Syphon Filter (series)



Syphon Filter is a Third-Person Shooter and Stealth Based Game focusing on the adventures of Gabriel "Gabe" Logan, who begins the story as an agency operative, until turning rogue, and eventually after exposing the misdeeds of said agency, forms his own, known as the IPCA. Syphon Filter itself is a fatal virus, akin to FoxDie which can be made to target specific ethnicities. Throughout the first four games, one is trying to stop its distribution.

There are six games in the series:


 * Syphon Filter - Gabe Logan and Lian Xing are part of a covert government agency known as well, The Agency and they are tracking the terrorist Erich Rhoemer who is in possession of a dangerous bio weapon known as Syphon Filter. They don't need to look far because Rhoemer just launched a massive attack on the nation's capital!
 * Syphon Filter 2 - Gabe and Lian stopped Rhoemer's evil plan but their troubles aren't over. The Agency kidnapped Lian and Gabe is in hot pursuit but his chase hits a snag when his plane is shot down over the Rockies.
 * Syphon Filter 3 - Gabe and his allies are interrogated by a closed Congressional hearing about their exploits and the truth about Syphon Filter.
 * Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain
 * Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror
 * Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow

In all of the above games, sans The Omega Strain, Gabe is usually the player character.

"Rhoemer: The missile was my idea. Markinson came here to stop it but he was too late. As are you. Logan: Who's the target, Rhoemer? Rhoemer Does it matter?"
 * Adaptation Dye Job - Mara Aramov changed from a redhead to a blonde in the second game (as well as changing her hairstyle), and she kept her blonde hair in the flashbacks in 3.
 * Air Vent Passageway - Starting in 2.
 * AKA-47: Most of the guns in the first two games.
 * The Alcatraz - Aljir Prison in 2. It even has a Shower Scene.
 * And Your Reward Is Clothes - Earning ranks in The Omega Strain gives you new pants, shirts, hats, vests, and shoes to wear.
 * Anyone Can Die - In Logan's Shadow,.
 * Badass Normal - Gabe, Mara, and Lian.
 * Teresa and Mujari in his prime.
 * BFG - Anton Girdeux's flamethrower.
 * Body Armor as Hit Points
 * Boom! Headshot! - One-Hit Kill, also applies to the player character.
 * Chase Scene - Several. Ranging from a helicopter constantly hunting Gabe, to having to chase an informant through the Moscow streets.
 * Clear My Name - The third game is more or less everyone who was associated with Gabe testifying on his behalf.
 * Cold War - All the levels in Kazakhstan in the first game, Russian levels in the second game, the premise of the fourth game involving Chechnyan terrorists with a nuke in Ukraine.
 * Conspiracy Redemption - From The Agency to IPCA.
 * Corridor Cubbyhole Run: The mission in the first game where Gabe had to pursue and capture Mara through D.C.'s subway tunnels while avoiding the occasional train.
 * Critical Existence Failure: You can get shot several times without it slowing your character down appreciably, although it does deplete your armor, and your "health" stat is very, very low. All that aside, if you get somewhere near an open flame in any way at any time, you're going up like a Roman candle.
 * Crosshair Aware - The game will notify you when snipers have you lined up for a headshot.
 * Dance Party Ending - Unlockable in the second game.
 * Dead-Man Switch: Morgan has one that will blow up the Expo Center unless you defuse the bombs first.
 * Downer Ending - Syphon Filter 2.
 * Logan's Shadow mixes this with a Cliff Hanger.
 * The Dragon: Mara Aramov was this for many bad guys. Also Unit One.
 * Elite Mooks - The aptly named Pharcom Elite Guards.
 * The Agency's Emergency Defense Squad, which wears full body armor suits that can only be penetrated by grenades.
 * Enemy Civil War - Pharcom Elite vs. Rhoemer's goons in the first game.
 * Escort Mission - Many times.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Why Mara turned against Rhoemer.
 * Every Car Is a Pinto: Cars always explode spectacularly when they crash, and even a few shots to a parked car makes it go boom.
 * Everybody's Dead, Dave
 * Faking the Dead -
 * Flak Jacket - Your only armor in the game, and it is a huge life saver.
 * Follow the Leader - Some felt that the first Syphon Filter was poor man's Goldeneye 007 or Metal Gear Solid. While there are some similarities, the first game stood well on its own and eventually became popular in its own right as the series went on.
 * Foreshadowing:
 * In The Omega Strain,
 * For the Evulz - Rhoemer.
 * For the Evulz - Rhoemer.


