PSP - Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror

Format
PSP
Publisher
SCEE
Developer
Sony Bend
Country of origin
US
Genre
Stealth

Syphon Filter : Dark Mirror

By David Rasmussen
22nd Oct 06

Looks like Blockbusters is hellbent on stopping me from reviewing anymore titles from their library.
No longer satisfied to just continue to do business the way they have been doing, they’ve changed the rules so that I cannot rent things out from them without a lot of hooey which makes it a pain in the butt to even rent from them anymore… so there goes any future endorsements from me concerning the wonders of renting with the formerly trouble free not so friendly anymore people at Blockbusters. Too bad for them.
But before they turned me off to a future of PSP rentals from their nice (if sometimes a tad lacking) selection, I did manage to get in a few final reviews before the horrible change came (which, ironically enough, came post the October 15th Earthquake that rattled all of Hawaii).
This is one of those reviews. Syphon Filter : Dark Mirror, because we need our third person shooter fix until the all new Metal Gear Solid shooter (sans all the card battling action) hit’s the PSP in the near future.

Yet another Syphon Filter game, one of a long history of games… except this is my first exposure to the whole franchise. Sorry if I wasn’t around for the previous games, but since nothing can change the fact that I wasn’t around for the previous games let’s just focus on reviewing this present PSP outing (Syphon Filter : Dark Mirror).

Straddled with some dark voiced tough guy named Gabe Logan, and the little asian minx that is Lian Xing, you are headed to the great white hype of Alaska… no, no, you’re not the hired gun of Greenpeace out to save a certain type of whale (allegedly). In Dark Mirror you’ll find yourself with a messy situation when a large facility is overrun by a mysterious organization known as Red Section who are out to do some mysterious things… which seems to involve hidden hothouses, strange flowers, and a hidden plot which has attracted enemies who seem to have given themselves fanciful codenames like Black King and so forth.

But the story alone isn’t what you’re here for, you’re here for the 3rd person shooting action.
Without the use of a second analog stick you find yourself using the X, O, triangle and square buttons to aim, which is not the more precise aiming I’ve ever run across. This is not so much of a problem if you are taking your time to snipe enemies, or using the target lock (L button) to quickly tag enemies, but if you are making precise shots you might find this to be a troubling aspect since using the four buttons is not the most precise thing I can think of in aiming.

Because the buttons are used for aiming most of your other functions (like opening doors, crawling, picking up ammo and swapping guns, picking up stuff and so forth) is done by tapping the up button on the D-pad. This speeds up certain things, and makes it easier to do lots of things as you’ll only need to remember to tap the up button on the D-pad to do a great deal of things.

The areas are nicely done, and you often find yourself switching between your three visors in order to either see hidden things, see in the dark (airshafts are dark which requires a certain visor which also doubles as an easy ways to see through walls and spot distant enemies before they can ambush you) , and one more that… well… I haven’t figured out yet. Maybe it has a use but not a general use like the first two visors.
Puzzles are not here. Other than the usual find the keycard and shoot things to make things happen the only other thing you have to do to “puzzle” your mind is finding codes to punch into doors and the ever frustrating “challenge“ of the escort mission to protect such and such a person as you escort person somewhere. At least here, though, you do have the ability to give a limited set of instructions to your “escort“ so it‘s not completely frustrating (stay here or follow)… so this is probably no more frustrating than any other batch of escort missions in any other game I suppose though I am still not a fan of the concept of escort missions.

Well, depth of thought is probably not your main goal here since, after all, this is just a shooter which should have been more deep in challenge but isn’t. Your goal for the most part is basically getting from point A to B in this game, which is not a hardship… much. It might be abit of a hardship if you consider your inprecise aiming, and sometimes overtly tight deadlines to wade through X amount of enemies in order to stop Y device from blowing, then if you add that thought into the equation then this game does seem abit of a hardship… just not insurmountable all in all. You’ll finish it, even on Normal mode all the same.

There is some variety here, yes. With the ability to swap weapons (offering up abit of guns to play with), armor and medikit pick ups to refresh health and armor, and three visors to play with you’ll find abit of variety in the game… it’s just that the variety won’t make the game last longer without Multiplayer.

Besides the main storyline you have Mission mode where you can replay missions you’ve already played, which allows you to find all the hidden “files” spread throughout the game. There are also “bonus” missions which have specifics goals that you need to complete in order to unlock (like playing through all the Training Missions INCLUDING the Multiplayer Trainer regardless of whether or not you’ll ever play Multiplayer)… and that’s it. Yes, that seems abit but without the ability to play Multiplayer (again) you’ll find that this game is still abit lacking (even if you play Normal mode which isn‘t as hard as you think).

The game does try to provide some difficulties, mainly in an AI that seems to have Superman type hearing in that they can locate you whatever precautions you take to surprise them… mainly because you ARE trying to sneak through a facility in the middle of nowhwere Alaska… I’m taking it it’s so darn quiet here that you can hear Bill O’Reilly’s thoughts drop… so they hearing you easier than, say, during an infiltration of a facility in the middle of NYC or LA might not be such a farflung thing to grasp your mind about.
That, of course, makes the fact that the game teaches you how to sneak up and take them down a useless thing since you’ll never be able to sneak up on them and take them out.

Ok. Long story short. Dark Mirror is a nice time killer, and if you can organize up a posse of pals in order to romp on Multiplayer you’ll get more life out of it… but unless you don’t mind the so-so manual aiming, the fact you’ll blaze through this game in probably about a dozen or so hours (maybe more) and the fact that there is only so much you can do in this game you might not want to get this one. But if you can find it for $20 or so this is a nice mid range priced game that will partially please and give you some thrills for the times on the road you need a little shooter to get you through the day.

-- David Rasmussen 22nd Oct 06

PSP Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror Images