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| Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror Review | 
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror Review
Kill the baddies... with style.
March 28, 2006
By Robert A.
Like many other current titles for the PSP, the Syphon Filter series has its own share of fans and addicts in the gaming world. Myself, I've played Syphon Filter since its early days on the PS1/PS2 consoles. If you're not a real fan of third person shooters, or anything with blood and gore for that matter, you might think that this is just another pathetic addition to the PSPs game lineup. But this game has some really neat stuff in it that many games have yet to offer in one nice package: outstanding graphics, amazing gameplay, and a great story to go along with it all.
Upon first picking up the game, you may be a little overwhelmed or confused with the plotline of the story, and what the heck is going on. Inevitably, you take the role of a counter-terrorist, holding the name 'Gabe Logan', which has been known throughout the Syphon Filter series as 'the man with the gun' so to speak; you take his role as a gruff and fearless man, ready to battle against all odds. Or as long as you can get yourself adjusted to the controls, bringing us to one of the only downfalls we found while playing around with the game.
After shooting enemies, the crosshairs tend to either pull downward or upwards, as if some kind of strong gravity is taking control of your gun. The problem with this lies in multi-enemy ambushes. After taking one enemy out, you're going to take a few seconds to refocus your crosshairs on the next opponent, even though the game sports an auto-lockon function. These precious few seconds have often ended up in either barely lost firefights, or really sore fingers. The triangle, square, circle, and cross buttons tend to be over-sensitive for small movements of the crosshair, that's the real problem, and is entirely expectable too, since you're dealing with a PSP here, a single-analog-sticked handheld console.
Gameplay, awesome. Video cutscenes between missions make you feel truely immersed into the whole counter-terrorist plot, sometimes making you not want to put the game down for hours because of the consistent urge to see what's right around of corner. And when we say right around the corner, we mean it. The plethora of available movements, attacks, and combos are pretty much never before seen on a third person shoorter for the PSP. Get your back against the wall, peek around the corner, aim while still peeking behind the corner, and then pop out and surprise your enemys with a headshot. This is the type of full-console gaming you're experiencing with this game, not some cheesy, rashly put together, two hour non-stop, use as much ammo as possible to brute force your enemies, shooting fest. No, this game takes skill, stealth, and in some aspects, thinking, yes thinking, to kill your opponents.
The selection of guns and weapons in Dark Mirror is pretty much loaded. From FAMAs to heat-scoped sniper rifles, it's pretty much got it all. But wait, there's even more console-quality features that we haven't seen in other shooting games: nightvision, IR vision, heat vision, and flashlights! The story does a great job of making use of all of the aforementioned tools, and after a just an hour or two of playing Dark Mirror, switching to different visions and weapons will become as easy as cooking Ramen noodle soup, although, at first, the game can have a somewhat steep learning curve.
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror has some damn astounding graphics for a portable game. The incredible level of detail in maps and character models is something new to the PSP, that's how good they look. In contrast to SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo, a game comparable to the likes of Dark Mirror, the level of detail visible in Dark Mirror is considerably better. Things such as the character models don't look 'flat' as they do in SOCOM. Reflections are superb. And in some larger maps, such as the Canyon level, you notice a slight "overbright" on the mountains when looking at the sky, much like the type you see in HDR-enabled PC games, or games like Need For Speed: Most Wanted. Graphically, this game is superior to pretty much all third person shooters out there. If you want to impress your friends with awesome graphics and an outstanding framerate to boot (unlike GTA: Liberty City Stories, which doesn't really have the latter), then this is the game to get.
Think it can't get any better with Dark Mirror? It does. Dark Mirror supports both forms of multiplayer gaming, Ad-Hoc (local) mode, and Infrastructure (Internet) mode, both allowing anywhere from 2-8 players in a match. Playing from a wireless access point at 30% signal on the PSP, we believed that there was no way the game would run with 7 other players all around the US without lag. Once again, Dark Mirror threw us a surprise and played/performed flawlessly. As far as multiplayer gameplay is concerned, there are a few small problems which didn't make the experience as fun as it could have been. First off, within two weeks of this games release, there's already a ton of matches with spawnkillers. Though there is nothing that Sony can do to prevent this, I'm not a really big fan of that myself, and even though it can be a ton of fun for the person actually doing the spawnkilling, I found myself dying instantaneously upon spawning; up to three times in a row if I didn't quickly jump to a different location. Once again, the PSPs controls were the culprit. Those golden few milliseconds that I had to spend adjusting my characters view just cost me a headshot. Maybe I'm just too fumbly with multiplayer PSP shooter games, but I did find SOCOM easier to move around and attack with, although not nearly as intuitive or as fun as Dark Mirror.
On the whole, our experience with Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror was a blast. Gabe Logan has arrived to the PSP just as strong as it did on full-fledge gaming consoles, and not a single step backwards. The great graphics and framerate, decent controls, short loading times, and outstanding story and multiplayer makes this game, as mentioned before, truely unique to the PSP.
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