Despite being known as a PlayStation company, Sucker Punch began its career on the N64. In 1999, they put out Rocket: Robot on Wheels, which is their only standalone title. After that, they then became synonymous with PlayStation, developing three key franchises: Sly Cooper, inFAMOUS, and the Ghost of games.
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Sucker Punch Productions has been creating some of the best PlayStation games for over 20 years, but how do they rank against each other?
So, what makes a Sucker Punch game unique? While all three of these franchises are different, there are things that tie them together. In celebration of their latest title, Ghost of Yotei, let’s dive in and see if there are any common gameplay mechanics, story beats, or tropes that define a Sucker Punch game.
Stealth
Skipping The Superhero Generation
Stealth has been a key mechanic in many of Sucker Punch’s games, with Rocket: Robot on Wheels and the inFAMOUS franchise being exceptions. Sly Cooper, the titular hero of his franchise, is a raccoon who has to sneak through levels. There are other playable characters in the series that don’t use stealth, but the Sly Cooper franchise is largely about executing big heists through minimal combat.
Ghost of Tsushima was all about Jin deciding whether it was honorable to remain a samurai or go the path of the ninja to slay his enemies. Atsu has fewer struggles in Ghost of Yotei when using the shadows to accomplish her needs.
Open Traversal
Always Feels Good To Travel
Sucker Punch gets that walking or running around a game can be boring. Their first game, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, was notable as the main character was a robot on a unicycle, thus making traversal unique for a N64 platformer. Sly Cooper moved great as a 3D platformer star who used stealth.
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Jin was a force to be reckoned with in Ghost of Tsushima, but Ghost of Yotei's Atsu possesses a few unique skills that the older samurai does not.
The inFAMOUS series is when Sucker Punch got even more creative with Cole in the first two games, being able to hover or dash using electricity, or Delsin using smoke to go into small ducts to reach rooftops in inFAMOUS Second Son. Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yotei have great horse gameplay, and they have beautiful worlds to ride through.
Walking On Tightropes
Only One Has Sound Effects
Tightropes have made appearances in most Sucker Punch games, and they deserve a separate highlight from the traversal discussion. The Sly Cooper series uses tightropes the best, as that’s one of the fastest ways players can sneak around levels. Also, Sly Cooper makes sneaking noises whenever he moves, thus adding more cartoon-like enjoyment to the experience.
There are tightropes of sorts in the inFAMOUS games, as Cole can use power lines and other things like railway systems to zip around. Finally, Atsu in Ghost of Yotei gets to use tightropes around camps and castles to descend upon her enemies even more so than Jin could in Ghost of Tsushima. There’s nothing like pulling off a well-timed stealth kill with the many weapons in Ghost of Yotei.
Unskippable Cutscenes
You Will Watch
Not everything Sucker Punch does is met with universal approval. For example, most of their games have unskippable cutscenes for some reason. There are examples of skippable ones in their three biggest franchises, but they are rare. Even their latest game, Ghost of Yotei, with all of the bells and whistles that make the PS5 sing, does not fully have skippable cutscenes.
Technically, this is not a bad thing because what fans can gather from this is that the story is important to Sucker Punch. From a band of anthropomorphic animals pulling off heists to samurai looking for revenge, Sucker Punch cares about their narrative, and they want players to watch what they created.
Ahead Of The Curve
Unique Twists Before Their Time
It’s safe to say that Sucker Punch does not follow trends, and they make what they want. Whoever heard of a robot riding a unicycle throughout an entire platformer before? Also, in their sequel project, the Sly Cooper trilogy, they used what they learned with 3D platforming and decided to add stealth. That’s still a unique spin on the genre, as there aren’t many stealth-based platformers out there.
There were many licensed superhero games before inFAMOUS with varying quality, but there weren’t many original ones with the scope of inFAMOUS besides Prototype, which launched alongside it in 2009. Finally, there were open-ended samurai games before Ghost of Tsushima, but not many true open-world examples. Now there are two big examples of followers like Rise of the Ronin and Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Basically, Sucker Punch is kind of like a trendsetter, or at least they can be said to be ahead of the curve.
Sticking To Trilogies
Thus Far, At Least
After Rocket: Robot on Wheels, Sucker Punch mostly stuck to making trilogies before moving on to something else. There were three core Sly Cooper games, along with a fourth, but that one was not developed by them. InFAMOUS got two main games starring Cole and a third game with a new protagonist, Delsin.
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There were also two standalone inFAMOUS DLC examples, but they don’t really count to throw off the balance of the trilogy theory. What could make things different is where they go next. Will there be a new Ghost of game following Ghost of Yotei? Will they go back to one of their older franchises? Or will they start on a new project?
The Quality Of Their Games
They Rarely Miss
It’s wild for a game company to have about the same average for most of their games, squarely hitting the 80s on sites like Metacritic. Rocket: Robot on Wheels is a bit harder to track down reviews for, as it requires looking back at archived reviews. A majority of its reviews were around 7s and 8s, or 70s and 80s, to use a modern scale.
The Sly Cooper games averaged between 83-88 for their review scores. Not counting the DLC, the inFAMOUS games averaged between 80-85 for their reviews. Finally, Ghost of Tsushima sits at an 83 on PS4, and Ghost of Yotei is at an 86. So, while their games have not reached the 90s yet on average, that’s still a pretty good track record of quality for any game company.
