3/5 ★ – Endless_backlog's review of Syphon Filter.

6/10 A lot of people compare Syphon Filter to other stealth games of its era, and albeit there are stealth levels, I can’t agree that is it’s genre. It’s a classic B rated 80s action movie in PS1 form, and it excels at this. The story is pretty thin, there is a terrorist villain threatening the world, although at least there is plot in his agenda. Largely forgettable lead antagonist Romanov has been using a team of scientists to test human subjects with viruses that are capable of wiping out entire cultures. Nostalgia brought me to facing Girdeux and his flame thrower, PSX replay allowed me to complete the story, and honestly.. without it I may not have. Playability is insanely difficult, a common problem of games of PS1 era. The biggest disadvantage SP has is it’s aiming. There is a lock-on feature, which is useful in the early stages. After a few levels though, nearly every enemy is wearing a flak jacket (bulletproof vest) and by the time you drag the cursor of your gun eye line to their headshot you’ve lost half or all of your health. It also suffers from classic PS1 checkpointing. If you have x objectives to meet, it will let you reach the end of the level with no prompts and watch you aimlessly treck back to find where you missed out. Not to mention there is no weapons wheel, which means opening the menu and changing manually each time. Which is time consuming.. but it is a PS1 game after all. There is an option to quick select, but you need to go through every option to do so. The levels are fun and pretty unique from each other, but after the initial fun of the catacombs level it gets pretty repetitive. I also had no interest in the lead villain as there was little build up bar a name drop throughout the entire game? To give it its credit, Syphon Filter was perfect for its time. It also boasts the most influential weapon of its generation in the taser, of which every player ever zapped an enemy long enough to set them on fire.. something you won’t find anywhere else!