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GamesRadar+ Verdict
Pros
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Gunfights
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exploration balanced well
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Deep
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versatile gameplay
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Taser still sets terrorists on fire
Cons
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Controls can be awkward
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Action sometimes hampered by bugs
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The screams sound horrifyingly real
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When superspy Gabe Logan first stomped onto the PSone scene in 1999's then-amazing Syphon Filter, he became an icon overnight. But seven years and three increasingly tepid sequels later, he's been all but forgotten. Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror yanks him out of obscurity once more, and lucky for Gabe, this handheld shooter is exactly the shot in the arm the series needed.
As Dark Mirror opens, Gabe and his partner Lian Xing are dispatched to Alaska, where a terror cell called Red Section has seized a refinery. That's just the first step, though, as they find evidence there of a mysterious superweapon called Project Dark Mirror. To find out exactly what it is and shut it down, they'll have to chase Red Section to places like a casino in Eastern Europe, a remote South American village and a war-torn munitions plant in Bosnia.
For the most part, gameplay in Dark Mirror is pretty straightforward: run around, try to stay out of sight and quietly kill bad guys. When that doesn't work, duck behind cover and shoot the hordes of terrorists before they gun you down. Like in a lot of other PSP shooters, players move with the analog stick and use the face buttons to look around. It's a little clunky and gets awkward in tight situations, but overall it's comfortable and allows for pinpoint accuracy - when you've got the time to aim carefully, that is. If not, the auto-aim feature keeps it from getting frustrating.
