Hey all, it’s time to kick-off our month of Silly Scoundrels! As Cary explained earlier this week, we’ll be spending this first real month of spring talking about some of our favorite, more comedically-inclined villains. There are plenty of series with goofy baddies, and I the first one to cross my mind was the Sly Cooper series. While it does have a handful of serious villains, each game has its share of those who just love hamming it up. So, I figured I’d kick my own series off with Mz. Ruby from the very first game: Sly Cooper and the Thevius Raccoonus!

For those who don’t know all that much about Mz. Ruby, she’s an alligator with a very unusual talent: voodoo magic! Her swampy stronghold is filled with curses, hexes, witch doctors, ghosts, evil spirits and overall bad mojo. It’s an all around ridiculous place, capped-off with a just as ridiculous boss fight! Have a look at the video below for a quick refresher!

Mz. Ruby is a rather interesting antagonist for Sly to go up against since her motives aren’t immediately apparent. Supposedly, each member of the Fiendish Five stole bits of the Thievius Racoonus in order to become fabulously wealthy, yet there’s not much evidence that Mz. Ruby gained any wealth from it, nor even that she even used the stolen knowledge at all! She’s still chilling in the swamp doing her own thing. Of course, “her own thing” happens to be building up an army of evil ghosts with which to conquer Mexico (for…reasons), so it’s a good thing Sly showed up to stop her.

The thing is though, she doesn’t seem to be pursuing that goal all too intently. In fact, she doesn’t even seems to mind that she was defeated. If she’d wanted to, she probably could’ve easily overpowered Sly and proceeded on with her plan, but she chose something else instead: a game of Voodoo Simon Says!

This fight is why she’s managed to stick around in my memory all these years, and why she’s absolutely a silly scoundrel. For all her anger, malice and truly dangerous abilities, she’d still much rather play games and trash talk than anything else. You can see it throughout Sly’s encounter with her: she not only takes time to banter with him, but also takes great delight in the fight itself.

She celebrates with a hearty belly slap whenever she manages to land a hit, and she never removes Sly’s means of transport until he’s close enough to continue the melee. It may very well be that this game with Sly is what she truly wanted all along, and she made sure to fully enjoy every minute of it. She probably didn’t intend to lose, but them’s the breaks when you prioritize silly games over your grand plans. Ah well, better luck next time, right?

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What do you think of Mz. Ruby? Did you enjoy her fight? Which Sly villains are your favorites?

Above screenshot captured by the Duck of Indeed