CLASSIC GAMING
Syphon Filter 1/2/3
Developer - Eidetic Inc.
Publisher - 989 Studios
Genre - Third Person Shoot-em up/Tactical Stealth
Year of Release - 1999/2000/2001
System - Playstation


Some of us can really enjoy a good action film because of the sheer amount of imagination and adrenaline-fuelled events on the very belief that "it could happen".  There can be elite heads of criminal organisations with an eyepatch and a white fluffy animal.  There can be explosive chewing gum and there can be helicopters crashing into full-speeding trains.  A good action film is not just about the story that drives our hero onwards, be they spy, ex-cop or secret agent, onwards, but also have a hell of an army to fight, enough locations to make a change of scenery, and of course big guns and even bigger blasts.
On TV you can probably find this in the form of 24.  In videogames, you have Syphon Filter.
Now, you may be admonishing me for not selecting Metal Gear Solid (and what makes you think I won't review that, dear reader?) but you do ask me nevertheless.  Why the first three Syphon Filter games and not even one game of the Metal Gear series?  Well, let's go with the flow here.

Story - The three games follow a general plot with immediate picking up from the end of the last game.  You play as Gabriel Logan, a top notch field agent of The Agency who are just a big suit secret government agency that not only stop terrorists on US soil, but on others' soil as well.  Gabriel finds info on a deadly biochemical virus called Syphon Filter which can wipe out entire continents if used correctly.  With the aid of Lian Xing, his best pal, he tries to stop the mercenary and drug supplier Erich Rhoemer from supplying others with the virus, only to find out that it runs deeper into his own company and soon being betrayed at every turn.


The second story picks up right after Gabriel cleans up Rhoemer and his operation, as well as now being on the run from The Agency.  Lian Xing is kidnapped to be administered and experimented on with Syphon Filter, but Gabe is back on the trail to not only rescue Lian with the help of more friends (Teresa Lipan the US communicator and Lawrence Mujari the South African biochemist) but find a vaccine for Syphon Filter as well as picking off the rest of The Agency that so betrayed them.


And finally, the third game has Gabriel Logan up on trial for the assassination of a Chinese world leader in Tokyo who they have found was involved in Chinese terrorist attacks involving Syphon Filter in the second game.  The rest of his buddies, by association, are also on trial surrounding Gabriel Logan's actions as well as their own motives as a mercenary group.  This game rather strolls you through a little more on the search for Syphon Filter but also moreso on the characters' pasts and their eventual meetings with Gabriel Logan.
The stories are not as juicily packed as 24 would ever be, and it's not as mind-bendingly intelligent and as entirely believeable within a 10-minute monologue as Metal Gear Solid, but it'll do for those who want to have a good spy game, but really don't want to press the start button everytime another cutscene comes up and then get really confused on why they're doing the next mission in a Russian gulag.


Gameplay - The game is a fine balance between shooting and stealth.  You control your character through levels and complete listed objectives before reaching the end point and finishing the level, while dealing with any enemies in your way as well as keeping within the parameters of your mission (which are restrictions such as not killing innocents or not being seen at all by the enemies), with a somewhat briefed warning of when your shifting between all-out action and all-low stealth.  Hopefully you'll be smart enough to know when that happens.
Missions are greatly variable and are never fully the same monotonous shoot-and-run/sneak-and-slit stuff over and over again.  Each mission takes on its own flavour of what kind of work you'll be doing.  In a few examples, you can be on a moving train and gunning down enemies non-stop as you run forwards to the main engine.  In another, you're sneaking around an airbase trying to escape capture but having to do so without killing any of the guards who are not your enemy and are rather just gormlessly obedient low-level pawns that don't specifically hate you, but just have orders to kill you.
In this sense, the game is very moral on its parameters, with the occasional let-up of rules that can allow you to kill EVERYONE (even the bastard scientists making the virus) and other times being very restrictive (of making you not kill ANYONE at all within the level).
You of course have a wide variety of weapons at your disposal ranging from tasers and silenced 9mm to grenades and tear gas launchers, each one with a rating of accuracy, fire rate and capacity along with a charmingly detailed explanation of the weapon.  Aiming the weapon is generally easy with cross hairs and even a little indicator of when you have a headshot on an enemy and can instantly kill them, as well as letting you know who's an innocent person and should not be shot.


