Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror
Gabe Logan is back, and we couldn't be happier.
Published: May 17, 2006
The slow but steady decline of the Syphon Filter franchise on the PS one mirrored a handful of 989 titles as Sony lifted the properties from the original developers (or the original developers no longer felt like making another sequel) and started doing things internally at 989 Studios. Jet Moto and Twisted Metal, along with Syphon Filter were inexorably pulled towards a giant vortex of suck, and Jet Moto -- at least at the time of this review -- never made it out.
Twisted Metal recovered quite nicely but Syphon Filter, for whatever reason, didn't make the next-gen transition too well. Perhaps it was just the style of game, or maybe it was that too much was changed. Or maybe, just maybe, the game was just a better fit on lesser hardware, where the limitations made it clear what could and couldn't be done with the game.
I stop short of calling the PSP a limiting platform for games, but I honestly can't explain why Dark Mirror is so sure of itself. It knows what kind of game it can be, knows what the PSP is capable of, and then works with that rather than against it to deliver one of the best games to hit the PSP -- and quite possibly the best Syphon Filter ever made.
Part of it is the storyline, which begins with Red Section, a terrorist organization, raiding KemSynth, a refinery in Alaska, in search of... something. It turns out some of the employees there were working on something called Project Dark Mirror, and, well, let's just say plants that have been genetically altered and infused with viruses like Ebola are not a good thing.
Once again, Gabe Logan (who was absent from the last game) is called in to both stamp out Red Sections plans and discover the true nature of Project Dark Mirror. The story itself is fairly interesting, though it happily skips ahead, delivering details that aren't really shown in-game. It's not a huge deal, since the storyline is really just there to link up the levels, but there was some attempt to make it the focal point of the game, and it tends to feel pretty weak.
Luckily, the game is entirely adept at cramming the core Syphon Filter experience into the little 16:9 screen of the PSP. In fact, once could argue that, once you get used to the controls (and it does take a while), this is actually a better home for the type of gameplay that the series provides. The analog nub does a great job of scooting Gabe around (and pressing it toward a wall and holding it will snap him to that wall, allowing you to lean around corners and set up headshots, which are pulled of with the shoulder buttons.
Then things get a little weird. The face buttons are used for fine aiming, a though most will tell you that digital buttons have no place in a first- or third-person shooter's aiming controls (and they'd be right), it works surprisingly well here. Once you get used to quick, light taps and the occasional instance of over-correcting, it becomes fairly easy to play the way the game intended: lots of firing from behind cover with the occasional bit of run-and-gun spurts.
Which leaves only the d-pad. The development team at Sony Bend did a damn fine job of making the most of just four buttons. Tapping a direction will let you kick on goggles, crouch, reload, toggle between single, semi- or full-auto fire, and holding left or right lets you choose a weapon with the face and shoulder buttons (complete with ammo if it's the multi-munitions-firing sniper rifle, which can do explosive darts, gas grenades and tracking darts in addition to the usual bullets), health packs or grenades, as well as a handful of vision modes that let you see in the dark, pick out mission-specific objects or things like laser tripwires, and so on. For such a simple idea, it works very, very well.
Twisted Metal recovered quite nicely but Syphon Filter, for whatever reason, didn't make the next-gen transition too well. Perhaps it was just the style of game, or maybe it was that too much was changed. Or maybe, just maybe, the game was just a better fit on lesser hardware, where the limitations made it clear what could and couldn't be done with the game.
I stop short of calling the PSP a limiting platform for games, but I honestly can't explain why Dark Mirror is so sure of itself. It knows what kind of game it can be, knows what the PSP is capable of, and then works with that rather than against it to deliver one of the best games to hit the PSP -- and quite possibly the best Syphon Filter ever made.
Part of it is the storyline, which begins with Red Section, a terrorist organization, raiding KemSynth, a refinery in Alaska, in search of... something. It turns out some of the employees there were working on something called Project Dark Mirror, and, well, let's just say plants that have been genetically altered and infused with viruses like Ebola are not a good thing.
Once again, Gabe Logan (who was absent from the last game) is called in to both stamp out Red Sections plans and discover the true nature of Project Dark Mirror. The story itself is fairly interesting, though it happily skips ahead, delivering details that aren't really shown in-game. It's not a huge deal, since the storyline is really just there to link up the levels, but there was some attempt to make it the focal point of the game, and it tends to feel pretty weak.
Luckily, the game is entirely adept at cramming the core Syphon Filter experience into the little 16:9 screen of the PSP. In fact, once could argue that, once you get used to the controls (and it does take a while), this is actually a better home for the type of gameplay that the series provides. The analog nub does a great job of scooting Gabe around (and pressing it toward a wall and holding it will snap him to that wall, allowing you to lean around corners and set up headshots, which are pulled of with the shoulder buttons.
Then things get a little weird. The face buttons are used for fine aiming, a though most will tell you that digital buttons have no place in a first- or third-person shooter's aiming controls (and they'd be right), it works surprisingly well here. Once you get used to quick, light taps and the occasional instance of over-correcting, it becomes fairly easy to play the way the game intended: lots of firing from behind cover with the occasional bit of run-and-gun spurts.
Which leaves only the d-pad. The development team at Sony Bend did a damn fine job of making the most of just four buttons. Tapping a direction will let you kick on goggles, crouch, reload, toggle between single, semi- or full-auto fire, and holding left or right lets you choose a weapon with the face and shoulder buttons (complete with ammo if it's the multi-munitions-firing sniper rifle, which can do explosive darts, gas grenades and tracking darts in addition to the usual bullets), health packs or grenades, as well as a handful of vision modes that let you see in the dark, pick out mission-specific objects or things like laser tripwires, and so on. For such a simple idea, it works very, very well.