 * Franchise Killer - John Garvin has officially stated that there will be no further games, due to the relatively poor sales of Dark Mirror and Logan's Shadow.
 * Though if recent rumors are true, Syphon Filter 4 is in development for the Play Station 3.
 * Gas Mask Mooks: Encountered by Lian in part 3's Australia missions. They essentially CBDC agents who wear blue.
 * Government Agency of Fiction - The Agency, and its Conspiracy Redemption successor, the IPCA, are of the first type. Also, MI6, SVR, MSS, and various other Real Life agencies are portrayed as the second type.
 * Gun Porn - There are over 60 weapons to use and unlock in The Omega Strain.
 * Heel Face Revolving Door -
 * In The Omega Strain,
 * , who starts as antagonist in 2, while a flashback in 3 shows her as an ally. The Omega Strain had her as an ally, before she swaps back to the antagonist side. A part of The Omega Strain's ending has her, so this could be a Justified Trope.
 * Heroic Mime: Aside from grunts of pain, the player character doesn't speak a single word in The Omega Strain.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: Starting with The Omega Strain, James Arnold Taylor and Kim Mai Guest (Mei Ling) took over as the voices of Gabe and Lian, respectively, and Mara was voiced by Jennifer Hale in The Omega Strain and Dark Mirror.
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The enemies you encounter in the first level of the original game are terrible shots, incapable of hitting you even when you're standing two feet away, often for several seconds. Averted as the game goes on, as enemies become better shots.
 * Indy Ploy - This will happen if you were supposed to land in the Arizona desert and wind up getting shot down over the Colorado Rockies.
 * Infinite Flashlight - Although the in-game description states it's rated for 300 hours of use, the games take an average of twenty to thirty hours to complete.
 * In Medias Res - The series began in this way, with no thorough explanations of any character or event preceding Gabe's pursuit of Rhoemer.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja - Gabe's outfit in the Pharcom Expo Center in 2. The two player vs. mode in 2 and 3 even call him "Ninja Gabe."
 * I Surrender, Suckers - Variant, Teresa has to do this in order to get the militia mooks guarding an otherwise impassable hallway to flee the area
 * Joke Character: Characters in the 2 player vs. mode in 2 and 3 include a corpse, a Syphon Filter victim, and random civilians.
 * Kill Her Already - Mara. First three games.
 * Averted with Dark Mirror, where
 * had his helmet off in the cutscene before the final battle in Syphon Filter 2 (and he wasn't shown putting it back on either).
 * Same with Rhoemer in Syphon Filter 3, but granted, Gabe was trying to aim for his head.
 * Kill It with Fire - Girdeaux. Cue Karmic Death.
 * Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the Senate Building level of 3, you can hear two Mooks talking about a "spy game" coming out the year after.
 * The Man Behind the Man -
 * The Men in Black - The Agency.
 * The Mole -
 * Nigel Cummings in 3. Edward Benton should count but then again, the whole Agency is evil.
 * Neck Snap - Stone can use it in his bonus mission in The Omega Strain, and the Player Character can as well after the mission's completion.
 * Nigh Invulnerability - The shock troops in 2 wore full body armor, and could only be killed with high-explosives.  And it doesn't seem to weigh them down.
 * Girdeux also wore armor comparable to the shock troops, and was only defeated by his flamethrower exploding.
 * Nintendo Hard - Most of the games are fairly tough, but the second in particular is brutal.
 * In the first three games, there is a code that will unlock the Hard Difficulty. Harder Than Hard, that is.
 * In The Omega Strain, every level can be nightmarishly difficult: to unlock the best guns, abilities, and ranks, the player has to complete all the objectives on every mission while on a time limit. To do this requires memorizing when and where everything happens, and praying that they don't get screwed by soldiers who magically appear out of thin air, extremely weak people you have to escort, or a completely random glitch. With very little margin for error, players should expect to replay almost every level several times, or in some of the tougher ones, dozens of times.
 * No Escape but Down: Many times.
 * No-Gear Level
 * No One Could Survive That - In 2, Gabe dives head first off a cliff of unknown height, then later off a significantly high bridge onto a moving train.
 * He's survived falling off high places and explosions without explaining why.
 * The bomb that wrecks a good part of D.C.'s subway system is the worst offender. Gabe was literally right next to the bomb as it went off, and doesn't get a scratch.
 * Not So Different - Gabe vs. Singularity in Dark Mirror.
 * Once an Episode: Every game from the original trilogy ended with Mara's laugh.
