Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain
- Create your characters, with a host of customizable options — the character you create will be a new recruit training under Logan
- Stop terrorists from destroying a mall, taking out a SWAT team and carrying the injured to safety
- Work through puzzle elements and use strategy to think ahead, when picking up weapons — the game challenges your mind and your reflexes
- Vast options for cooperative play — multiple solo missions combined with two-person gameplay
- Online play with nine fantastic multiplayer levels – Lay down cover fire while your teammates go in after the terrorists
This next installment of Syphon Filter takes everything you’ve loved about the series to the next level. Battle through this intense, international story with four-player cooperative, peer-to-peer online play (requires PS2 Network Adapter)! Features a bevy of high-tech, lethal weaponry at your disposal, lush, detailed environments for surrounding gameplay and a deep character customization feature.
List Price: $ 10.49
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A mixed experience.,
What followed wasn’t far from what I’d expected: Given the much larger storage capability of a DVD and the PS2’s processing power, the designers piled on everything and the kitchen sink — and not surprisingly, not all the pieces are great.
The ability to design your own agent is smart; you can now add a tinge of RPG to the experience by customizing your agent more or less to your specs. More hairstyles would’ve been nice, though. There are way too many new stock characters — as another reviewer mentioned, Imani Gray is a pain in the neck which drifts farther down towards the butt the more you have to listen to her. I was glad to see the return of Teresa Lipan, killed in SF2 but apparently revived later; I’d loved voice actress Shannon Tilton’s smart-aleck voice for Teresa way back in SF2 and it’s telling that she’s the only voice actor left from the cast of SF2. The look of the game is good, though I’m peeved by games that concentrate so much on making moody lighting that they forget to make your enemies visible. No amount of noir visuals can compensate for having to fire blindly into the dark, especially in this game, when you have to pull off headshots on targets the size of a pea. The controls took some getting used to — if you’re an old-timer, you have to learn never to touch the directional pad — but similar enough to the old games that it wasn’t a problem. There’s a vast array of weapons to be used, a big bonus, though the side effect is that if you pick the wrong weapon, you may find yourself out of ammo quickly. In previous SF games, by killing an enemy whose weapon you don’t have, you can pick up new weapons you didn’t start out with. This was a useful mechanical device so that the player wouldn’t find himself completely defenseless. Now, you can pick up hundreds of rounds for a weapon but never come across that weapon for the ammo to become useful. I had to replay an entire level I’d already finished up to about 75 per cent just because I chose a different gun in the beginning, a gun whose ammo can’t be found anywhere in the level. Hello?
The most glaring problem lies in mission design. It is true what the other reviewers said about the missions being repetitive and confusing. I’ve never been shy about using strategy guides, but even with the Prima guide in hand this time, I wasn’t able to avoid bumbling about like a blind bee. You have to enter buildings and areas in exact orders and the designers made so many unnecessary detours, areas that don’t do anything to advance your mission, that you’ll find yourself going round and round. I’d finished Syphon Filter 2 without a guide and had been able to follow SF1 all through with the help of a guide, but Omega Strain’s levels are simply overlarge, the missions overlong. They gave you more checkpoints this time, but you’re no longer able to temporarily stop a game and pick it up later with your checkpoints intact, a major flaw in the design. What’s wrong with giving us manual game saves?
My least favourite feature in this game is the enemy respawning. When you have to take such a snaky route through the level, revisiting areas multiple times, the last thing you want is to have to fight the exact same enemies all over again. It’s also always frustrating to have enemies jump out of a hole above your head and blast you to death with two shots from a combat shotgun, or worse still, come out of the door you’d just exited and cleared of opposition. How about some logic? I’ve always hated games that respawn enemies indefinitely, and unfortunately Syphon Filter just joined those ranks.
I’m enjoying this game, but it’s far more laborious than playing SF1 and SF2. I’m not even trying to meet their par times at this point. You’re supposed to be able to finish 10 objectives in Mission 2 in nine minutes. Nine minutes! My time was more like 45. Frankly, given that you have to run back and forth four, five times among three buildings in this level, that’s just insulting. I guess if your whole life is playing games, the depth and size of the missions is a good thing. Me? I play games to relax, and this is just too much material, with no way to break it down into chunks because of the save-game system. At a certain point, too much of something just spoils the fun.
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|WATCH OUT if you plan on buying this game,
Unlike the other games in the series, this one is designed ALMOST ENTIRELY around *online play*. If you don’t plan on playing this game online, you’re probably better off not buying it at all. I bought it and tried playing it offline, and after finishing the first mission, I was thoroughly disgusted with it.
I’m sure it’s a great online game, but as far as offline single player goes, it’s extremely frustrating and annoying to play.
Some of the reasons for this are:
– Unlike in the previous games, hardly any actions actually pause the game other than pressing the pause button. Checking your map or changing weapons keeps the rest of the game moving.
– The missions have checkpoints that act as quick saves for if you die, but the game isn’t actually reset back to that point when you die.. so if you fail a critical objective and then die, you’ll go back to the checkpoint with the objective still failed. Any timersthat were counting down will still be counting down.
– Speaking of which, if you fail objectives, the game lets you keep playing. You have to actually quit the mission and go back to the title screen before you can start it over. Very irritating.
– Enemies constantly respawn within seconds of killing them. In the previous games, you could dispatch all the enemies and then move on at your own pace, but with enemies respawning instantly, the only thing that makes sense is to run past everything.
Anyway, I’m just warning you, watch out if you plan on playing this game offline..
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