Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain

"Better then the rest? not quite."

First off I am a huge fan of the Syphon Filter series. But no matter how hard I try to love this game it's a hard thing to do. Well, let's move on with the review.

The Graphics: No huge problems here. Just a few a very small ones. The environments have some poorly done textures. With the exception of the jungle level. That level has so many different kinds of plants and ferns and they all look amazing. The cut scenes also look exceptionally good. All of the characters and their motions look exceptionally good. Although there are some clipping issues when the character moves their arms, but this rarely happens. Also all of the weapons have great detail put in to them. They look very exceptional. Over all the graphics are not bad but they don't hold up when compared to most current military/action-shooter games. I give the graphics a 7/10.

The Sound: I have no huge problems with the sounds. The gun sound effects all sound great. Except I did find the grenade sounds to be a bit unrealistic and I thought they just sounded like guns going off. I thought it was quite annoying to hear your agency commanders yelling at you all the time telling you to hurry up or telling you that you screwed something up every 5 seconds. I also noticed that there were major sound glitches. This has only happened to me once offline. But I have experienced it frequently when playing online. The sound will just quit out for no reason at all. And then you can hear nothing except your commander yelling at you and you can hear your foot steps. All weapon sounds and music completely go away. It can be very annoying. But sometimes the music can be kind of annoying so this may be a welcome glitch for some people. But over all I give the sound a 7/10 as well.

The Game play: Oh the game play… What can I say… If you don't have a network adapter I wouldn't suggest buying this game because you can never EVER beat it 100% if you can only play offline. Even if you do have the ability to play online this is a very hard game to complete. I just recently got the highest rank possible. It takes lots of practice and lots of time spent at it. But you can only play as the trade mark Syphon Filter characters (Lian, Gabe and Mujari) for 1 mission each. For the rest you MUST play as your own character you create. This in its self is not a bad thing. You can make a male or female which is nice. (Me being a guy in real life I made a male character) But there is no difference between the two. Except some of the clothing items you can unlock for your character will differ depending on gender. But the customization is amazing. It will be very hard for you to run into a person who looks exactly like you online especially after you have unlocked new clothing items by gaining higher ranks. You also unlock new weapons with each new rank. There are also many many awards, medals and ratings that will earn you new abilities or new, more powerful weapons. The only bad thing about the character customization is that your character never ever appears in cut scenes, has no voice and is only referred to by the code name “Cobra”. But in order to get all these extra weapons and things you must complete all objectives for a mission under a specific time limit. This can be VERY hard to do. Plus it can be even harder online because not everyone you will play with will be as experienced as you need them to be. Plus there are certain objectives that can be only completed with a player online helping you. So if you don't have a network adapter think twice before buying this game. There are many game play glitches. To many to list here but they don't occur a lot. Most of them are just things like clipping issues with characters and objects. And the sound glitch I mentioned earlier. But I give the game play a 6/10.

The Closing Comments: In all I say they game deserves an 8/10. This is mostly because of the amount of customization. Plus I love making my self as a secret agent type person. But I really wish your character had a voice in the game. (make note this is not an average. Simply the rating I think the game deserves based on everything put together.) There are many glitches but most of them don't occur a lot and aren't that disruptive of the gaming experience. But sadly had this game spent another month or two in play testing this would have been so much better possibly a 9/10 or even a 10/10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/04/05