The original Syphon Filter was conceived to compete with Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation, the fourth game in the Syphon Filter franchise on PS2 is not going to break any new ground and it is hard and unforgiving. Hard almost to the point of controller-throwing frustration, and once you finally do work your way through, the mediocre experience is really not worth all the effort.

The game follows the exploits of Gabe Logan’s team as it still keeps trying to contain the Syphon Filter virus once and for all. Gabe has been kicked upstairs (or, after the last couple of Syphon Filter games, that might be a case of a screw-up-and-move-up promotion), so the gamer actually plays as a rookie on Gabe’s antiterrorist team, the IPCA, and gets to construct a character with the just-serviceable character generator.

After character creation, the player launches on a series of missions that begin in Michigan. Yeah, I know, who starts a game in Michigan? From there the player will continue on to missions in the Middle and Far East. Time is the cruel task master of these missions and getting them done fast and accurate wins the big awards and commendations.

There are some real problems with the level design. The levels are large with many objectives, which can be rather confounding. The map is not really well executed so it is often no help. Enemies tend to respawn like some kind of wigged-out classic arcade game. You’re always getting plenty of ammo from fallen enemies, but it does not seem right that the enemies never end. Players will die a lot, but dying doesn’t carry any heavy penalty. A swift trip back the last checkpoint and off on the mission again. Succeeding in completing the mission’s objectives is all that really matters.

Weapons to complete your mission come in a nice variety of armaments from the real world. At any given time your agent is limited to carrying one weapon on his back, one in a holster, an auxiliary weapon, one type of grenade and a melee weapon for close quarters fighting. Weapons may be exchanged during missions with those found on fallen enemies.

The controls have an extremely steep learning curve. Seems like everything but the Analog-Mode button is liberally used. It takes a bit of an investment in time to use them with some proficiency. The reward is a workman-like control system that will suffice to let the player accomplish everything he needs to do in the course of the game, but my fingers still occasionally miss the right button combination when the heat is on.

Sadly, the character animations look little improved over previous Syphon Filter games. Considering those games were on the original PlayStation … I’ll let you figure it out. Overall the game’s graphics are just not up to par with its contemporaries. They serve the game well enough, but suffer by comparison to recent, better-looking games like Onimusha 3.

On the audio front, the music is a bit uninspired. A bright spot is the weapons sounds. All are pretty damned convincing. The M-16 sound is a dead ringer for what I remember from my time in the Army. The voice acting is also good. Ambient noise is somewhat lacking. The sound just does not convince me the place is lived in.

The big, new feature of this installment of Syphon Filter is online play. It is fairly clear that a lot of the play balancing went toward the online game. Nowhere is this more evident than in the extreme difficulty of playing through the game with a really decent score in single player mode. With four guys kicking terrorist butt, many of the levels are much easier because you can divide and conquer.

So, it comes down to a question for the PS2 gamer, “Do I need a new online game?” If the answer is, “Yes.”, then you should probably give Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain a look. If the Answer is, “No.”, then you might want to give it a rental before investing the green. Unlike many Sony-developed games, this one is selling for the full $50 retail that the majority of new games go for. It has no huge deficiencies that make it a bad game, but it was clearly built with online play in mind and the solitary gamer may feel a bit cheated in the difficulty of the single-player mode. I know I did.