Despite the many issues it contained, I found Syphon filter to be one of the more endearing games I’ve played in the last twenty or so years.
I have to get the obvious out of the way here, Syphon filter is one of the ugliest games on the PlayStation (and the 5th generation). Textures constantly warp and break, effects like fire are super low res and overly pixelated, level geometry 90% of the time only consists of nothing but basic rectangles and squares, and character models are ugly as sin, with face textures that look like they were lifted from roblox (I roared laughing when I saw Gabe’s face the first time). The models have an ugly, blocky shape to them, and due to the game being covered in a gross looking grain filter, it can be near impossible to tell what kind of fire arms they have until they start shooting at you. The games prerendered cut scenes don’t fair any better, being extremely compressed and pixelated, and covered in the same grain. With the same low quality character models.
Thankfully, the game fares far better in terms of animations, location variety, and frame rate.
Enemies have exaggerated animations to clearly convey to the player how to react and where to aim. Which is even more impressive when you learn everything is mocapped. The mocap in cut scenes is genuinely competent, and doesn’t suffer from the mocap many 7th gen-contemporary games still suffer from where characters never stop moving just to show of the tech and having it end up becoming distracting. Characters in cut scenes animate with enough realism to impress, in spite of the low fidelity.
While the game is ugly as sin as I have mentioned, and will continue to mention, the location variety will always keep you interested. Syphon Filter never has a location overstay it’s welcome. You’ll be stopping a terrorist assault on Washington DC, infiltrating a museum undercover, stealthing around a frozen Kazakhstan base, sneaking through a Gothic Ukrainian labyrinth etc. It really immerses you into Gabe’s career as a globe trotting secret agent.
The game maintains an almost constant, stable, 30 fps. The only significant drops being if you constantly list Gabe back and forth while running (which you have to go out of your way to do), or doing a U-turn when you need to drop down ledges, which is never a major issue as that always occurs during downtime when you need to sneak around or navigate at high elevations.
Syphon Filters story isn’t anything special. While the premise is solid, the Syphon filter virus is rarely used across the entirety of the story, we are given no indication as to how deadly the virus is due to Rhoemers men only manufacturing and testing it. And while you do see some infected around the midway point of the game, they show no dangerous or alarming symptoms aside from marginal fatigue.
Gabe and Liang aren’t particularly interesting either. The only real defining trait they both have is that they are good at their jobs. For better or worse, you won’t see either develop over the games run. It doesn’t help that the games first cut scene establishes Liang as just as capable as Gabe, yet she’s side lined to being Gabe’s info giver for the entirety of the game. Why this was done is bizarre, as she could have had her own tool kit and missions to help provide more variety to the gameplay.
Rhoemer himself also isn’t a very compelling antagonist, his attacks never escalate past small skirmishes or occupations, and he is constantly thwarted by Gabe, never gaining one victory over him. His motivation for wanting to use the virus is never explained either, he comically tells Gabe “I won’t tell you” in the final mission when asked this, and his death comes incredibly easy, which I guess suits him given how unremarkable he is.
The game does feature some other prominent secondary characters, but they’re just as bland and underwritten as the rest. Mara had potential as a rival to Gabe, but all she really does is escape and play both sides to her own benefit (we never see what that benefit is nor are we given a hint). Markinson is nothing more than Gabe’s boss until he isn’t anymore and betrays Gabe to get his hands on the virus, but he’s killed by Rhoemer before he can explain why (in the same cut scene where Rhomer refuses to explain why HE wants the virus).
The story is not a reason you would be compelled to play this, or replay it. The bullet points for a story are there, but its execution is bare minimum.
It’s impossible to talk about Syphon filter’s gameplay without comparing it to it’s biggest source of inspiration, Goldeneye. During the games troubled and lengthy dev cycle, Goldeneye was extensively played in order to get an idea of strong level structure and pacing. For what it’s worth, Syphon filter translates these mechanics quite well for the majority of the game, with the truly bad missions abandoning the template of excellence from Rare’s classic.
Unlike Goldeneye, Syphon Filter doesn’t stack mission objectives with each level of difficulty, this does not mean the game is easy though, far from it. Syphon Filter is one of the most difficult games on the playstation and memorization of enemy placements and awareness of mission parameters are integral to progressing.