 * Our Hero Is Dead - Logan's Shadow's epilogue.
 * The Plague - Stopping the pandemic is the ultimate optional goal in The Omega Strain, involving the collection of a number of Plot Coupons which provide characters insight into the Syphon Filter virus.
 * Redshirt Army - The GI's, although you're instructed to protect them, most of them end up getting killed anyway.
 * Regional Riff - In The Omega Strain, each region uses a certain ethnic style of music, eg mandolins in Italy, Arabic instruments and vocals in Yemen, Mongolian-type music in Kyrgyzstan, and traditional Japanese instruments in Tokyo.
 * Remixed Level - The D.C. subway, Rhoemer's base, Rhoemer's warehouses, Pharcom Expo Center, Aljir Prison, Agency Bio Lab.
 * Respawning Enemies - Known to the fans as "Magic Guards".
 * Retcon - Teresa was obviously Killed Off for Real at the end of 2, complete with a funeral. However, in 3, possibly due to fan outcries, they changed the story so that she only faked her death.
 * Right-Wing Militia Fanatic - Averted.
 * Sequel Hook
 * 1:
 * 2:
 * 3:
 * The Omega Strain:
 * Shaggy Dog Story: The first Rhoemer's Base mission is easier if done with stealth but the next mission says Gabe tripped the silent alarm.
 * Shout-Out - After Gabe saves the hostage in the first mission of 3, he says "Come with me if you want to live".
 * Gabe sounds like Garviel Lokken from Warhammer 40,000.
 * Slow Doors: The last level of the first game has one. Now, if you're quick enough, you can make it under before it's halfway closed and you need to use the Unnecessary Combat Roll button, but let's be honest, you're not going to do that, are you?
 * Split Screen - Mostly in The Omega Strain.
 * Stuffed Into the Fridge - Imani in The Omega Strain. You spend an entire mission retrieving her corpse and whatever it was she was working on.
 * This happened literally to Girdeaux. The Agency kept his corpse in their bio lab.
 * Super Window Jump - Gabe jumps through a glass ceiling in the first game's Expo Center mission.
 * Also in Rhoemer's Stronghold.
 * Suspiciously Similar Song: The song playing part 2's Club 32 sounds like a techno version of "Dancing Queen".
 * Tank Goodness - The T-62 in 3.
 * The Other Darrin - Mara had four different voice actress in the first four games. Lian was voiced by Ava Fang in the first game, then changed to Zoe Galvez in 2 and 3. Then almost all of the returning characters (except Teresa) were recast with more famous voice actors in The Omega Strain, with James Arnold Taylor as Gabe and Kim Mai Guest as Lian.
 * Time Bomb - "This one's different from the others."
 * Also, the terrorists in the first loved using them - the first level was a race to disarm one. It ends badly.
 * Unnecessary Combat Roll - Averted. The roll is very necessary and even allows you to dodge some bullets.
 * Unwinnable by Design: It's certainly possible to finish The Omega Strain...but if you want to get all the weapons, all the ranks, and get the best ending, you need to play the game both off-line, and online to complete certain objectives and criteria (such as completing team-based objectives you can't get in single-player mode). However, with the online servers now shut down, it's impossible to fully complete the game and unlock all the goodies.
 * Van in Black: Agency vans in 2.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential - The air taser in the first game delivered... fairly horrific deaths to those unfortunate enough to be struck with it. And they SCREAMED the whole time. And burst into flames. Also, you have this weapon from the start, it never runs out of uses, and it's considered a silent weapon, making it one of the most useful things you carry. ...Yeah.
 * It was fun watching goons squirm using the taser.
 * Try tasering your allies. Their screams can be quite amusing.
 * Then there's the M-90 Grenade Launcher, which for some bizarre reason, still informed you of when you lined up a headshot in first-person aiming mode. Not that you needed it since it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin...
 * Tired of lugging 's corpse around? At the end of the level, just dump it in the filthy jungle river, and leave it to rot!
 * Western Terrorists: The PSX trilogy. Averted in the later games.
 * What Measure Is a Mook? - Before the final boss fight in Syphon Filter 2, Gabe Logan and will engage in a Circling Monologue in which  calls Gabe out for killing hundreds of agents over the course of the game who were just doing their job.
 * Where It All Began - The PS 1 trilogy begins and ends in Washington, D.C.
 * With This Herring - For a secret government agency engaged in counter-terrorism, the weapons you start out with are kinda shitty, exception of the air taser.
 * Yakuza - Present in the third game's first level and The Omega Strain.
 * You Have Failed Me... / You Have Outlived Your Usefulness
 * You Have Failed Me... / You Have Outlived Your Usefulness