Syphon Filter Games Rated, Likely for PS Plus Premium

Seems like it has to be PlayStation Plus Premium.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what this service will have to offer.

Will they have gone all out and added trophy support? They did have that patent talking about retro trophies. We can only hope.

https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=US320326875&tab=NATIONALBIBLIO

While I'm Happy To Hear About This How You Going To Skip The 3rd Game In The Trilogy

If any game (series) is crying out for a proper full fledged remake, it's this.

Intresting news, no doubt this is linked to premium tier. Never played any of them and always was was curious. This is the sort of legacy content i can get onboard with.

I’m interested to see whether they have trophy support, or just the same old challenges from before with nothing added.

I hope the native PS Plus Premium games are available as standalone purchase.

@nookie_egg Or at least a modern sequel.

@Husker I'd settle for a sequel to be fair. But I really liked the first game in particular, and I want to 4k taser combust a dude on a roof, and explode Anton Girdeux with a well aimed pistol to the gas canister.

Hooked up my ps3 just now to see if I can still buy them from there after seeing this article and seeing a comment on YouTube of the syphon filter theme tune dated from a year ago saying they have it on ps3. Still can. £3.99. Might add to my wallet to get it.

@SoulChimera If the retro games don't trophies, I won't even think about playing (paying for) them. Sony should be treating this service launch like a console launch. They should have remastered 20 or so games and added trophy support with more to come every few months.

@Apfelschteiner What? Trophies are nothing. They do nothing and they mean nothing. In what way can they influence the decision to play or not play a game?

I wonder whether these games will have trophies?

@WexMajor Well trophies can actually expand a game by making you do things that you wouldn't normally do in the game otherwise.

Would love these to be remasters and get a new game

@WexMajor If they don't add trophies they are signaling that they don't want me to buy/play the games. All new releases have to have trophies.

@WexMajor Some people care about 60 frames per second that they won't play games at 30. Whether a game has trophies or not is not a purchasing decision, because all games have to have them. If Horizon FW didn't have trophies, would I still buy it? Probably yes, but I'd expect it to be a tenner cheaper. If Nintendo did trophies, I would seriously consider getting a Switch as my kids are really into Mario.

@WexMajor
The trophy campaign is an entirely new campaign in every game for me. Often more fun to accomplish than the more linear narrative campaign completion. Developer given challenges are hardly “nothing”, lol.

@WexMajor Plenty of people feel they need some sort of reward for there to be purpose in playing games, that only playing for fun isn't a good enough reason to play. It's like how in live service games, there's plenty of people who feel there's no point in playing after the battle pass is completed until the next battle pass arrives.

Where's all the splinter cells? And virtua tennis titles? If they're in, I'll definitely be interested

@thefourfoldroot Challenges are fine, there's plenty of those in-game and that's the main driving point for most games. I'm specifically talking about trophies, not what you have to do to get them. I admit I go out of my way to complete those challenges, but only if I enjoy the game and want more out of it. But I certainly don't do it to collect trophies because I know they are meaningless.

Best ps1 games ever.oh yeah.syphon filter games are awsome.word up son

@Snake_V5 Yeah the challenges can do that. I'm just saying the idea that trophies mean something and can sway someone toward or away from buying a game is ridiculous.

As much as I hate to say it there is absolutely no way the PS1 and the majority of PS2 games won’t have trophies, the PS2 exceptions would be the games released on PS4. The resources it would require would be insane to shoe horn trophies into 300ish games. I’m expecting the PS1/PS2 games to be along the lines of what’s available on the PS3. Sony please prove me wrong.

@WexMajor
Sure… and I don’t collect games just to have a disc of polycarbon, I do it for the fun and the challenges included in the 0s and 1s. I really couldn’t care less about whether the fun is mainly in the narrative campaign or trophy campaign, I see no reason to differentiate. Which is why, if a game has both, it is innately better than if that same game only had the one campaign. Especially if, as in this case, I’ve already played the narrative campaign to death.

@WexMajor It might be ridiculous but it's actually the truth, it does affect some people's decisions

@thefourfoldroot yeah that's all good and I agree. But I'm not talking about challenges, I'm talking about trophies.

@Snake_V5 I've noticed.

@Apfelschteiner 30 vs 60 frames actually affects gameplay so not a good comparison. But I'm just saying the act of collecting digital trophies should have no influence on whether or not someone buys a game or enjoys a game. And it certainly shouldn't add ten bucks to a games value. But I guess that's all subjective.

@WexMajor
They are the same though right? Task / challenge, same thing. For me, completing a linear story campaign is often less interesting than getting to the end of the trophy campaign. Sure, a platinum trophy has zero value just as getting to the null point at the end of a game has zero value, the fun is in accomplishing what you need to in order to get there.

