inject it. It pulled backward before finally closing. The PS2 made a deep honing noise before the camera plunged into the deep space below, the PS2 logo faded into view on a black screen before cutting away. After the company logos of Sucker Punch Productions and Sony, the game loaded and this is where I noticed something strange.

The intro showing Sly sneakily moving around inside the Museum of Natural History was gone, instead. A black background took its place, displaying the Sly 2 logo. I also noticed there was no "Menu" option, only just the "Start" option. I pressed Start to start a new game where it immediately threw me to the gameplay. I was in Paris. There was no Cairo prologue. I was on the streets and started roaming around where I quickly discovered that there were no rat-like enemies to fight, no coins, no objectives. I tried heading to Dimitri's place where I found out that it was missing, just a black space where it used to be. Like it had been deleted from the game, I went to the safehouse to change my character and when I entered only Sly was sitting at the table. Bentley and Murray weren't there as if they didn't exist. No powerups could be purchased either. I exited the safehouse, and I spotted a message written in black text on the pavement. It read.

"Are you ready to play again?"

I was confused about what the message meant by "play again"? As I kept playing, these deviations I kept noticing were unignorable, especially from someone who has played Sly Cooper 2 before. After pointlessly roaming around the level trying to find something that resembled an objective, a cutscene triggered. The camera panned to one of the rooftops where cinematic black bars folded in, Carmelita Fox jumped into the camera's view, she assumed a pose, waving her yellow coloured gloved fist in the air, an animation from Sly 1, before screaming.

"I WILL GET YOU! COOPER!"

Puzzlingly, the voice actor didn't sound like Alesia Glidewell but more like Roxana Ortega from Sly 1 or Grey Delisle from Sly 4 with a more pronounced french accent. The camera panned back to Sly who did not welcome Carmelita like he usually does, he didn't fold his arms, his arms were straight down, and his body was unmoving. He gave Carmelita this fearful worrisome look as he remained silent. After the cutscene, the gameplay resumed. And Carmelita Fox was firing electric bolts at me, usually, in any Sly game, Carmelita's attacks were easy to dodge due to horrible aim. But this time, her attacks were dead-on, she shot like the perfect markswoman. I ran down the street as she was firing electric bolts at me, I tried to find a turnoff, an alleyway, or even a shortcut but I didn't find any of them, as the street was only one way. As I sprinted down the street. Carmelita's attacks become more difficult to avoid as she kept jumping from rooftop to rooftop, raining down electric bolts and on some occasions I almost got hit by them, I kept running down the street when I spotted another character in the distance. It was Constable Neyla, standing at the far end, with no chance of losing my pursuer. I ran towards her as I could only go straight, eventually. I reached the end of the street with Carmelita still hot on my tail. I got close enough to Constable Neyla to trigger a cutscene. Carmelita stopped firing electric bolts at me, and Neyla spoke.

"Cooper, we meet again."

It was the same line from the third episode but what came next I never heard her say in Sly Cooper 2 before.

"Cooper, are you ready to play again?"

The voice actor exactly sounded like Alesia Glidewell. It has to be an excellent impersonation of her voice, however, when the cutscene ended and gameplay resumed. Carmelita fired an electric bolt from her shock pistol. I couldn't react in time to dodge. I got hit, and Sly did his death animation before the game faded to black.

The Sly Cooper logo then appeared on a black background, as I stared at the screen. I could hear something muffled playing in the background. It sounded like gagging as if someone was trying to say something but couldn't. I heard chains rattling and something being thrashed. I couldn't be sure as they were muffled. Like it had been recorded from a very horrible microphone from 2004, the same year the game was released. Then I could hear voices. They sounded to be feminine. I couldn't make out anything the voices were saying as the quality was too poor to hear any distinguishable words.

The voices, they sounded like they were in pleasure or glee, as the thrashing noise got louder I could hear, to me like a deep male moaning, this lasted for 2 minutes straight before cutting back to the gameplay.

Sly was back on the street, and he looked injured. He had heaps of red welts that streaked across his body with black spots of varying sizes, to which I could only presume they were bruises. When I looked upon this sight. The only thought I could think to myself was.

"What the hell did they do to you Sly?"

I pressed my thumb upwards on the dial stick to move Sly, as I did Sly walked with this limp in his left leg, because of this he walked at a snail's pace I couldn't get him to move faster. After a few seconds, Sly promptly collapsed to the ground and the game faded to black.

It then faded to the title card of "A Starry Eyed Encounter". But the animatics explaining exposition narrated by Sly wasn't there, just the title card. It then cut to gameplay I was placed in a random location. And just like the previous level, there were no enemies and no collectables, this time, the safehouse was inaccessible despite the icon indicating that the player could access it as if the trigger to do so, had been removed.

There was, however, one job available and that was "Dominate the Dance Floor". I went over to Rajan's Palace and went up to the door, as I did so the game cut to black before fading to an open view of the ballroom. I could see Neyla and Carmelita standing on the dance floor, Bentley's dialogue did not play, I couldn't see the other characters and Rajan as according to this version of the game, he did not exist.

There were no cutout silhouettes of the other guests either, just Neyla and Carmelita Fox. Sly entered into view in his tuxedo and made his way down to the dance floor. He approached Constable Neyla, and the usual dialogue like in the normal game ensued before Neyla says "Enchanté", and the two dance. The player is then required to press certain buttons in quick time events to perform dance moves. This part was easy. However, during the mission, something rather unexpected happened. Neyla suddenly stopped dancing and slapped Sly in the face, when Neyla did this, Carmelita walked over to the back of Sly and stopped.

The two stood there for a minute, and then they began to tear at Sly's clothes. It was to the point where it almost showed his body. Carmelita and Neyla then began undressing. I knew what was going to happen. And at this point, I had enough. I threw the controller on the ground, where I got up and walked over to the PS2. Before slamming the tip of my index finger against the Eject button, the blue light flashed and as I did this. I looked up to the television screen, Carmelita and Neyla stopped undressing and had their heads turned towards the camera where they gave this piercing, angry, glare that stared into my soul before the screen went black as the PS2 ejected the disk. I took it out and placed back in its case before proceeding to walk over to my game shelf. I took out my damaged copy of Sly 2 that was lying between Sly 1 and Sly 3 and replaced it with my other copy.

I placed the damaged copy on the shelf ledge. It's been a few minutes since I played the game and I don't know what I think of it, this question lingers in my head. "Why?" Is this made as a joke or prank? Or as someone's fetish fuel? I mean I'm not against that kind of stuff but if it is one of those things. I got to hand it to them. They did a good job, I'm not getting rid of it yet. I want to know where it came from and who made it because all I want is some answers.