The forgotten PS1 classic
Syphon Filter, the spy that Metal Gear eclipsed
- Critic score
- 90
- Player rating
- 4.5/5
- Main story
- 9.9 h
- Genre
- Shooter, Action
Released a few months after Metal Gear Solid, it paid the price. Twenty-five years later its score remains among the highest in the Classics Catalog.
A terrorist organisation seizes a virus codenamed Syphon Filter. Agent Gabe Logan is sent to track it down. The story is the espionage thriller of its period, with government conspiracies, betrayals and secret laboratories.
The game takes a different approach from its illustrious contemporary. Where Metal Gear Solid imposed a top-down view and strict infiltration, Syphon Filter adopts an over-the-shoulder third-person camera and leaves the choice open: hide, or take the fight. In practice it prefigures what modern action-stealth games would become.
Its arsenal made its reputation, partly for the wrong reasons. The taser in particular lets you hold the charge until the target catches fire — a detail players of the era remembered, and one that says plenty about late-1990s taste for that kind of excess.
What has aged best are the missions: compact, varied, with clear objectives and maps built for several approaches. A subway, a park, an embassy. There is a density here that action games lost as they grew longer.
What has aged badly is the aiming, which is stiff, and the camera, which needs taming. Around ten hours. It is a historical curiosity as much as a good game, and exactly the kind of title you will not find outside the Classics Catalog.