I remarked before in my reviews of SF1 and SF2 on this site that neither games have aged particularly well, despite finding them to be a blast back in the PS1 days. Syphon Filter 3 is the only game of the PS1 trilogy that I had never played prior to my playthrough on the PS5. Needless to say, it manages to be an even bigger chore than the previous entries, and a downgrade in its own right. Gone are any of the interesting locales of the first two games. Taking place almost entirely in either open forests or endless corridors, Syphon Filter 3 is a confusing and boring mess. It's environments are so bland that they are often confusing to navigate, and with little signposting it is easy to get lost. Objectives will often exacerbate this confusion, being downright vague at times as to where it is you're supposed to go or what it is you're supposed to do. Enemies will frequently ambush you from out of nowhere; an annoying design tactic in previous games but used to particularly egregious effect here. The plot? Even if I could talk about it, the audio mix was so low that I could barely hear any of the dialogue. Not that any of it really mattered anyway. It's all sub-Tom Clancy hogwash, written by a guy who recently embarrassed himself by calling critics of the woefully mediocre Days Gone "woke."

It's interesting to note that, while the first Syphon Filter has a score of 90 on MetaCritic, this installment has 73. I can see why there is that discrepancy. And if SF3 was met with a tepid response back in 2001, how is it going to be received now?

Avoid like the plague. It's not even worth suffering through for the easy platinum.