Syphon Filter (1999) | Sony PlayStation | Game Review

By 1999, the year Syphon Filter was released on the Sony PlayStation, gaming was dominated by several trends. The first had actually evolved from a trend into the new standard for the vast majority of games going forward: 3D graphics and gameplay in partially 3D to fully 3D environments. 

The resounding success of Super Mario 64 in 1996 and many of the Nintendo 64 games that followed convinced publishers that 3D was not only the future of video games, it was the present. The PlayStation and Sega Saturn’s hardware weren’t as proficient as the 64’s when it came to 3D graphics but the pressure was on to produce 3D games. Both systems did go on to have some very good 3D games while 2D was seen as passé and games in that style dropped off significantly.

The other trend relevant to Syphon Filter was that of the stealth action genre. While 1997’s Goldeneye – the N64’s massively successful movie-based first person shooter – offered plenty of action and moments where the player must take on waves of enemies as is customary for the genre, the spy aspect did squeeze in a little sneaking around. It was to the player’s benefit to take out enemies quickly and quietly before the alarm was raised bringing reinforcements. The use of silencers was key as was good accuracy; often you only had one chance to silently take out an enemy and if you missed the heat would be on.

The following year saw the release of the game most responsible for the rise of stealth: Metal Gear Solid. Bringing in the elements that made its 8-bit predecessors in the series, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, unique, as well as adding in some new ones to the 32-bit realm, Metal Gear Solid was a masterpiece of, in its own words “Tactical Espionage Action”. The game’s entire premise was that of infiltration and in most places, a strategy of avoiding enemies rather than engaging them was key. Not only was it still quite different from other games of the time, it was a lot of fun. As much as gamers had enjoyed titles with a “guns blazing” approach – blasting all enemies like a space marine – this sneaky alternative proved to be extremely enjoyable. Successfully passing through areas undetected forced the player to be more thoughtful and creative. The game was a success as big if not bigger than Goldeneye so a wave of imitators was inevitable. 

Metal Gear Solid: Often imitated, never duplicated.

Which brings us back to Syphon Filter. Possibly you forgot that’s what this article is about. You are forgiven.

Developed by the little-known Eidetic, whose only game to that point was one of the absolute worst of the aforementioned wave of fully 3D games, Bubsy 3D, Syphon Filter is no Metal Gear Solid clone, but it’s definitely strongly influenced by the Konami title. The player finds himself in control of a covert agent Gabriel Logan engaged in a series of missions. The agency is tracking terrorist Erich Rhoemer, who has acquired a deadly biological weapon called Syphon Filter (which, yes, is similar to Metal Gear Solid’s FOXDIE) and has just launched an attack on Washington, DC. Just like Goldeneye and most spy movies, Logan’s quest brings him to a variety of locations throughout the world. The story is fairly standard and it’s not necessary to relate it here. Logan himself is a fairly bland character and his voice actor makes him sound approximately seventy years old.

The gameplay takes place in third person with Logan going through 3D environments and the player can rotate the camera as needed. While the camera isn’t perfect and you can sometimes end up with some inconvenient angles, it’s usually not enough to truly hamper you. It’s not a platformer requiring precise jumps like Super Mario 64 after all.

That isn’t to say precision isn’t required, though. Aiming certain weapons shifts the perspective to first person and it can be tricky if you’re under pressure from enemies. While the game favours a stealthy approach, Gabe is still going to see plenty of combat as enemies sometimes come at him in waves. But the real challenge lies in entering new rooms or areas where enemies have already taken up firing positions. Cover isn’t always available and even when it is, it’s tenuous.

I haven’t watched videos of people playing Syphon Filter so I only really know how I chose to play it. My main strategy involves almost constant movement once I’m in a gun battle. This frantic style of play enables you to dodge bullets but makes aiming difficult and weapons do run out of ammo. So in some of the later levels it can take several attempts to figure out the best way to navigate a prolonged battle. A few years later, I’d apply a similar strategy to the Max Payne games but it was easier there because of that game’s feature of being able to slow down time.

While Syphon Filter falls well short of the standard set by Metal Gear Solid in terms of gameplay, story, voice acting and music, it still does add a few neat wrinkles of its own. For instance, in taking advantage of the game’s decent lighting effects, some areas are dark enough to require you to use a flashlight. In certain instances this can be a calculated risk as light can alert nearby enemies when you’re trying to sneak past them.

Syphon Filter was well received and spawned two sequels in quick succession. I’m fairly certain I’ve played both; I know for sure I did play Syphon Filter 2 but can’t really remember much about it beyond it playing exactly like the original game. Beyond that trilogy there came several more I never played: Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain in 2004, Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror in 2006 and Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow in 2007. The latter three were all for the PlayStation 2 and were mostly lost in the shuffle during those years. But playing once more through the original has made me curious about them.

