RUMOR: Syphon Filter 4 incoming

Dear young people: once upon a time in the late 1990s, there was a game called Syphon Filter. Anyhow, this Syphon Filter thing was pretty good, and allowed you to talk about stealth games without using the words %26ldquo;Kojima%26rdquo; or %26ldquo;Tom Clancy.%26rdquo; Flash-forward to now, where everything old is new again, and %26ndash; with your new knowledge of this %26ldquo;Syphon Filter%26rdquo; thing %26ndash; you'll doubtless be interested to learn that Sony may be teasing a new entry in the series.

Supposedly revealed via a quickly-erased addition to the PlayStation Blog, Syphon Filter 4 (there've been seven titles in the series, but only the first three PlayStation originals were numbered installments) is said, if you believe the spurious conjecture that is the internet's stock-in-trade, to feature a brand new PS3 engine intended to %26ldquo;revolutionize%26rdquo; the stealth genre. A single teaser image was pulled off the supposed post by intrepid fans/fraudsters, which you can see above.

Above: The gorgeous Syphon Filter 1. Shut up, it was a different time

Frankly, the ropiness of the image doesn't greatly harm its credibility, as fakes tend to look, well, more polished; then again, the lack of a trademark makes it hard to take the evidence too seriously. If there's any truth to this rumor, expect some measure of canny viral marketing (that being how we do things in 2011) and probably a hint at E3. Otherwise, it's a very well-pitched fake %26ndash; just exciting enough to set the blogosphere off, but not so huge as to warrant official comment from Sony. Would you be excited if this rumor were true?

Jun 1, 2011