Just as in Goldeneye, failing certain parameters fails the entire mission and requires a restart, but doesn’t instantly boot the player back to the last checkpoint, so you can can still get a feel for the level layout if you wish before restarting, which is a nice form of balance. Completing each objective gives you a checkpoint, and the larger the levels, the more frequent the checkpoints, so progression never feels like it’s stalling even with the extremely high difficulty. And with the level structure designed around memorizing everything, subsequent attempts become easier.
Movement in Syphon filter takes around 5 minutes to get used to, but feels great once it settles in. The game uses tank controls, but Gabe’s movement is surprisingly swift. Making slight adjustments is easy as all you need to do is roll your thumb around the D-pad and gabe will list just enough to the direction you want to go, if that isn’t enough for you, holding L2 or R2 let’s you instantly strafe, adding to the overall fluidity.
Needing Gabe to drop down onto a ledge can be a bit of a pain however. As you need to be facing away from the ledge and walking backwards, and pressing down of the D-pad for to long will make Gabe automatically do an 180 and force you to try again, this is more and more frequent as the game goes on, and becomes annoying quick.
The shooting never tries to be more complex than it needs to be, simply locking on snaps the reticule to the nearest enemy. Gabe will always hit his target unless there is an object in the way, enemies go down quickly to compensate for the high amount of damage they can do to you, And strafing and dodging with circle makes running and gunning fun to do with how fluid Gabe’s movement is.
The way Syphon filter approaches enemy attacks is quite interesting. While engaged in combat, a danger meter will gradually fill, during this time, all attacks towards Gabe will miss, and when it does fill and flash, you are guaranteed to get hit. This is where the extremely high difficulty of the game lies. Enemies hit hard when the danger meter fills, and can kill Gabe in less than a second. Constant movement and repositioning is needed to survive, as that can make the danger meter drain and give the player a fighting chance. I was incredibly impressed with the danger meter, as in many stealth games, a blown cover or mandatory combat sections can be incredibly dull or frustrating, but this clear, but not condescending safety net makes firefights engaging and is a great balancing tool for the powerful enemies.
Another mechanic taken from Goldeneye (and Virtua cop by extension) is the zoomed in first person aiming, though it’s implementation is quite clunky and stiff. If you are needing to use stealth, the aiming is fine, and the game displays the word “head shot” when the reticule contacts the enemy hitbox to not make the player waste any ammo, but having to use it in required combat scenarios is a different story.
The health system in the game revolves around finding flak jackets, and while you can find some of them in ammo crates scattered around the level, the majority will be acquired by killing enemies wearing them, the only way to kill said enemies is to head shot them in first person mode, the vast majority of your deaths will happen because of these encounters, as the incredibly stiff aiming in first person mode means that the danger meter will always fill by the time your head shot lines up, and late game when damn near every enemy squad has at least one of these flak jacket wearing soldiers, it can lead to several instances of great annoyance when the text “flak jacket” flashes on screen and you need to reset yourself to try and kill them quickly. Thankfully, flak jackets restore half of your health bar each time, making this poorly implemented mechanic a bit more bearable. This comes in clutch as your health is not refilled after each mission, but I would have appreciated if it was at least refilled after a mission, as having to deal with that is plain cheap design.
Syphon filter suffers from very poor boss fights, the first two bosses have way to much health and take way to much time to wear down. There is nothing tense about these fights either, as avoiding their attacks is incredibly easy with all of the cover the game provides, the first boss is the worst offender, as you need to keep using the awful first person aiming to hit his fuel tanks, and it takes well over a dozen hits to finally blow him up.
The final fight against Rhoemer is straight up pathetic, as all you need to do is climb up a ledge, and throw a gas grenade, if you have none on hand, there’s a box full of them on the ledge with you, add to the fact that he can’t hit you when on said ledge, and it makes it all the more hilarious.
While Syphon filters level design is mostly good. It also suffers from some outright terrible missions.
While the game gives a wrong impression at first with mission 1 being more open ended, you’ll still be taught the fundamentals of shooting, climbing, room memorization. How to deal with flak jacket soldiers, scanning the environment for text prompts to complete objectives, and when checkpoints are given. There’s even a funny nod to Goldeneye’s Dam mission, where you have to use the first person aim to shoot off a lock to progress, while the open endedness ending here is a bit dissappointing, a high amount the rest of the games missions are tightly focused and push you forward just enough while not being hand holdy.
Syphon filter is at its best when you must use stealth to progress. Mission 8 is the prime example of this, as the player has to take out searchlights, and use their silenced pistol and night vision rifles to take out enemies silently, or they risk failing the mission.