As for how enemies affect you, it's a fairly-balanced manner of fighting.  You have two bars for your vitality.  Your flak jacket armour and your health hidden underneath it.  Enemies can shoot away at your flak jacket armour and then expose the health bar, which is an indicator that you're vulnerable and they will shoot your health down to death.  In quite an innovative way for a game, you are actually just as vulnerable as the enemies themselves, and technically not able to take a lot of shots as much as Solid Snake could ever take.
There is a byway on this.  You can regain armour by either taking flak jackets from green supply cases around the levels, or you can steal them off any enemies who were wearing flak jackets which you killed without tearing away at the flack jacket by either a heavy spray of bullets or explosives.  Your health however is non-recoverable and you have to suffer with that throughout the mission.
However, the series has one-upped you by the second game, by adding the ability for enemies to now kill YOU with one shot to the head, which you will be greatly warned of.  Once again, Gabriel Logan is just like any other soldier, which all in all is quite fair to his enemies really and somehow realistic, adding a much more serious tone to the game of mortality.

Graphics - Because the three games were made from 1999-2001, the graphics are blocky, surprise surprise.  The levels are not incredibly detailed and will not win any awards in their time or now.  Backgrounds are flat and basic looking, with very little grandeur actually made to them with a few minor exceptions of levels having some exceptionally good lighting.  Lighting is well done in this game and heck, you can even shoot out lights and you'd darken a whole section of corridor.  The only thing that has actually gotten better in the sequels are the cutscenes and characters, with more work given into their faces to make them look more like a person and less like sticks of tofu that someone drew a good face on.  While not bad enough to make you irk from it, they're not brilliant, but then you won't have much time to look around what with the sneaking and the running and the shooting.


Music/Sound - The musical score as composed by Chuck Doud and Christopher Stevens is good throughout the games, giving off the perfect spy/action film sense, a sort of watered down Gregson-Williams (wh you've probably heard do a lot of good action film music like Spy Game) that lets you know from the moment you hear the main theme, shows you by ear the kind of stuff you're getting into.  The score throughout the games has been entertaining and yet pacing nicely with the action of the mission, speeding up or becoming more hasty when you get into a fire fight with the enemies before slowly lulling itself back to normality.
Sound effects are quite impressive with the expectant "Boomfshhh" of the grenade or the "KHAOOWW" of a shotgun, which certainly make you feel you're in some movie of drama series.
Voice acting too is actually better than most games normally have.  Gabe Logan has a Solid Snake quality in his gruff husked voice which alone will make you feel more the action spy you really are.  It's definitely a staircase up from Resident Evil's voice acting (and here you may groan in remembering that).


Syphon Filter is a game for those who want to play stealth but got too bored with Metal Gear Solid.  It can run as well as sneak, shoot as well as blow up, and you never have to piss about with cardboard boxes or infamously long theatrical cutscenes about genetics and atomic weapon theories flying over your head at the altitude of the Hubble Telescope.  Sometimes we wanna sneak around half a level only, and then destroy the other half.  If you want that, then you can enjoy the Syphon Filter games of the Playstation 1.  The only thing to grieve about in this series was its terrible transition into PS2 (one of many series that never managed to move into the next generation of consoles with any scars on its pixellated face) with the somewhat less-than-lacklustre Omega Strain.  But hopefully Gabriel will rise again in the PSP sequel of the series entitled Dark Mirror.  Until then, enjoy saving the world from terrorism at your fingertips, and without too much information overload on your attention span.

Final's Final Rating - 8/10

I bet you were the kind of guy who put people on the Air Taser for a good five minutes to dance and burn.

I did that too ^.=.^

hahah ya...they need a tazer in hl2 dm..lmao...that would be great. AHAHA...but ya..5 mins..pfft 5 hours. lol

 

And what a twist, right?
I like the boss battles in that series, gave off their own difficulty and tactical feel, yet still keeping with not making the enemies more harder health-wise.