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Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror
Developer(s)	Sony Bend
Publisher(s)	SCEA
Release date(s)	March 14, 2006 September 29, 2006
Genre(s)	Third-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single Player, 2-8 player Ad Hoc (with Game Sharing), 8 player Infrastructure
Rating(s)	ESRB: M (Mature)
Platform(s)	PlayStation Portable
Media	UMD
System requirements	Firmware 2.60
Input	PSP Headset Compatible

Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror is a third-person action game developed by Sony Bend and published by SCEA, released in North America for the PSP on March 14, 2006. Meanwhile, the release of the European version was eventually released on the 6th October 2006. Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror returns to the universe of Syphon Filter where players take on the role of Gabe Logan, a special operative for a secret government agency. In Dark Mirror, a mysterious operation at an Alaskan oil reserve has Gabe investigating the cause, however he is quickly presented with a deeper operation that has him venturing across the world.

Contents 1 Story 2 Features 3 Plot Synopsis 4 Multiplayer 4.1 Game Modes 4.2 Ranks 4.3 Badges 5 Sequel 6 Reviews 6.1 Awards 7 Firmware Update 8 Downloadable Demo 9 See also 10 External links 11 References

"A para-military group calling itself Red Section has attacked KemSynth Petroleum, a refinery along the Alaskan pipeline. Washington has ordered a Precision Strike: Lian and Gabe are to infiltrate the area of operation, recon Red Section forces, and execute a surgical strike."^[1]

Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror has been critically acclaimed as being, "quite possibly the best game on the PSP yet"^[2]. Dark Mirror has been hailed as a bridge between the quality of home console games and the standards of portable gaming. Dark Mirror's graphics alone are worthy of praise, however the game as a whole is of high quality. Some of Dark Mirror's key features include:

• Game physics with ragdoll effects.
• A variety of weapons and gadgets such as thermalvision, and a knife.
• Just like in the original, Gabe will always have a taser, flashlight, knife, his bare hands and a Mark 23 (similar to the 9mm he carried in the original game).
• Wall hugging as seen in both the Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell series.
• Highly impressive AI for a portable system.
• Expansive multiplayer options, both via Ad Hoc (local with game sharing) and Infrastructure (Internet) modes. These include traditional deathmatch styles, as well as cooperative missions.
• To unlock gadgets and New weapons in Multiplayer you need to advance in rank or do certain objectives.
• The ability to use thermal goggles very much like Splinter Cell

Much of Dark Mirror's impressiveness stems from its success in carrying over features from much larger games to a smaller scale with great success. Many PSP games have attempted this and failed with complications, however Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror works well on the PSP.

After Mara Aramov and Elsa Weissinger are assassinated by Gary Stoneman, Gabe Logan and IPCA are sent to Kemsynth Petroleum in Alaska. A paramiltary group known only as Red Section has taken hold of the complex. Upon heading into the Kemsynth facility, Logan comes across a Red Section lieutenant codenamed Red Jack, a soldier who bares a striking resemblance to Anton Girdeux body armor and flame thrower wise. Fortunately, Logan is able to kill Red Jack, and head down to the lower shaft to investigate further. After finding clues that prove that Red Section is searching for something, Gabe faces off with the RS on sight commander, Black King, a heavily armed soldier that is the apparent leader of the attack. He arms electronic explosives ready to destroy the oil rich factory. After he is killed, his hostage, Freeman, is dead after committing suicide by swallowing a cyanide pill. Another hostage named William Kreisler also kills himself by sniffing a poisonous plant that Logan finds on his plant.

A data disc reveals that the attack is connected to Kemsynth's botanical arm in Peru in charge of making a new DDT pesticide. They also learn that a former Agency operative (Gabe's first partner, professionally and romantically) Addison Hargrove is in charge of security. Gabe goes down there to find the rebel forces destroying Kemsynth's labs in Iquitos, only to find that they are in ties with Red Section. Upon searching the area, he comes across his former partner being held captive for questioning by a Red Section seargant codenamed Black Viper. While investigating Addison, Black Viper remains unaware that someone else is watching, and is shot and killed through the curtains. But upon attempting to escape, Addison and Gabe discover more of the rare plants found on Kreisler and Freeman. But upon retrieving samples of the plants, they are ambushed by several rebel forces. So Gabe takes control of a turret, and mows them all down to protect Addison. But as they try to leave, Red Section lieutenant, White Scorpion finds them after Black Viper didn't report back to him, and attempts to kill both of them using the same turret gun Gabe used. But Logan uses his sniper to pick off White Scorpion, and manages to get Addison home safely, only for her to vanish from him once more.

