Christmas came a little early for all the mascot-loving PlayStation Plus subscribers, because this week's update brought us three classic platformers. That's right, fans of Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch have a lot to celebrate this month, as PlayStation 5 owners finally have access to Jak & Daxter, as well as both Sly 2: Band of Thieves and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. That's genuinely exciting news, but are any of these games worth playing? To answer that question, I decided to flip through the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly, GamePro, Edge and more classic magazines to see what the critics said back when these games first came out. Get ready for some cartoon shenanigans and double-jump your way into a new episode of PlayStation Plus Review Crew!


After what was considered at the time to be a lackluster launch, the PlayStation 2 came back with a vengeance in 2001. That was the year that gave us blockbuster hits like Grand Theft Auto III, Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X. 2001 also introduced us to Jak & Daxter, the newest heroes from Naughty Dog, the people behind Crash Bandicoot. While they would eventually be known for generation-defining hits like Uncharted, The Last of Us and, if Sony has anything to say about it, the upcoming Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, it's fun to go back to a time when Jason Rubin, Neil Druckmann and the rest of the team were more interested in cartoony platformers. And after Crash Bandicoot, Naughty Dog had a lot to prove. Could they revolutionize the genre using the PlayStation 2's advanced hardware? And more importantly, would their fans go along for the ride? Obviously, Jak & Daxter proved to be a big hit, spawning multiple sequels and spin-offs, but what did the critics say at the time? Let's find out.

When it comes to Electronic Gaming Monthly, they were mostly positive about the new franchise, giving The Precursor Legacy an average score of 8.2 out of 10. Milkman praised the presentation, but wondered if adults would enjoy these new characters: “Jak & Daxter is one of the best-looking games I've ever seen and Jak handles like a bandicoot that's learned some new moves. But therein lies the rub. While the great control and flashy visuals ensure that someone will enjoy this, these tricks are strictly for kids. Only young'uns will enjoy Daxter's Jar Jar-esque ‘zaniness,' and only kids possess the patience required to complete this nonstop fetch quest. Younger gamers will cotton to this very quickly and older gamers will yawn.” Chris is one of those older gamers, but you didn't see him yawning: “One look at Jak's spin attack and the exploding boxes, and you know the Crash Bandicoot people are behind this. If it weren't for the excellent characters, story and animation, Jak & Daxter would be just another hunt-and-gather game like so many other 3D platformers. The difference is that the game is so incredibly polished and well-crafted, it doesn't matter if you've done this stuff a hundred times before – it's still fun. And any game on the PS2 with zero load time deserves props.”

Believe it or not, that 8.2 from EGM is one of the worst scores of any English-language magazine, with Edge being the only one to go lower, with a straight 8 out of 10. PSM liked the game quite a bit more, giving this debut a solid 9 out of 10. GamePro agreed, giving it a 4.5 out of 5 and arguing that “Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy will captivate you for hours. Its premise is straight-forward, yet there's so much to do and see, along with some sizeable challenges that will test even the brightest adventure veterans.” They were hopeful that this would not be the last we saw of this platforming duo. Spoiler: It was not.

Moving up the list, we see that Game Informer went as high as giving Jak & Daxter a 9.25 out of 10, one of the highest scores of the year. However, it was the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine that dared to go even higher, offering up the one and only perfect 5 out of 5 score we're going to see today. Despite giving it their highest score, they did complain that Jak & Daxter didn't have a compelling story and, in a weird twist I doubt anybody will see coming, didn't have enough role-playing game elements. “Let's be honest here, though. These are pretty niggling complaints. Although I can't stop thinking about how the game could have been better, that's really only because it's so good to begin with. I don't feel like any of these problems (or even all of them together) are serious enough to knock points off of this remarkably solid game. Sure, it may borrow from just about every successful platform game ever made, but it does it damn well. What more can I say?”

With an overall average of 89%, this was a strong start for Jak & Daxter. It's interesting to hear the critics complain that the game is geared towards kids, especially that they would be arguing in the exact opposite direction with the sequel. But that's a story for another day.

By the end of 2004, the PlayStation 2 was the console to have for fans of 3D platformers. Even without factoring in all of the third-party games on the market, Sony was juggling three different 3D platformers all on their own – Jak & Daxter from Naughty Dog, Ratchet & Clank from Insomniac Games and Sly Cooper from Sucker Punch. Of the three, Sly Cooper was the one that took the most chances, giving fans a platformer that was inspired more by Metal Gear Solid and Syphon Filter than Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario. While never the sales juggernaut Sony hoped for, they did greenlight a number of sequels, including Sly 2: Band of Thieves on the PS2. This was a chance for Sucker Punch to take the criticism to heart and make a much stronger follow-up to a game that everybody agreed had a lot of potential. But did they succeed?

If we go by the Edge review found in issue 143, the answer to that question is a resounding “NO!” Giving Sly 2 a 6 out of 10, the exact same score they gave the first game, Edge was just not feeling this series. “Sly 2's highest points are when it's at its most hectic and, ironically, most linear – those frenzied climaxes of each episode when all the strands of the heist come together, with control flicking between each of the three characters as they work to bring the masterplan to fruition. But that over-dependence on legwork throughout the bulk of each world robs the game of its sparkle, making it feel more work-ethic sweatshop than well-paced sweetshop. It's a masterpiece-in-waiting, so preoccupied with the petty crime of repetition that its variety and imagination are forced to remain in the small time.”

