Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow First Look and Hands-On

The star of the Syphon Filter games, Gabe Logan has been taking out bad guys and making the world a better place since 1999. After successful runs on the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, the series found its way to the PlayStation Portable and showed that the handheld system could deliver an action game on par with consoles despite its small size and lack of a second analog stick. Now, just a year later, Gabe is back on the PSP for another adventure (his sixth overall). The game is called Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow, and we were able to spend some time with it at Sony's spring event in San Diego, California.

Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow is being penned by Greg Rucka, who is best known for his Atticus Kodiak series of novels, as well as the Queen and Country series of comics and novels. When an undisclosed piece of top-secret equipment ends up in the hands of a terrorist group, Gabe is sent across the globe to take care of the situation. As if his hands weren't already full, Logan will also have to deal with the possibility that his longtime partner, Lian Xing, is a double agent. The game will take place in a variety of locations including a naval vessel, a Middle Eastern desert, and, thanks to some new underwater moves, a shipwreck on the bottom of the ocean.

The basic controls should be familiar to anyone who played the last Syphon Filter. You move with the analog stick, look around with the face buttons, lock on with the L button, fire with the R button, and use the D pad to change weapons and select gadgets. As you would expect, Gabe has some new abilities to help him tackle the enemy. By pressing the fire button while not locked on to an enemy, you can "blind fire" and send enemies scurrying for safety while remaining behind the protective cover of a wall. Gabe also has some new melee attacks and can even snag unsuspecting foes and use them as human shields. He won't have to worry about going into battle empty-handed, either. On land, Gabe will have a number of guns available to him as well as grenade launchers, sticky mines, smoke grenades, and flash bangs. Thanks to a bolt pistol and a spear gun, he'll even be packing when he takes to the water

The first level of the game took place on the U.S.S. Mt. St. Helens, which had been taken over by Somali pirates. Not only had the pirates gotten their hands on some sensitive cargo, but they had also taken over the ship's weapon system. From the relative safety of a helicopter we accomplished our first objective, which was to blow up the ship's missile launchers. Once that was done we turned our attention toward clearing a landing zone, taking out a few rocket-toting soldiers in the process. As soon as we were on board the ship we came under fire and had to take cover and use Gabe's new blind-firing ability. The auto-targeting feature made aiming a breeze, but it seemed to require a lot of bullets to take an enemy down. As a result, we quickly ran out of bullets and were forced to make our way across the ship's deck using melee attacks (Logan can break necks too, but we didn't get a chance to try that). Unfortunately for us, this tactic wasn't successful for very long thanks to aggressive (and accurate) enemies.

Though SF:LS isn't due out for some time, its visuals are already quite solid since it's using the same engine from the previous game. Particularly impressive were the lighting and smoke effects that add to the atmosphere and force you to move with caution. Because of how loud the room was, we weren't able to hear much of the game, but Sony promises that it will sound great thanks in no small part to Azam Ali (300), who will be composing the soundtrack and performing the game's theme song.

Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror was and still is one of the PSP's best games, so hopes are high that the sequel will maintain the high standard set by its predecessor. Our time with Logan's Shadow was brief, but it looks like the game is headed in the right direction.