Starting from the beginning with an iconic series.

There is A LOT going on in this PS Classic. Half awesome, magical nostalgia, half excruciatingly difficult pain.

Let’s start from the beginning. Agents, Gabe Logan and Lian Xing work for a secret United States counter-terrorism unit called, The Agency. The Agency has Logan and Xing begin to investigate a terrorist group called, The Black Baton after a fellow agent goes missing in Costa Rica. It’s here the agents find out that instead of a previously believed narcotics operation The Black Baton and its leader, German born, Erich Rhoemer are actually treading in much darker territory. They are weaponizing a virus.

From there the first use of the virus seems to be in an attack on Nepal. Both the power and nuance of the virus are on full display in the attack – killing every single person it comes into contact with but one. Which at this point is still a mystery.

But before The Agency can go after Rhoemer – he attacks Washington D.C. first by filling the subway tunnels and museums with vials of the dangerous virus called, Syphon Filter. That’s where the game begins and only gets more bananas from there.

You fight a pyromaniac Frenchmen, you shoot a Russian assassin like forty different times yet she keeps coming around. A bunch of The Agency guys turn on you and big surprise, a big pharmaceutical company is working with the terrorists!

I’m not big into spoiling games – even if they are twenty three years old but there are also like six more Syphon Filter games (all of which have Gabe Logan’s face on them) so you can probably guess who wins this time in the battle between Agents Logan and Xing versus Rhoemer and his eccentric crew.

Also this:

Anyways.

Overall a fun and extremely difficult product of its time. A cog in the slow evolution from Video Games moving away from childish themes to a more serious brand of adult storytelling. It’s not perfect but it’s fun and wild and ironically enough, just engaging enough to take my mind off the current virus plaguing our times.

Overall: 81%

Year Released: 1999

Developer: Eidetic Games

Publisher: 989 Studios

System(s): PlayStation

Type of Third Person Game: Stealth/Action

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