From their information, Gabe heads to war-torn Bosnia to find another revolutionary organization, this time in an embattled weapons factory. Like Peru, these soldiers are receiving aid by the ruthless Red Section. Here, Gabe saves and meets a young UN soldier, Private Janzen. Gabe tries to reunite Janzen with his group, only to find they have been slaughtered. Along the way, they meet up with Kress, a medical UN soldier who tells Gabe to find some medical equipment to help a soldier that is in serious need of help. When Gabe goes to find it, he is caught in a trap. After killing the rebel soldiers to find Janzen and the wounded soldier murdered and Kress gone, proving Kress was a Red Section mole working in the higher ranks of the UN. He find Kress ready to escape and, while reciting Dante's poem and the lowest levels of eternal damnation being reserved for traitors like him that will be covered in ice up to their necks and be repeatedly shit on by demons, kills him. He faces down the rebel's sadistic leader in a hijacked M1 Abrams UN tank and uses a SMAW Anti-tank to destroy the tank and kill the leader, Zhidmov.

With Addison mysteriously gone, Gabe goes to Kaliningrad where his MI:6 counterpart has installed micro recording devices in a casino serving as a Yavlinsky crime family front. Gabe finds a prostitute being beaten by one of Yavlinsky's men (The dead body of a prostitute found outside the casino suggests the guy is a serial killer) and saves her by killing the mafioso. By completing the level stealthily, the prostitute is not shot to death by mafioso guards after running down the stairs and Gabe tells her to get out of the casino.

We learn here that before the Syphon Filter fiasco, Mara took a job from this crime family to go and kill rival criminals on Christmas Eve, no matter where they were. She left the bullet casings in their children's stockings. She also sold Niculescu's paintings on the black market as her source of income until she died. While in Yavlinsky's casino, Gabe discovers that he was using the casinos to launder both weapons and cash to Red Section. So after dealing with a good majority of Yavlinsky's security, and eliminating Victor Yavlinsky himself, Gabe finds the MI:6 recording devices and calls it done. But before he could leave, Red Section enter the casino, along with one of their two leaders, Touchstone. Enraged by the fact that Yavinsky failed him, Touchstone shoots and kills Yavlinsky's head security guard, and orders Red Section troops to eliminate any and every bit of information that could be leaked about his deal with Yavlinski, or, to put it bluntly, killing everyone in the casino. But Logan takes them out first, and escapes with the MI:6 recording devices with Lian.

Gabe meets up with Addison in Warsaw, Poland. Here he learns the truth about why she left Gabe and the Agency. She was pregnant, and she did not want her daughter, Blake, now ten, to be raised a life of violence. But, Red Section tracked down her daughter's boarding school and kidnapped her. The deal is for Addison to meet Touchstone, the second-in-command and Red Section head of security, and turn over her data discs containing information on the mysterious Project Dark Mirror to him. In return, she will get her daughter back. However, Addison's experience has taught her that Red Section is ruthless enough to kill Blake anyway, as the ransom tape, has audio of Touchstone abusing her and forcing her to cooperate. They also sent Adddison Blake's left tennis shoe.

They meet at a tram terminal in the German Mounatains of Zugspitz Pass. Touchstone brings Red Section to the meeting spot and as he argue with Addison, she hits him. Touchstone shoves her over the railing and she falls off the mountain to her death. Gabe is distraught that he failed to save her and becomes obsessive in single-handedly destroying Red Section. Gabe believes in controlling one's destiny over Addison's belief in fate. He saves hostages inside the transport atrium area, and becomes hell bent on killing Touchstone. But upon reaching the transport ski lift area, Touchstone comes up from behind, and beats Logan down, and steals his rifle. But even after using Logan's most important weapon, Touchstone is beaten, and dragged near the edge of the mountains. Logan then holds Touchstone overboard, ready to drop him off as they share a few choice words with one another. Touchstone then tells Logan to die well, as he is dropped off the mountain to his death.

Gabe learns the truth behind Red Section. Grant Morrill was an Interpol accountant who audited and copied every single piece of information he had so he could disappear and start his own company, Aeroscience Integrated Technology (AIT). Mild-mannered Grant Morrill became the sadistic, almost sociopathic entity known only as Singularity, becoming one of the most disturbing characters Gabe has ever faced. And, considering he has dealt with the likes of Erich Rhomer, Mara Aramov, Mihai Niculescu and Jason Chance in the past, this would be a great challenge to Gabe. However, learning that an accountant was behind all of this makes Gabe furious, more apathetic to Red Section, and it consumes him unlike anything he ever faced in the Syphon Filter incident. He and Lian go to AIT to stop Red Section once and for all, and to save young Blake.