Edit: reading through, I see that you might be agreeing with me, but just saying that giving a trophy for accomplishing the task is meaningless. I would largely agree (accept it’s nice to have a marker to remind and reminisce).

@thefourfoldroot Yeah. And the more I see the replys, the more I realize that I'm the only one that views challenges and trophies as separate things. The original comment mentioned trophies as a deciding factor for making a purchase. I understand if people want challenges, because I do too. I was just focused on the word "trophy".

@WexMajor
Yes, I just realised that and edited my reply, lol.
You are right, I don’t really see a digital trophy as existing separate from what is done to achieve it. They are one and the same to me, named for and in existence due to the tasks they represent. I hope these old games are given these new challenges/trophies for something new to do for those I have played, and / or in case I find the narrative campaign weak.

This alone would have me onboard. Loved Syphon Filter

@meistergeister Trophies can be added automatically and checked and fixed by a programmer. It's really not that complicated to set 40 triggers in a game for things that are already being measured. Sony should be looking at this as the start of their ongoing back catalogue and it's worth doing it right, even if that means gradually adding the games once they have optimized the frame rate, textures, etc. There is a reason why games get remade, and that is because the vast majority don't want to play games as they were when they released.

@thefourfoldroot It's not just the enjoyment that collecting the trophies brings, the trophy list also serves as a record of your gaming history. From the business side of things, trophies are a no-brainer. Why wouldn't they want investment into their ecosystem?

@Apfelschteiner I think you're vastly underestimating the effort that goes into adding Trophies, especially when you're retroactively adding them to PS1 and PS2 games. I wouldn't be expecting Trophies for the classic games.

@Apfelschteiner
Yes, I also said it’s nice to have a marker to remember accomplishments and reminisce about the games. For me it’s largely treated as a new campaign to enjoy though. Would I have enjoyed the Yakuza series if I didn’t go for all the trophy challenges? Sure. But not as much and for half as long.

Nice, I hope ps5 psone emulation is good and can clean up the game resolutions and framerate 😃

@LiamCroft
Actually, they have a system to add them when emulating the PS1 and 2 games already.

Edit:
OK, so harder than they first indicated:

https://gamingbolt.com/dev-it-takes-2-3-months-just-to-add-trophies-for-ps2-emulation-comments-on-trophy-progression-tracker/amp

@Apfelschteiner my goodness…..

shrugs meh still can play these games other ways without the premium although I'm not into these type of games anyways

Playing Dark Mirror hand held seemed surreal at the time. The PSP was quite influential in pushing the mobile processor forward. It may well have been the push that gave the world smart phone SoCs earlier than expected. The PSP was a little wonder that pushed the mobile chip industry.

@Apfelschteiner tenner cheaper without trophies?! I'm all for trophies but that's a ridiculous take.

@get2sammyb
I personally really hope there is no rewind functionality! I know, I know, I “don’t have to use it”, but I would. I know I would. It just makes every game I play with it cheap and easy. Sorry people with will-power, but my fingers are cross that it isn’t included. I don’t think it will be.

I'd love to see some of the great JRPGs from the ps1 and ps2 era. The likes of wild arms, shadow hearts legaia, legend of dragoon and some of the old shin megami tensei games. I know it's a long shot but I used to love them but never finished most of them

@thefourfoldroot Yeah it would be cool if they added something like that

There is a simplistic method of adding trophies to older games skimming the save state file for triggers. So chapter completion, skill unlock, weapon unlock etc. Things already tracked in the original games. It would not allow for the more nuance or abstract trophies. Anything not tracked in the original code base would require a lot of work. The big question is would these simpler trophies satisfy the trophy hunters or would the blowback mean Sony is better off doing nothing.
These are old code sets, Code management systems were very basic back then mostly relying on simple CI/CO version control and a revision control manager (a actual person, not a system) keeping track of everything. I would hate to have to go back into old 90's code and start putting trigger points in and rebuilding. I doubt most of these code sets are complete. The small hacks made to this library or that library to make things work were seldom well documented. The idea that someone would come back to the code in 25 years never really mattered. In most cases it would be massively expensive to add new style trophies to these old games.

@TooBarFoo if I'm not mistaken, pc emulators have trophies for PS1 and PS2 games so somebody somewhere has done this work...it's a matter of Sony finding the people and reimbursing them.

@TooBarFoo ...but your right regarding the more abstract trophies. If the code on original hardware for instance isn't checking for obscure events then it also won't be logging them so adding trophies for those would be difficult. Maybe the actual emulator would have a profile per game for the emulator to keep check on these events? But I don't think it's simple to do that...not impossible mind if you have a dedicated fanbase of ROM hackers and emulation purists who have already plunged into these icy depths.