It would have greatly benefited the game to have 4 or 5 more of these missions, as while the shooting galleries are fine in bursts, the game relies heavily on them late game to pad out the length. With the last 4 missions being reduced to narrow, under designed hallways peppered to hell and back with Flak jacket squads.
The game doesn’t feature a heavy use of gadgets, which is a shame because the two you do use are feel fresh and interesting, using an infrared scanner to find viral cadavers in crates was a fun way to test the players observation skills, and the Taser was a nice safety net in case you run out of ammo, but given how many enemies you encounter, who always drop their weapons, you’ll never run out anyway, making the latter redundant.
For the majority of the game, you’ll be simply going through mostly tight linear levels with heavy amounts of shooting galleries, broken up by finding consoles/bombs/other objects. Occasionally you’ll need to kill a scientist to get a key card, and in later missions this becomes tedious as they will often be paired up in twos, and stealth shotting one of them will always alert the other to your presence, and it’s a guarantee he’ll be wearing a flak jacket. Which adds to how dull the end game becomes.
When the game takes you to Ukraine for a few missions, it does have you using the lock on mechanic to figure out which stained glass window you can break through to find your way around. I was impressed at this unconventional use of lock on, and it was unfortunate that the game never attempted this kind of quirkyness after this.
Syphon filter’s gameplay isn’t anything amazing, or great, but it is competent and solid in its foundations. While the end game being poor is a let down, it’s not due to any mechanical faults, rather it was most likely due to having to get the game out at a final deadline given how troubled the development was.
Musically the game is on par with the gameplay, solid but nothing special. Aside from the now Iconic menu theme, none of the tracks stand out that well, that being said, the melodies are catchy and the synths and drums do an ok job at setting a tense atmosphere. The seamless switch from stealth to combat ost is genuinely very well done, and while 99% of the songs will not stand out, there isn’t a bad one to be found.
Syphon filter’s troubled development certainly brings it down quite a bit, but in spite of that, it does have a mostly competent gameplay loop and solid fundamentals that make it worth a look for six to seven hours. There are flashes of brilliance such as the Ukraine and Kazakstan sections, and it at the very least understands what made its source of inspiration work and makes an honest effort to try and mostly replicate it. It’s awful visuals and bare bones plot won’t stick with you, but the decent level design, serviceable run and gun shooting, tight controls, and perfectly fine ost make it worth checking out.
6/10.
I have to get the obvious out of the way here, Syphon filter is one of the ugliest games on the PlayStation (and the 5th generation). Textures constantly warp and break, effects like fire are super low res and overly pixelated, level geometry 90% of the time only consists of nothing but basic rectangles and squares, and character models are ugly as sin, with face textures that look like they were lifted from roblox (I roared laughing when I saw Gabe’s face the first time). The models have an ugly, blocky shape to them, and due to the game being covered in a gross looking grain filter, it can be near impossible to tell what kind of fire arms they have until they start shooting at you. The games prerendered cut scenes don’t fair any better, being extremely compressed and pixelated, and covered in the same grain. With the same low quality character models.
Thankfully, the game fares far better in terms of animations, location variety, and frame rate.
Enemies have exaggerated animations to clearly convey to the player how to react and where to aim. Which is even more impressive when you learn everything is mocapped. The mocap in cut scenes is genuinely competent, and doesn’t suffer from the mocap many 7th gen-contemporary games still suffer from where characters never stop moving just to show of the tech and having it end up becoming distracting. Characters in cut scenes animate with enough realism to impress, in spite of the low fidelity.
While the game is ugly as sin as I have mentioned, and will continue to mention, the location variety will always keep you interested. Syphon Filter never has a location overstay it’s welcome. You’ll be stopping a terrorist assault on Washington DC, infiltrating a museum undercover, stealthing around a frozen Kazakhstan base, sneaking through a Gothic Ukrainian labyrinth etc. It really immerses you into Gabe’s career as a globe trotting secret agent.
The game maintains an almost constant, stable, 30 fps. The only significant drops being if you constantly list Gabe back and forth while running (which you have to go out of your way to do), or doing a U-turn when you need to drop down ledges, which is never a major issue as that always occurs during downtime when you need to sneak around or navigate at high elevations.
Syphon Filters story isn’t anything special. While the premise is solid, the Syphon filter virus is rarely used across the entirety of the story, we are given no indication as to how deadly the virus is due to Rhoemers men only manufacturing and testing it. And while you do see some infected around the midway point of the game, they show no dangerous or alarming symptoms aside from marginal fatigue.
