Back in the late nineties I had just started college, was dirt poor, and was also very jealous of N64 owners because they had Goldeneye and the PSOne had no such animal, but Sony's Syphon Filter was at the time the next best thing. An action heavy third person shooter, its developers helped to pioneer the genre, and its sequels were all right until Sony hit the proverbial brick wall with the lackluster PS2 title, The Omega Strain. But all that's in the past. SCEA has resurrected hero Gabe Logan and his cohorts and put them onto the PSP, and while I'm not exactly sure whether this new entry in the series, called Dark Mirror, will thrust the franchise to the top of the sales charts, at the very least it appears to be an entertaining thriller that'll no doubt quench the dry throats of PSP owners thirsting for a bit more variety on Sony's hand held.

When I first encountered this game at CES 2006 I certainly had my reservations, because unlike some of Sony's other brands (SOCOM, Ratchet & Clank), the Syphon Filter franchise has spiraled out of control, but the developers have put things back on track with Dark Mirror and for numerous reasons beginning with the look and feel of the game. Sony's apparently spared no expense making it extremely dramatic and I'm pleased with the opening cut scene that shows a large plane cutting through a harsh Alaskan snowstorm. As it slices through the night sky and eventually touches down on a blanketed snow field (highlighted by dramatic music) I'm shown a few familiar faces, the hero Gabe Logan and his cohort and strike operative Lian Xing. During these scenes the story is relayed to me, a narrative that focuses on the shenanigans employed by a paramilitary group known as Red Section, a band of evil doers that have captured the Kemsynth Petroleum plant in Alaska, just near the pipeline. The American government fears that Red Section has access to the WMD known as Dark Mirror and thinks that the situation is too delicate to send in troops, thus Gabe is called to dispose of the terrorists, so for the most part the game is a one man show where you must get from point A to point B and murder whoever crosses your path. Quite frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Like the previous Syphon Filters, Dark Mirror is a third person shooter that features all sorts of gadgets for Gabe to use both old and new. He's got access to over 30 different types of weapons including pistols, sniper rifles, machine gun turrets, and a MB-150 rifle that fires the following types of darts: an EDT tazer dart, an explosive, and an X34 poison gas dart. But he can also make use of a few different types of vision modes including infra red, night vision, and EDSU goggles (which help him locate hidden electronic devices). It's all pretty standard stuff, I'm afraid, but the developers have done an admirable job mapping them all to the PSP's digital pad, so whenever I want to swap weapons I press and hold Right and then press a corresponding face button, and the same goes for goggles/the flashlight, which have been assigned to the Left button.