Syphon Filter may have been the byproduct of trends but it’s still a solid game that’s fairly fun to play and takes some skill to complete. I was even driven to frustration at some parts but I wouldn’t call the difficulty cheap or unforgiving. One just has to make the proper adjustments. In the end, Gabriel Logan never joined the upper echelon of classic video game characters but he sits somewhere comfortably in the middle as the protagonist of a pretty good series. That’s more than can be said for many others.

cole d'arc

Cole d'arc is a writer based out of Halifax, NS. He is a practiced blogeteer and professional lister at Five-O-Rama, is the man behind Cole Talks Comics on YouTube, and talks about movies and video games live from the Movie Discussion Pocket Dimension and The Final Dungeon

Memory, Blog | Gundam Wing on YTV’s The Zone

 I want to take you back now to… THE YEAR 2000! April 24th, 2000, to be exact. I was a teenager who was into geeky things and one of those things was anime. I’d had plenty of run-ins with anime from the ’80s onward – or as we called it, “Japanimation” (still don’t know why that didn’t stick). Some of my favourite shows as a kid were Astro Boy and Tekkaman, but at the time I had no clue they were any different from G.I. Joe or He-Man.

In my teenage years I had more of an understanding of the anime scene and would start to seek out some of the best stuff available, like Bubblegum Crisis, Akira, and Galaxy Express 999.

Most of the stuff that I wanted to get my hands on was hard sci-fi that just had a completely different look-and-feel that we didn’t get in the West. I was certainly drawn to that. The thing is, I wouldn’t say I was or am an “anime fan”. There are plenty of shows and movies that I absolutely love, which – although they certainly are anime – I don’t even really care to put in that “bucket”. I just enjoy them, because they’re awesome!

One of those shows – if not the show – is Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

I stumbled upon Gundam Wing one night while doing my usual thing – channel surfing. I was a TV junkie as a kid and even into early adulthood. Honestly, it’s something I miss. It was totally normal for me to eat dinner and then spend the next six hours glued to the tube. On this particular day, which was Easter Monday in my neck-of-the-woods, I would’ve had a whole lazy day in front of the TV. Good times!

I watched just about anything and everything, but YTV (stood for Youth Television, maybe?) was definitely a station of choice. It was the place to watch cartoons in Canada, although Fox Kids certainly gave it a run for its money in the Saturday morning market during the ’90s. I want desperately to gush about YTV and its evening programming block called The Zone, but I’ll keep it brief for this post and just say that it contained slightly more “adultish” shows for the nighttime crowd and was a place a teenager could still safely watch cartoons without losing their self-perceived edge.

At the time, the phenomenon that was Dragon Ball Z was syndicating in Canada and the US. It wasn’t the show’s first kick at the cat, but in late-1999 and onto the early-2000s the show was being re-aired uncut for the first time, so the fervor for it was reaching new heights. I had seen an episode here and there of its predecessor, Dragon Ball, which aired a few years earlier on Saturday mornings and… it wasn’t really my thing. A friend of mine was all about Dragon Ball Z and kept recommending it, so I thought I’d give it a shot – heck, what did I have to lose? I had all the time in the world back then!

On the evening in question, however, Dragon Ball Z was not being aired. In its stead was Gundam Wing. I’m assuming that after seeing the resurging interest in DBZ that Gundam Wing was a bit of a safe bet to bring to North America. Unlike DBZ, which ran for over 150 episodes, Gundam Wing only had 49 and a sequel OVA (original video animation), which is geekspeak for an “anime movie”. Producing English dubs for the whole series was likely less of a scary investment and good way to see if more of this kind of thing would stick during primetime TV blocks in North America. But what do I know!?

In an effort to give the show a foothold, on its first night airing on YTV they played it in place of Dragon Ball Z, so all the fans of that show could give Gundam Wing their undivided attention. Even better was that instead of showing one half-hour episode, they aired three whole shows back-to-back! You could even vote for the show on The Zone’s website to let the station know if it was a hit or not. This was an event night and, boy, let me tell you, event nights on TV were absolutely my thing.

I’d give you a really cerebral description about Gundam Wing and it’s incredibly nuanced story, but at the end of the day it’s a show about giant robots. Awesome giant robots. Like, giant robots with laser swords and machine guns. That’s all I really need, if I’m being honest with myself. It didn’t hurt that it had a really excellent dub, which could always be hit-or-miss with anime. In a brilliant move, Ocean Productions – the company that dubbed this series as well as earlier iterations of Dragon Ball Z – brought in Peter Cullen to narrate some promos for the show. Not only was he Optimus Freakin’ Prime, but he did the same style of narration for Voltron, so it was a really nice throwback for kids like myself who grew up on those shows.

