Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror

Assume that everything you see in Hollywood films is true (and it must be, because the bloke down the pub says so) and you have to question the thinking behind America’s obsession with black ops agencies. You know, the kind that don’t officially exist, not even to the government, and which deal with the messy end of volatile political and military situations. After all, running such things in secret from (and potentially against) each other displays the kind of impudent inefficiency only the world’s former leading consumerist society would revel in. Forget counter-terrorism, this would be counter-productive.

Then again, without those agencies, Gabe Logan and his kind would be sat at home with an overwhelming urge to hunt down and cut up their neighbour’s dog for dinner rather than calmly chewing on a juicy ribeye purchased from the local supermarket. Far better to send them off on dangerous lone operative international assignments, the kind that your average Tesco shopper would fail before even starting.

Logan doesn’t know failure, of course. And free from the rules and chain of command, the likelihood of successfully infiltrating enemy installations, carrying out recon and executing opponents whilst on a mission to retrieve Dark Mirror, a potential global killer that redefines the term ‘weapon of mass destruction’, is high. He’ll need your help, of course, but as Logan tends to turn up for work packing the latest and greatest in artillery (including a new dart rifle and a range of vision enhancement goggles) and suitably trained in unarmed combat, you should find him more than capable of achieving the many objectives he’ll face.

That’s not to say it’s a walk in the park; enemy behaviour is said to have been completely reworked for this latest Syphon Filter (the series has previously appeared on consoles), meaning awareness levels are now more acute, making sneaking around undetected far trickier. Should you find one area unreasonably challenging, the game’s dynamic difficulty structure should step in and balance things out.

Action fans will be relieved to learn that not everything has to be done on tiptoes or with silencers, though, and that the game is actually a big fan of pyrotechnics. The 23 missions include plenty of variety, happily catering for both ends of the special-ops spectrum so whether you prefer to disable enemies with a clean, silent headshot or by scattering their limbs about the place through liberal C4 use, you should find something in Dark Mirror that pulls your trigger.

And if that isn’t enough, then consider the five online maps which promise numerous gameplay purposes (not least of which is a worldwide ranking system enabling the highest-ranking operatives to access unique weaponry) or the bonus level which sheds some light on the ending of Gabe Logan’s last mission (Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain on PS2) and which saw him subsequently listed as MIA.

Expect Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror to step out of the shadows during the summer.