Inside, he learns that Singularity has built a new type of technology: an electromagnetic suit that deflect all kinds of bullets. Luckily, an electric shock from Gabe's taser, EDT dart, or EMP grenades can disable it long enough for Gabe and Lian to do some damage. Lian goes to rescue Blake, who is trapped in a rising pool of water. Lian feels that she is emotionally drowning because Gabe has never obsessed about her. Unbeknownst to her, Gabe did obsesses about her in the second game when she was infected with the Syphon Filter virus. Lian succeeds, but Blake runs away. Gabe tracks her down to a centrifuge room, where she has been taken hostage again. Gabe kills the Red Section soldiers holding Blake, still with only one shoe, and team up to stop the centrifuge so Lian could rig a bomb to it and use it to break down a door. Singularity hacks into IPCA's Zeus files to taunt Gabe. Gabe enters, takes down two EM guards and enter the bullet train station. Singularity has built canisters of the element known only as Project Dark Mirror. Singularity is in a EM suit stronger and unique to the other EM suits, similar to how the Emergency Defense Squad-Unit One full body armor suits while not as strong as Jason Chance's ultra-tough body armor in SF2, which was even impervious to M-79 grenade shots. In the battle, Singularity provides his complete "review" of the Syphon Filter attacks, from taunting him about those who repeatedly betrayed Gabe from the Georgia Street subway bombing to the Niculescu obsession and Stoneman's involvement in IPCA.

After killing the other soldiers, Gabe allows Singularity to say some final words as he is held on the train platform. Singularity continues to taunt Logan about how he knows him more than Logan knows himself, and how there isn't much difference from evil and good, hence looking into the Dark Mirror. After uttering his last words, Logan kicks Singularity right in the back, and straight into a speeding subway, killing him brutally and painfully as Logan reunites with Blake and Lian.

At base, Gabe learns from Dr. Mujari and Teresa Lipan that Dark Mirror was a nerve gas that could kill millions by fusing with oxygen molecules. It grows more deadly as it spreads, and Singularity's single canister could've killed almost half of the population of Europe. It is the nerve gas equivalent to Syphon Filter: Both are the deadliest in their categories and are weapons of mass death.

Gabe goes to Addison's plaque at Arlington National Cemetery a week after the AIT assault and leaves a flower, the same flower Singularity used to genetically engineer the nerve gas Dark Mirror. After minutes of quiet reflection (credits begin to roll), he turns around to find none other than Addison, alive and well. She prepared her death in advance and tied her self with a bungee cord to the railing. Gabe is upset that she once again lied to him. Blake comes inside and greets Gabe. He honors her as the bravest ten-year-old he's ever met. She corrects him, by saying she is twelve, not ten. Addison left him, and the Agency, twelve years ago.

He wants to tell Blake the newfound truth and is furious that Addison would hold such an important secret from him. She responds by mentioning that he will never want to leave the Agency, so he could end up causing indirect harm to Blake. She begs Gabe to let them leave in peace. Gabe honorably agrees. So, Gabe is forced to watch his former love and his only child to ride off in the distance, broken-hearted and alone once again.

A bonus level in Bangkok suggest a new finale, taking place after the AIT assault, and Gabe's revelation. Jimmy Zhou, a gang leader tries using the avian bird flu as a weapon against his rivals. Gabe destroys the feet/birds and learns that Zhou has taken Lian hostage. Inside his penthouse, Gabe faces an army of Zhou soldiers, including one with a gatling chain gun. Gabe bursts in and without a single breath, shoot Zhou in the eye with the powerful Desert Express .50. In the final scene, Lian thanks Gabe by embracing him, and he embraces her. This moment symbolizes that Gabe cares about her and would die for her.

The game is Ad Hoc and Infrastructure compatible, both supporting up to 8 players in a single game. Players can use the PSP Headset online to chat with others in the pre-game lobby, and in-game.

• Deathmatch

Standard deathmatch. It's everyone versus everyone and you can pick from any weapons you've unlocked. The player who reaches the point limit or has the highest score after time runs out is the winner.

• Team Deathmatch

Just like Deathmatch, except with teams. There are three factions, the I.P.C.A, the Akram Brotherhood, and Red Section. Each has their own unique weapon sets. The team who reaches the point limit first or has the highest score after time runs out is the winner.

