3D games start to get wild and wooly

I need to bring back the sun, retrieve a book and save my family from the dreamtime world they're trapped in. I need to collect coins and opals, get messages from bottles and build a better boomerang. I have to jump, climb, swim, bounce on lawn chairs and old mattresses, break boxes and slot machines and locate secret areas.

I am playing several different action-adventure games, but they all seem to run together into one vast game. Was I looking for gold coins in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger? No, it was opals -- I need coins to get a lucky horseshoe in Super Mario Sunshine. No, wait, that's Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus; in Mario, the coins restore my health.

These games are all "platformers," 3D descendants of the old 2D side-scrolling games in which the game character would jump from one platform -- a cliff, an ice floe, a cloud -- to another, collecting tokens and battling monsters. The great challenge for designers of platformers is to differentiate themselves from the pack. Thus monster plants, kangaroos and machine-wielding wolves all vie for our attention, screaming: "Play me! I'm different!"

Nintendo's Super Mario Sunshine sets itself apart from the masses by means of its weapon, a portable water hose called a Fludd, for Flash Liquidizing Ultra Dousing Device, which also doubles as a water-powered jet pack. On a visit to a tropical island, Mario is arrested in a case of mistaken identity. An evil look-alike has been destroying the island, covering it with graffiti and sludge, and Mario is ordered to clean up the mess with the Fludd. The sludge itself spits out nasty monsters that Mario must spritz, and cleaning graffiti gives him entry to other despoiled areas.

Super Mario Sunshine is yang to the yin of last year's Luigi's Mansion. Mansion took place in a dark, spooky mansion, Sunshine, on a bright island where sprightly music plays all day long. In Mansion, Luigi carried a vacuum cleaner on his back to suck up ghosts; in Sunshine, Mario carries a hose on his back to spritz gooey monsters. Sunshine is easily superior, in both its game play and atmosphere.

With its sunny graphics and clever game play, Mario does a good job of differentiating itself but has a flaw common to most platformers: a boring story. While interesting plot, characters and dialogue are increasingly common in more adult games, such elements are perfunctory in most platformers. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, developed by Sucker Punch, flouts this convention with a reasonably cogent story and some clever dialogue. While it is not in the same league as with story-intensive games like The Longest Journey or Final Fantasy X, it doesn't have to be. Just not boring the player to tears puts it well above its brethren.

Sly is a thief whose family heirloom, a book of thieving techniques, was stolen years ago. Sly is determined to retrieve this book, pages of which have been acquired by various gangsters.

The game unfolds at night, as Sly climbs over rooftops or sneaks into a gangster's lair to the accompaniment of sneaking-around music. Since Sly is a thief, he must often dodge spotlights and security systems, sidle along ledges and break through windows. While he hunts for the book, he himself is being hunted by the police, headed by Inspector Carmelita Fox. Their meetings involve Carmelita's telling Sly to turn himself in, Sly's breezy flirting with Carmelita, and Carmelita's doing her best to kill Sly.