Syphon Filter: the Omega Strain
Paul: In videogames, terrorism is the new kidnapping. Used to be, when game developers needed to whip up an antagonist in a hurry, they just had a couple of beefy thugs sucker-punch the main character’s girlfriend and carry her away. These days, they have some militia-like organization try to blow stuff up. Syphon Filter doesn’t dress up the clich?—the game is full of bombs to disarm and villains with silly accents to shoot, and that’s just fine. Straightforward run-and-gun action gets the blood pumping.
…Until you have to stop to check the map, which is all the time. That’s a problem, because looking at the map doesn’t suspend the action. Bad guys will shoot you dead while you figure out whether your objective is on the second floor or the third. (Poor sportsmanship!) As irritating as that is, it’s manageable; just be sure you’ve killed all the enemies in the area before you plan a route to the next goal.
But what’s with all the busywork? Every level has at least one painfully repetitive tacked-on objective. Set five C4 charges. Collect six data samples. On one mission you’re asked to lock the four entrances of a terrorist-held building so that the local police don’t wander inside and get killed. Is that a job for a supersecret agent? The game would have been stronger without so much pointless padding. Thankfully, once you’ve accomplished any part of an objective, it stays done even if you die.
In fact, dying is hardly a setback in Omega Strain. Kicking the bucket hurts your score (which unlocks optional levels and better weaponry), but it doesn’t slow your progress through the story. It’s a pretty clever setup, actually. Casual gamers can blast through this adventure in a weekend, while more serious players will want to hone their skills and improve their score in order to see everything the game has to offer.
Shawn: Omega Strain displays all the initial symptoms of a smart shoot-em-up but degenerates into a low-fever game of good guy/bad guy. After lying dormant for years, the series should show visible signs of improvement, and in that respect, Strain doesn’t disappoint. Around the world in 17 scenic and exciting missions, you’ll visit (and violate) the palaces of tin-pot generalissimos, slip through dusty Middle Eastern marketplaces in disguise, and duel snipers in Russian snowfields. A few too many missions ask you to play errand boy—plant explosives here, and here, and, oh yeah, over here too—but you’ll have some say over your itinerary and can see the story through even after scrapping several of the less interesting objectives.
It’s the controls, however, that’ll get under your skin. Auto-lock is so useless that enemies will ask for seconds even when it looks like you’re force-feeding ’em whole magazines. The rest works, just not very well. For instance, Strain maps aiming and movement to the same analog stick, so you can’t shoot accurately without stopping to bring up your scope. Splitting up your duties with three other germ warriors in co-op quadruples the strategy and takes the sting out of backtracking, but sickly controls still contaminate the online experience.
Shoe: This game feels so piecemeal, and I mean that in the most unflattering way possible. I imagine part of the development process went something like this:
“Hey, how come some of the levels are full of extra paths and real estate that don’t necessarily make sense?”
“We had extra memory.”
“What about controls? We do have this archaic control scheme leftover from pre-dual-analog-stick days….”
“Done and done.”
“Oh crap, we ran out of buttons on the controller. How will the players change weapons? Ooh! Light-bulb moment! How about the weapon-select on…the Select button! But that would be very awkward for players. Plus, if they run out of ammo and have to switch weapons in the middle of a firefight, they’ll have to let go of the analog stick and become immobile—a total sitting duck.”
“Hey, then God shouldn’t have named that button ‘Select.’ Do it…do it.”
I abuse because I care. The Omega Strain had so much potential, with a great rewards system that gives you lots of stuff to unlock and four-player cooperative online play (which, by the way, gives us yet another button that creates a sitting-duck situation: Up on the D-pad to voice chat, so forget about talking to your human teammates while the action’s hot). But sloppy game design and cumbersome controls filter out almost all of the fun.
Like taking down targets with a shot to the head? Or is hosing the place down with hot lead while screaming “Get some!” more your style? Depending on your strategy, Syphon Filter rewards you with different gear and guns. Sharpshooting, for instance, will earn sniper rifles, whereas playing the wild man is more likely to get you submachine guns.