This is, by far, the worst score of the bunch, with the next lowest score being Game Informer giving Sly 2 a much more respectable 8.5 out of 10. That's basically in line with Electronic Gaming Monthly, which gave the game an average score of 8.7 out of 10 in their 184th issue. Nich concluded that “Sly 2 is such a huge improvement over the first game that it's kind of eerie. What mystical covenants did developer Sucker Punch enter into to produce a game that controls and looks exactly like the first sly, but feels so much different? The balance between the free-roaming parts and the mission objectives is exactly right; running around, pickpocketing guards and finding miscellaneous valuables isn't so much fun that you'll deliberately go out to do it, but on the other hand, the nonessential stuff makes for an interesting diversion from the task at hand. And when it comes to the missions themselves, everything is improved, especially the care and detail put into the minigames that were so perfunctory last time around. Sucker punched is about right for how much Sly 2's quality took me by surprise.”

Electronic Gaming Monthly may have liked Sly 2, but GamePro loved it, giving the game a strong 4.5 out of 5. That basically matches the 9 out of 10 score we saw over at GMR magazine in their 22nd issue. “It's hard to find fault with Band of Thieves. The graphics are beautiful, the characters original, the story entertaining and the control dead-on. Controlling Sly as he effortlessly scampers across a wire or hearing Bentley scream ‘Catastrophe!' as his remote-controlled helicopter takes missile damage raises gaming to an art form almost on par with The Legend of Zelda. Sly 2 is a class act on every level and a title to which other development houses should aspire.”

See there, I bet you didn't expect to see Sly Cooper compared to The Legend of Zelda? This episode is full of surprises. With an overall average of 82%, this sequel is down slightly from the 85% of the first game, but the critics who liked it ended up giving the edge to this sequel. This really is a great platformer, and one you should definitely check out on PS+.

At long last, 2005 was the year when all three of Sony's platformer franchises came together for a one-two-three punch against the launch of the Xbox 360. Sure, the Jak & Daxter installment released that year was a racing game and Ratchet: Deadlocked was more of a multiplayer shooter, but the point is that all of the franchises were represented. As it turns out, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves was the most traditional sequel of the three, giving players more of what they loved about the first two installments, only now with 3D glasses for some reason. Was that enough to move the needle when came to the critics?

In the case of Edge, the answer is yes. Though, I'm not sure it was the 3D glasses alone that moved the score from a 6 to a 7 out of 10. They argued that Sly 3 is “a game that feels like bits of lots of other games you've played before, but not in this order, rarely within such a sure-footed framework and never presented with such a crisp gloss of cartoon-quality production; and it's all bunched up together more tightly and enjoyably than in Sly 2. It's an extravagant, fan-pleasing package that rivals Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's generosity of game modes in breadth of content. Even if those escapades can seem generic, Sly 3 confidently retains the series' tradition of excellence of execution above everything else.”

Moving over to Game Informer, they thought that this was the weakest of the three. They gave Sly 3 a score of 7.25 out of 10, down sharply from the 8.5 they gave Sly 2 and the 9.25 they gave the original. That's a two-point swing in the wrong direction. Electronic Gaming Monthly, on the other hand, liked this about as much as the other two, giving it an 8.5 out of 10. G. Ford makes the case that while “not carrying the same cachet as Sony's Ratchet and Jak series, the Sly games have always been just as solid, and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves continues the tradition. It's typical Sly – a mix of stealth and polished platforming gameplay, with dozens of (mostly entertaining) minigames breaking up the action – and some key additions to keep things interesting. The game's biggest faults are the rare uninspired collect-a-thon missions and an inconsistency in the quality of some levels. The good far outweighs the bad, though.” Dana liked it even more, explaining that “while not very innovative, the Sly series has always been a hallmark of good production value and fun gameplay – it's hard to argue with following a solid formula. Though none of the new playable characters have an extensive move set, they're still fun in their limited way, and I particularly enjoy the way developer Sucker Punch has structured the missions so that you're switching back and forth among characters a lot. All in all, this raccoon's game is still fun – no need to call Animal Control just yet.”

Moving up the scale, we see that the usually consistent GamePro gave Sly 3 a score of 4.5 out of 5, the same thing they gave the second game. The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine agreed with GamePro, also giving the game a 4.5 out of 5. They complained that the minigames can be a bit hit or miss, “the mode where you face off against each other as Sly and Carmelita is pretty fun, but the mode in which you try to sink each other's boat just feels pointless. It's still a good game, though, and one of the few out there that's fun for families to play together. Though on this, the third time around, the game's template is starting to feel a tad formulaic, it's still a formula that works well, and fans of the series should be pleased.”

Even with the gimmicky 3D glasses, the critics agree that Sly 3 is yet another solid entry. Some didn't like it as much as the second installment, but the overall average remains the same, at an 82%. While this isn't my favorite of the Sly games made by Sucker Punch, it's still a strong reminder why the PlayStation 2 was the system to own for must-play platformers.