3D action titles have endured some hardships in the late 90's, and it took a number of years for them to get their footing down. Games like Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time were blueprints, but it wasn't down to a science and devs still had a learning curve to land. One of those games that served a bridging gap between the cumbersome and optimal phase of programming with the advancements in tech was the oddly named Syphon Filter. 

Developed by Sony's now defunct 989 Studios and released on the PlayStation in 1999, Syphon Filter felt like the antithesis to the previous year's smash hit, Metal Gear Solid. Whereas Solid Snake lurked around in air ducts and sneaking around in boxes to avoid enemy detection, Gabe Logan's answer to everything is "BLOW THE ABSOLUTE SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE". Add in the early Mission Impossible and N64's Goldeneye 007 popularity at the time, and you have a lot of what the western mainstream audience was craving during the era. I'll give Sony and 989 this, their marketing campaign was pretty entertaining back then. Along with those Crash Bandicoot commercials with that jackass guy in the costume, the 989 adverts ruled. The Syphon FIlter 2 Taser one comes to mind.

It's tough to talk about this period in gaming without having a retrospective take on the graphics, I can't just always say "it's blocky" all the time. By this period, however, the textures were getting better at more defined detail and smoother polygonal bodies to map to, so the improvements were being made. The Metal Gear Solid influence isn't hard to pick up on in Syphon Filter as far as themes go; gravely-voiced protag hired to defeat and circumvent extradition, political intrigue, and a lot of dark corridors to traverse around. 

During some of the cinematic cut sequences, the more defined models and intricate details, like expressive faces are apparent, almost given a Hollywood-style presentation. Close-ups reveal some of the weakness in the quasi-rotoscoped mouth movements on chunky Bruce Campbell jawlines, but I digress. 

The map layouts and level design is straightforward, but the choppy textures on walls can make navigating some of the tighter areas a little confusing. Gabe has a flashlight, and boy, did I find myself needing it after a while, as a lot of areas can be quite dark. It's all fully rendered in 3D, and the leaps in improvement on how layers were working with the stages. Not a bad looking game, I really wish you could pull the camera back on Gabe. There are times where the view can hug really close and your peripheral vision is non-existent.

Syphon Filter's controls have aged the worst, and this is what makes a handful of games from this period tough to revisit without reverse engineering your conventional game sensibilities. If you're playing this on a PS2 or Dualshock PlayStation 1 controller, I dare you to try your absolute best to never touch the right stick. Going back to the camera again, it's guided by a wire that tries to give you the best angle possible, and it can be frustrating. 

This is aided in many ways by providing a lock-on button by holding R1. This does keep the action centralized on your target when attempting to fire in the heat of battle. L2 gives you a more precise aim, some of these things would become commonplace in action titles in the coming years. 

Gabe has only two means of travel; a duck walk stealth mode, and running around like a 4 year old that has to take a massive poop. His running physics feel like trying to navigate a bicycle with a broken front tire. All I'd want to do is leap over a box, or shoot a window out and hop through it. Unfortunately, Mr. Logan prefers trying to ride the walls like Lucio with zero elevation. This isn't impossible to deal with, just don't expect the reaction time and functions to be as crisp as you would like.

Syphon Filter may feel like a product of its time, but it was another important game that helped action titles shape themselves into what they would eventually become. The controls are a little archaic, but they just take some getting used to. Not bad for its time, I like the characters, and the story runs a touch corny, which makes it automatically more appealing than Kojima's confuse-O-vision narrative.

Seriously, what the f**k is a Syphon Filter...? This has to be the dumbest name for a video game series ever.