Anime or not, Gundam Wing is just a really great dramatic action show. Sure, the backdrop is a war between Earth and colonized space structures that circle the globe where giant robots are the primary weapon, but don’t let all that get you hung up. I really think it’s a show that anyone can enjoy if they just put aside the trappings of “anime” and give it a shot.

So, why have I written 1000 words about this TV show from my youth, you ask? Well, because recently I came across a VHS tape with a recording of this very night in question! It was amazing to sit back and relive those exact moments again 20 years later and I just wanted to share some of that.

As you can see, I’ve uploaded The Zone segments that aired during the show to the VHyesterdayS YouTube channel and I plan to upload some of the commercials that aired as well, but I think that will be a post on its own. There’s some really good stuff in there! I’ve also uploaded the theme songs for Gundam Wing in all their glory. As much as I’d like to upload the episodes in their entirety, we all know how that’d end. At the very least you can get a taste for the show’s look-and-feel to see if it’s something you’d like to seek out. Sorry for the hum on the audio – it’s an artifact of the tape. I did my best to clean it up, but it still a little buzzy.

I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane!
R

P.S. This tape also has the Gundam Wing OVA I mentioned called Endless Waltz: Special Edition. This did air on YTV as well, but during the later block at night so the commercials aren’t for cartoons and cereal, but ads for adult stuff like toothpaste and the upcoming Sydney Olympics. If I find anything actually interesting, maybe I’ll post some clips from this block, too.

A Brew and a View | Alone (2020)

It’s been a long while since I did one of these videos, but I saw the opportunity this evening and decided to kick back with a cold beer and watch a movie! I’m just now realizing, however, that I’ve never posted a Brew and a View video to the site before. I guess they used to be a YouTube exclusive, but no more!

This time I actually decided to watch something new. I took in Alone, which just came out on VOD yesterday. As for the beer, I had a Boxing Rock Wild Axe pilsner.

Find out my thoughts about each in the video!

Cheers,
R

DVD Review | UFO Abduction (1989) | The McPherson Tape?

So, back in January I made you a promise and I am absolutely about to break it into pieces. My apologies in advance, but I just couldn’t help myself!

I’ve talked about the many incarnations of filmmaker Dean Alioto’s UFO films, UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, both the TV and alternate film version, so I’ve clearly beaten this horse to death.

I acknowledge that, but it turns out this horse has a little life left! When I wrote about UFO Abduction, Dean Alioto’s first film foray – a shot-on-video found footage feature 10 years before The Blair Witch Project – I mentioned that it was difficult obtain a legit copy of the film outside of a few avenues, but that is no longer the truth!

It turns out that in October of last year POV Horror – a streaming site for found footage indie films – released a DVD copy titled The McPherson Tape: UFO Abduction, which includes the film, as well as several audio commentary tracks by the director and Found Footage Critic (which has also thoroughly covered the film), an alternate “Bootleg” version of the film, a making of featurette, and a few trailers.

I’ll be honest, I figured outside of a few limited run DVDs that Dean Alioto might print and sell himself that there would never be a full feature release of this short film, let alone one with so many extras.

What’s even more surprising is that there was also recently a Blu-ray release of the film! That’s right. The American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) and distributor Vinegar Syndrome – the place for cult film preservation and hard-to-find film releases – actually put out a high definition release of UFO Abduction in April of this year. This release contains – as far as I know – the same cut of the film as the DVD, but also comes with the Encounters TV segment about the film, which I mentioned in a previous post, and a Q&A from Fantastic Fest. As much as I wanted to pick up the Blu-ray, it’s neither easy nor inexpensive to buy Vinegar Syndrome releases in Nova Scotia, but I could get the POV Horror release at a decent price, so I opted for the DVD.

When I previously watched this movie I had to settle for a very poorly encoded YouTube video from an old VHS that was probably bootlegged and sold at UFO conventions in the early-90s. It made the experience incredibly sub-par, to say the least. Finally getting the see the film as it was intended was a real treat and I very much enjoyed it.

Here’s a video of my thoughts on the DVD!

One thing to note is that it is super weird that they branded this movie “The McPherson Tape”. The family – although I don’t think their last names are ever mentioned – are the Van Heese family. Hilariously, some of them are named Van Hesse on film’s credits. Either way, they are not the McPhersons! That name was the family name of the characters in the second of Alioto’s UFO films. I assume it was renamed this, because it gets more search hits and they wanted the DVD to sell better, but that’s speculation.

So, hopefully this is the last time – at least for a while – that I’ll cover these films. I can’t say never, because if somehow the “actual” The McPherson Tape did get a release, I would most certainly review that, as well!

Cheers,
R