Syphon Filter
Reviewed by AKMooseMan
Wow. This is a GREAT game. You'd think with me saying that,
and the subject, I'd give it an easy 10. But when you read
on, you'll see why. It's the kind of game that I think most
people want to play. You go around blowing terrorists away
with various weapons, with lots of objectives thrown in to
keep the game interesting. And it stays interesting, I'll
say that. I'd have played straight through if I didn't have
such a short temper and throw the controlled at the screen
once in awhile. But enough about that, down to the critique!
Graphics - 9 out of 10. Very nice. Patches of blood show up
when you shoot an enemy, but it's not that Mortal Kombat
amount of blood that's just ridiculous to look at. There's a
decent amount of interacting with the levels, from
shattering windows to shooting out lights to leaving
bulletholes in the walls to a black sheet of ash from a
grenade to footprints in the snow, etc. Your hero, Gabriel
Logan, has his regular suit, a white snowsuit, and a tuxedo
for a stealth mission. The levels range from the city, to a
huge stone castle type building, to a park, a destroyed
subway, on and on. All are done nicely, and the game's
graphics add a lot to the atmosphere. And the cutscenes,
those are another story. Man, they're nice!
Sound - 10 out of 10. Once again, very nice. The music adds
just as much to the game's atmosphere as the visuals do. The
sound effects are excellent. I can't get over the sound of
the taser: the electricity crackling, the victim's death
scream, etc. The voice acting was pretty good, although more
convincing emotion in spots would have been nice. The music
is very fitting, and sometimes can help make a given mission
seem a lot more important and make the player tense.
Storyline - 10 out of 10. Pay attention to those cutscenes!
It starts off dealing with the Syphon Filter virus, and
you've got a bomb suad and need to disarm some bombs. A
conspiracy starts to become unwrapped, and you find out a
lot of your superiors aren't really on your side. Add in
plenty of twists along the way, and you've got a great story.
Control/Gameplay - 10 out of 10. My personal most imporant
area. And the game delivers. As soon as you get bored of one
mission, here's a new one. You've got to escape an exploding
base, follow somebody without being detected, plants
explosives around a base without being detected, find your
way out of a demolished subway tunnel, dodge subway trains
while trying to take out a terrorist, kill off scientsts,
adminster a vaccine to patients, shoot down a helicopter,
stop a missle launch, and loads more. It's easy to control,
too. You can cycle through your weapons while on the run, or
pause to get more time. You strafe, roll, duck, crawl (sort
of), climb, and blast at enemies. There's various switches
to hit, bombs to plant, bombs to check, etc. You won't have
too much trouble adapting from level to level.
Replay Value: - 6 out of 10. The game's big drawback.
There's not much incentive to go through the game again.
It's still fun, but not nearly as much as the first time.
Maybe you can go through using the weapons/ammo code. There
is a certain satisfaction to extracting revenge from pesky
enemies with a round from the K3G4's flak jacket-piercing
bullets, or a grenade from the M-79. A two-player mode ala
SP2 would have helped a LOT.
Overall Score: 9 out of 10. Very close to a perfect score,
but the lack of a great replay value stops that. It doesn't
stop Syphon Filter from being a great game that everyone
with PlayStation should own, though.
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