Gaming's least personable frontman is back with a bang.

Believe it or not, it's only one year short of an entire decade since Syphon Filter first hit PSone screens...err, back before the machine was even referred to as the PSone, in fact. It was a time when the humble old PlayStation was in the ascendancy, stealth was just taking off as a viable gaming concept, and the likes of Konami's Metal Gear Solid ruled the roost. It was a great time to be a gamer - and not just because we'd only just reached our teens, and had recently discovered that the equation [control pad + copious amounts of coffee] makes for a very potent gaming combination.

When James met Duke...

It was into this world that Gabe Logan was born. The illegitimate result of gene-splicing James Bond and Duke Nukem, his chisel-jawed explosive exploits soon garnered favour from a sector of the gaming public who liked their stealth titles a little more forgiving than your average Solid Snake escapade. Celebrated for being an approachable third-person sneak-n-shuffler with an equally adept capacity for all-out guns-blazing assaults, players appreciated the Sony series for giving them the freedom to play things the way they chose, and for a while all was good.

It didn't last, sadly. Since we all left the PSone behind, the Syphon Filter brand has seen but one single release; and as an online-only title, Omega Strain wasn't even a 'proper' Syphon Filter game as we so fondly remembered them. It seems a shame for a series once so sought after, but we'd all-but given hope of seeing a fourth sequel appear on a current system.

And so it was with Espresso-fuelled shaky hands we finally picked up our PSP to play Dark Mirror - a game we'd been looking forward to since it first appeared on the PSP release schedule many moons ago. Our trepidation was high, our curiosity piqued, and our nerves shot to hell: Could the traditionally Dual Shock controls map successfully to the PSP? Had the Syphon Filter template survived an entire console generation without going stagnant? And could we stop convulsing long enough to actually play the thing?

Fortunately, the answers turned out to be: 'Yes', 'Yes' and '...Eventually'. It may have been some wait, and it may not be on a home console, but thankfully we're very pleased to report that Gabe Logan, the charismatically-challenged square-jawed all-American action hero of old, is back to his very best on Sony's smaller system.

Not that you're going to care too much about the specifics of where he's going, mind - just the way he's having to cause havoc and leave a trail of dead bodies to get to his objective. You see, the story in Dark Mirror, much as with the series' instalments of the past, is fairly inconsequential stuff: there's some bad guys; they have big guns, bio-weapons, bad intentions; and they need stopping...and it's up to Gabe and his Precision Strike Team to do it.

Under the radar

Which basically means players picking up their PSP's to undertake a series of under-the-radar stealth missions and save the world in their spare time - and all with the aid of a deftly intuitive control system.

And there are an impressive number of control choices on offer. Our preferred option, Standard Free Aim, maps movement to the analogue stick, aiming and turning to the four fascia buttons, jumping, crouching, context sensitive actions, and weapon and item select to the D-pad, with lock-on on the left trigger, and firing on the right trigger. This makes Dark Mirror play like more of a shooter than series' veterans may expect, but the trade-off is entirely worth it for the sheer wealth of actions available at your disposal; quite a feat for hardware with two fewer triggers and one less analogue stick than the established setup.

All of which makes for nothing short of the most fluid and coherent action game on PSP. Not only has the PSone control template been ported across with remarkable skill, but the very essence of Syphon Filter's flow has too. Every gadget, from several types of goggles, to your PID (Personal Illiumination Device...okay, torch), to tens of weapons with numerous ammo variants, to medkits, tazers, body armour, C4 and more will all have their own uses throughout the game. Switches will need to be flicked, stealth kills mastered, enemies eliminated, bosses bested, set pieces experienced and objectives identified and completed while controlling the one-man army that is Gabe Logan. It's some ride.

The few drawbacks to this are, on the whole, easy to overlook: enemy A.I isn't up to Metal Gear Solid standards, Gabe will sometimes cling to a wall when you want him to flick a switch (or vice versa), and ducking out from behind cover to fire off a few rounds can be annoyingly unresponsive under heavy fire - a trait which could also be levelled at the lock-on targeting, which tends to have an annoying habit of picking the target you're actually less concerned with shooting, and making you cycle through, wasting valuable time and health. It really is nit-picking, though - and only sticks out because the rest of the game works so peerlessly well on PSP.

A little bit special

Mirroring (sorry!) the game's general high quality are the some superb aesthetic aspects and an excellent online mode, both of which make the utmost use of the PSP's impressive portable power. Visuals get every bit as close to PS2 quality as the machine's other celebrated graphical tour-de-forces, Ridge Racer and Tekken, while audio, from the menu screen onwards, is a little bit special - heck, even the voice acting, hammed-up as it is, is well delivered, crisp and standard setting - while the implementation of voice communication when playing multiplayer games against people in other countries is an absolute marvel. Indeed, with buddy lists, clans and enough modes to keep you playing until well after the singleplayer story is a distant memory, this is nothing short of one of the best all-around packages available on PSP.

If that's not a ringing endorsement, we don't know what is. Perhaps the only real drawback could be that with so much going on on-screen at once, it's a little difficult to play Dark Mirror on the move - though you could attribute that as much to the genre as the game itself. And remember, this is a long-awaited update to an age-old franchise that won't be seeing the light of day on anything other than Sony's portable console, so even an evening spent sitting at home on the sofa with the PSP will be a welcome one for the series' fans and action aficionados alike. Gabe Logan's return is simply one of the year's most well-polished offerings, and you won't have to have grown up playing his past exploits to agree.

GAME's Verdict

• Visually and playably, hands-down the best action game on PSP, period.
• Intuitive control system that ports from the PlayStation pad without sacrificing a thing.
• Superior online mode to almost anything else on a handheld.

• Iffy enemy A.I., though you'll notice it less than you'd think, and care even less.
• "Get off the wall, Gabe! Flick the damn switch!"
• For a portable title, it's pretty difficult to play on-the-go.

Review by: Mark Scott
Review Published: 05.10.06