Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror Review

Syphon Filter Dark Mirror is pretty good. Not a fan of the lack of right stick controls on the PS5 version but the controls that are avaliable are easy enough to get used to. I'd say it's at least better than 2. The stealth isn't that great since you are given no visiblity indicator and guards have binary AI vision where they notice you way too quickly but knife kills are satisfying and while there is a lot of cover shooting, the game does know when to mix things up like the game doesn't have nothing but generic cover shooting, you will be escourting people, using your various goggles to locate objectives, avoiding nuclear waste, having occasional turret sections, will be going up and down ziplines and the level design can be pretty vertical at times too. I can see why the game gets the acclaim that it does especially for being a portable game. Some issues I have is the amount of randomly place tripwire traps, I randomly run into them even though I swore the tripwire section was over, it means I got to wear that red vision goggles at all times, and it looks pretty ugly, uglier than the Detective Vision. Headshots are satisfying to pull off and outside of the before mentioned gripes I did wish the all purpose sniper rifle got better use. The gas and the explosive dart doesn't have a super big area of effect, and it's not as good as Splinter Cell's 40K. I will admit later on in the game, the all purpose sniper did get better use with armoured enemies and plenty of sniping sections as well as enemies that can only be damaged when you use the electrical darts on them but I kind of wished the game did more of this instead of doing it towards the end, I know the game is a hitscan shooter where you fight human enemies but at the same time, the before mentioned armoured electrical enemies did show some potential with the combat and the all purpose sniper rifle.

I do like the nods to the previous games while outside of the refrences to past games, the story is decent overall, I did wish the optional loading screen monologues made into the main plot more since it adds much needed depth to the characters, and they did try to give more personal stakes to Logan which is nice and I loved how much the final boss just shoved in refrences to past adventures especially after playing the trilogy, I was almost losing my mind with the amount refrences the former got. Jason Chance and Mara Aramov actually get name drops. So does Markinson. I always like it when long running franchises acknowledge it's long running continuity rather than soft reboot bullshit. I don't think the writing is that amazing overall, and the villain outside of being a refrence machine could've been better but this was pretty cool.

Overall, SF Dark Mirror is a solid game to play on portable as well as console, the controls aren't the greatest but compared to other games on the PSP like Star Wars Elite Squadron and Ratchet Size Matters, I'd say the game controls decently, the game is a solid short adventure and if you like cinematic action games or a fan of Syphon Filter and missed this game, it's worth a shot.