Gabe and Liang aren’t particularly interesting either. The only real defining trait they both have is that they are good at their jobs. For better or worse, you won’t see either develop over the games run. It doesn’t help that the games first cut scene establishes Liang as just as capable as Gabe, yet she’s side lined to being Gabe’s info giver for the entirety of the game. Why this was done is bizarre, as she could have had her own tool kit and missions to help provide more variety to the gameplay.
Rhoemer himself also isn’t a very compelling antagonist, his attacks never escalate past small skirmishes or occupations, and he is constantly thwarted by Gabe, never gaining one victory over him. His motivation for wanting to use the virus is never explained either, he comically tells Gabe “I won’t tell you” in the final mission when asked this, and his death comes incredibly easy, which I guess suits him given how unremarkable he is.
The game does feature some other prominent secondary characters, but they’re just as bland and underwritten as the rest. Mara had potential as a rival to Gabe, but all she really does is escape and play both sides to her own benefit (we never see what that benefit is nor are we given a hint). Markinson is nothing more than Gabe’s boss until he isn’t anymore and betrays Gabe to get his hands on the virus, but he’s killed by Rhoemer before he can explain why (in the same cut scene where Rhomer refuses to explain why HE wants the virus).
The story is not a reason you would be compelled to play this, or replay it. The bullet points for a story are there, but its execution is bare minimum.
It’s impossible to talk about Syphon filter’s gameplay without comparing it to it’s biggest source of inspiration, Goldeneye. During the games troubled and lengthy dev cycle, Goldeneye was extensively played in order to get an idea of strong level structure and pacing. For what it’s worth, Syphon filter translates these mechanics quite well for the majority of the game, with the truly bad missions abandoning the template of excellence from Rare’s classic.
Unlike Goldeneye, Syphon Filter doesn’t stack mission objectives with each level of difficulty, this does not mean the game is easy though, far from it. Syphon Filter is one of the most difficult games on the playstation and memorization of enemy placements and awareness of mission parameters are integral to progressing.
Just as in Goldeneye, failing certain parameters fails the entire mission and requires a restart, but doesn’t instantly boot the player back to the last checkpoint, so you can can still get a feel for the level layout if you wish before restarting, which is a nice form of balance. Completing each objective gives you a checkpoint, and the larger the levels, the more frequent the checkpoints, so progression never feels like it’s stalling even with the extremely high difficulty. And with the level structure designed around memorizing everything, subsequent attempts become easier.
Movement in Syphon filter takes around 5 minutes to get used to, but feels great once it settles in. The game uses tank controls, but Gabe’s movement is surprisingly swift. Making slight adjustments is easy as all you need to do is roll your thumb around the D-pad and gabe will list just enough to the direction you want to go, if that isn’t enough for you, holding L2 or R2 let’s you instantly strafe, adding to the overall fluidity.
Needing Gabe to drop down onto a ledge can be a bit of a pain however. As you need to be facing away from the ledge and walking backwards, and pressing down of the D-pad for to long will make Gabe automatically do an 180 and force you to try again, this is more and more frequent as the game goes on, and becomes annoying quick.
The shooting never tries to be more complex than it needs to be, simply locking on snaps the reticule to the nearest enemy. Gabe will always hit his target unless there is an object in the way, enemies go down quickly to compensate for the high amount of damage they can do to you, And strafing and dodging with circle makes running and gunning fun to do with how fluid Gabe’s movement is.
The way Syphon filter approaches enemy attacks is quite interesting. While engaged in combat, a danger meter will gradually fill, during this time, all attacks towards Gabe will miss, and when it does fill and flash, you are guaranteed to get hit. This is where the extremely high difficulty of the game lies. Enemies hit hard when the danger meter fills, and can kill Gabe in less than a second. Constant movement and repositioning is needed to survive, as that can make the danger meter drain and give the player a fighting chance. I was incredibly impressed with the danger meter, as in many stealth games, a blown cover or mandatory combat sections can be incredibly dull or frustrating, but this clear, but not condescending safety net makes firefights engaging and is a great balancing tool for the powerful enemies.
Another mechanic taken from Goldeneye (and Virtua cop by extension) is the zoomed in first person aiming, though it’s implementation is quite clunky and stiff. If you are needing to use stealth, the aiming is fine, and the game displays the word “head shot” when the reticule contacts the enemy hitbox to not make the player waste any ammo, but having to use it in required combat scenarios is a different story.
