Preview: The Sly Collection
With an HD compilation of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus sadly nowhere to be found at E3, we could still find solace in the fact that three of the PS2's best action-platformers -- the Sly Cooper trilogy -- are being "remastered" for release on PS3 as The Sly Collection. Sanzaru Games, which last worked with Sony on the PS2 port of High Impact's Secret Agent Clank, is on the case, providing the thieving raccoon in HD, 3D and even the realm of PlayStation Move.
Sanzaru started out its work on the trilogy with Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, a game that was originally designed to be in 3D, but ultimately only shipped with select levels playable while wearing retro red-and-blue glasses. For the E3 demo, one of the game's boss fights was chosen, and had me squaring off against my foe in a bamboo forest. It was a good choice -- the green stalks really helped drive home the sense of depth, and the colorful, crisp HD visuals made it one of the better 3D experiences I've had with Sony's console.
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Unfortunately, that's all there was to see (and play). Sanzaru told me that it's investigating 3D for the first two games in the series, but wasn't sure if time would permit. One interesting tidbit I learned from Sucker Punch during an early demo of InFamous 2: the developer has given Sanzaru all of its original, super-high-resolution texture maps and art assets (which were eventually scaled down for PS2) for use in the "remastering" process.
It was hard to tell if the one-area demo I played had benefited from this, but it's promising nonetheless. We'll get to see a lot more of the Trophy-enabled collection as its November 2010 release nears.