• Rogue Agent

Almost like deathmatch. When the game starts, everyone is on the same "team". Everyone must rush to a fixed location and run over a kit to become the "Rogue Agent". The rogue agent then gets teleported away from all other players and spawns with a new skin and a special weapon. Kills only count when you are the rogue agent. When the Rogue Agent is killed, he drops the kit, and whoever runs it over becomes the new rogue agent. Whoever has the highest score after time runs out or reaches the kill limit is the winner.

• Objective

Sort of like Team Deathmatch, except objective based. Each team has a set number of lives or "reinforcements" and they must complete objectives to win. One team must defend some object relevant to the map while the other team assaults, either trying to destroy something, carry an object back to another location, etc. If a team completes all objectives before time runs out, or whatever team defends successfully will win. If a team's reinforcements are depleted, they will lose automatically.

• R0 (Recruit 0): (Assault Rifle/Auto. Machine Gun) For this you automatically get the M16A2 for IPCA and FAMAS for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• R1 (Recruit 1): (Semi-Automatic Guns) For this you will receive the MDS A3 for IPCA and Spectre for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• R2 (Recruit 2) : (Sniper Rifles) For this you will receive the 33 SC-1 for IPCA and Stava SG-76 HBAR for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• R3 (Recruit 3) : (Shot Guns) For this you will receive Shot Defender for IPCA and SPA-12 for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• O1 (Officer 1) : (Assault Rifles /Auto. Machine Guns) For this you will receive the M60 E-3 and for IPCA Chinese Type 56 for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• O2 (Officer 2) : (Same as O1) For this you will receive the M16K for IPCA and Galil AR for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• O3 (Officer 3) : (Pistols) For this you will receive the Desert Sniper .357 for IPCA and SP-57 for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• O4 (Officer 4) : (Shotguns/Auto Shotgun) For this you will receive the USAS-12 for IPCA and Sawed-Off Shotgun for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• T1 (Top Brass 1): (SMG's Sub-Machine Guns) For this you will receive MDS-7 for IPCA and Ripper for Brotherhood and Red Section. ( You can Dual Wield these weapons)
• T2 (Top Brass 2): (Sniper Rifles) For this you will receive AR-15 for IPCA and Dragonuv SVD for Brotherhood and Red Section.
• T3 (Top Brass 3): (Assault Rifles/Machine Gun) For this you will receive TripBar for IPCA and Ramat for Brotherhood and Red Section.

• Armor Expertise: Expert: 10% stronger flak vest. Elite: 20% stronger.
• Ammo Expertise: Expert: 10% more overall ammo (or one more clip). Elite: 20% more ammo.
• One Handed Skill: Expert: Dual wield pistols. Elite: Sawed off pistols.
• Hand-To-Hand: Expert: 10% melee damage increase. Elite: EPDD.
• Explosive Expertise: Expert: EMP Grenades Elite: M67 Grenades
• Gadget Expertise: Expert: Claymores. Elite: Laser trip mines.
• Field Medic: Expert: 10% health increase. Elite: 20% health increase.
• Triage: Expert Medium Med Kit. Elite Large Med Kit

There has been much speculation and many rumors around the web, but as of now SCEA has stated no plans on making a sequel. Players who were well-aware and who paid attention to the story and dialogue suggest that there is a strong possibility of a sequel. Such examples are :

• Singularity's last words before Gabe executes him via the speeding subway train.
• The lack of a solution for the Syphon Filter/Dark Mirror viruses.
• Dark Mirror sold extremely well, and was met with mostly positive reviews, from both the media and the gaming public.

SCEA and Sony Bend have not said that there won't necessarily be a sequel, it's just that they have yet to announce one. If there is one, it would most likely be released for PSP or PS3, or possibly both with crosstalk capabilities.

Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror is one of the highest rated games available for the PSP.

• Gamespy - 5/5
• IGN - 9.3/10
• Gamespot - 8.8/10
• Pocket Gamer 9/10
• PSM - 8.5/10
• OPS2 UK 9/10

• IGN
  • PSP Game of the Year 2006
  • Best PSP Action Game of 2006
  • Best PSP Online Game of 2006

Further reviews are available at GameRankings.com

Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror includes version 2.60 of the PSP firmware which is required to play.

The European version of the game includes PSP firmware version 2.71, however it only requires PSP firmware version 2.6 to play.

There is now a downloadable demo which can be located here.

• Syphon Filter
• Gabriel Logan

• Official Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror Website
• GameRankings.com - Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror Reviews
• Official Syphon Filter Dark Mirror Message Boards

↑ Official Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror Website
↑ Gamespy Review