The health system in the game revolves around finding flak jackets, and while you can find some of them in ammo crates scattered around the level, the majority will be acquired by killing enemies wearing them, the only way to kill said enemies is to head shot them in first person mode, the vast majority of your deaths will happen because of these encounters, as the incredibly stiff aiming in first person mode means that the danger meter will always fill by the time your head shot lines up, and late game when damn near every enemy squad has at least one of these flak jacket wearing soldiers, it can lead to several instances of great annoyance when the text “flak jacket” flashes on screen and you need to reset yourself to try and kill them quickly. Thankfully, flak jackets restore half of your health bar each time, making this poorly implemented mechanic a bit more bearable. This comes in clutch as your health is not refilled after each mission, but I would have appreciated if it was at least refilled after a mission, as having to deal with that is plain cheap design.
Syphon filter suffers from very poor boss fights, the first two bosses have way to much health and take way to much time to wear down. There is nothing tense about these fights either, as avoiding their attacks is incredibly easy with all of the cover the game provides, the first boss is the worst offender, as you need to keep using the awful first person aiming to hit his fuel tanks, and it takes well over a dozen hits to finally blow him up.
The final fight against Rhoemer is straight up pathetic, as all you need to do is climb up a ledge, and throw a gas grenade, if you have none on hand, there’s a box full of them on the ledge with you, add to the fact that he can’t hit you when on said ledge, and it makes it all the more hilarious.
While Syphon filters level design is mostly good. It also suffers from some outright terrible missions.
While the game gives a wrong impression at first with mission 1 being more open ended, you’ll still be taught the fundamentals of shooting, climbing, room memorization. How to deal with flak jacket soldiers, scanning the environment for text prompts to complete objectives, and when checkpoints are given. There’s even a funny nod to Goldeneye’s Dam mission, where you have to use the first person aim to shoot off a lock to progress, while the open endedness ending here is a bit dissappointing, a high amount the rest of the games missions are tightly focused and push you forward just enough while not being hand holdy.
Syphon filter is at its best when you must use stealth to progress. Mission 8 is the prime example of this, as the player has to take out searchlights, and use their silenced pistol and night vision rifles to take out enemies silently, or they risk failing the mission.
It would have greatly benefited the game to have 4 or 5 more of these missions, as while the shooting galleries are fine in bursts, the game relies heavily on them late game to pad out the length. With the last 4 missions being reduced to narrow, under designed hallways peppered to hell and back with Flak jacket squads.
The game doesn’t feature a heavy use of gadgets, which is a shame because the two you do use are feel fresh and interesting, using an infrared scanner to find viral cadavers in crates was a fun way to test the players observation skills, and the Taser was a nice safety net in case you run out of ammo, but given how many enemies you encounter, who always drop their weapons, you’ll never run out anyway, making the latter redundant.
For the majority of the game, you’ll be simply going through mostly tight linear levels with heavy amounts of shooting galleries, broken up by finding consoles/bombs/other objects. Occasionally you’ll need to kill a scientist to get a key card, and in later missions this becomes tedious as they will often be paired up in twos, and stealth shotting one of them will always alert the other to your presence, and it’s a guarantee he’ll be wearing a flak jacket. Which adds to how dull the end game becomes.
When the game takes you to Ukraine for a few missions, it does have you using the lock on mechanic to figure out which stained glass window you can break through to find your way around. I was impressed at this unconventional use of lock on, and it was unfortunate that the game never attempted this kind of quirkyness after this.
Syphon filter’s gameplay isn’t anything amazing, or great, but it is competent and solid in its foundations. While the end game being poor is a let down, it’s not due to any mechanical faults, rather it was most likely due to having to get the game out at a final deadline given how troubled the development was.
Musically the game is on par with the gameplay, solid but nothing special. Aside from the now Iconic menu theme, none of the tracks stand out that well, that being said, the melodies are catchy and the synths and drums do an ok job at setting a tense atmosphere. The seamless switch from stealth to combat ost is genuinely very well done, and while 99% of the songs will not stand out, there isn’t a bad one to be found.
Syphon filter’s troubled development certainly brings it down quite a bit, but in spite of that, it does have a mostly competent gameplay loop and solid fundamentals that make it worth a look for six to seven hours. There are flashes of brilliance such as the Ukraine and Kazakstan sections, and it at the very least understands what made its source of inspiration work and makes an honest effort to try and mostly replicate it. It’s awful visuals and bare bones plot won’t stick with you, but the decent level design, serviceable run and gun shooting, tight controls, and perfectly fine ost make it worth checking out.
6/10.