@WexMajor If most people can't tell the difference between 30 frames and 60 frames, it doesn't really affect the gameplay. The framerate only affects the gameplay in very precise games. "the act of collecting digital trophies should have no influence on whether or not someone buys a game or enjoys a game", well that's totally subjective and you are discounting the entire aspect of collectibles in games. Trophies are just an aspect of gaming like graphics, controls, fidelity, story, and gameplay. You will get people arguing that games don't need story etc.

I'm just going to say if modders can add achievements to retro games and even have a website dedicated to it, Sony can add trophies to these games. I sure will not subscribe if they don't enhance them with this feature. Might as well just play them on my PS3.

Never played the ps1 games, but man, dark mirror and Logan's shadow were some of my favourite PSP games.

@daveofduncan I'm talking about full-price games like if HFW didn't have trophies. How's that a ridiculous take?! It's my own choice and value that I assign. You are free to think differently.
When I finish the story of a game, then for me I consider that to be the end. If the trophies are worth going for then that is maybe another 10-20 hours of a game. That is easily worth a tenner!

I have no interest in paying to play PS1 classics loved sython filter tasering terrorists until they caught fire was genius....but I dont buy into nostalgia it's just not the same I dont think it's possible to replicate the feelings and memories as the circumstances are unique to that point of time in our lives. I would play a remake tho that would be somewhat a new experience.

Could not care less about trophies: it is quite frankly why I love the Switch - just about the games. Achievements on Xbox is cool (because you can get reward points and cash ultimately) but I don't get trophies at all really.

I hope we get 'save' systems though: because those PS1 games need something like that. And any framerate improvements but we'll see: Sony probably won't.

This is great news overall though: like Syphon Filter was a great series and I'll happily play these games again. If this is the type of thing they are aiming for premium, it bodes well.

@thefourfoldroot That was from 5 years ago. I don't know if Sony's patent for automatic trophies makes that process easier. Even so, it's not a huge undertaking for a company of Sony's size even if it is a little complicated to add trophies. It's worth the energy as they will be playable going forward in perpetuity.

@add286 Just turn off the trophy notifications and you are fine. Switch would be way better with trophy support and you could just turn them off too. I don't like the concept of gamerscore because I like the concept of the trophies being particular to one game, also there is inevitably going to be inconsistency between trophy list difficulty levels.

@Apfelschteiner
Definitely worth it ( I personally am unlikely to play many old games unless they have a new trophy campaign added). And I know they patented a method, but that was before the article I found. Of course it could have been improved since then.

@thefourfoldroot I only have the plat for 6. I would love to go back and get the plat for all Yakuza games. It is one of my life goals to learn how to play Mah Jong!

@Apfelschteiner
Lol, I gave up on zero due to Mahjong, but went back and learned the game 3 years later, and got the plat. Love it now.

Sped through 7 of the Yakuza plats in one year, and I now have all the mainline, as well as both Judgement games, and I’m currently working on Lost Paradise. This is now my favourite series of all time, and much of the fun and accomplishment came from the journey to platinum them.

Definitely go back and try. Mahjong is easy enough if you remember a few simple rules (when to steal, how to block a win against you, what tiles to discard at the start)

@thefourfoldroot The problem I have with Yakuza games is that they are so time-consuming, although Yakuza is my favourite series of all time. I love it like a son though and I lament that it is not reaching its potential. I really think Ryu ga Gotoku studio have the story-telling chops to be the Japanese equivalent of Naughty Dog, but they just don't have the budget or technical expertise.

@add286 it was already discussed here, but trophies are a part of the game. They represent milestones within the game or additional challenges to accomplish. They're an improvement on a solely in-game tracked task due to them being available outside your save file and the game itself to view and show off.

You cannot 100% complete a game without getting all of the trophies as well.

These are games I'm actually very interested to try. Only one I ever bought was one of the PSP ones, but I bought the UMD (lol) second hand and it never worked in my system. I've heard good things. Count me in.

@Apfelschteiner
They do take between 100hr - 200hrs to plat, but when it’s almost constant fun that’s a good thing for me. Just means other games are finished and cheaper when I get to them! Lol

I really liked the Yakuza storyline, Judgment not so much, but Lost Judgment was great. Maybe I’m just not that sophisticated, but I really don’t need a hard hitting story full of complex themes, just a fast paced plot and wacky side content. When things get too po-faced in games it really starts to turn me off them in fact.

The only thing I lament is that they are far less seedy than they used to be. Sega (or more likely Sony) sanitised them too much IMO.They lost a lot of their character in that respect.

@Milktastrophe well that’s cool but I’m not a fan of them (lol and that’s okay: I’m not saying anything about anyone else). And it’s relevant because Sony should be looking at controls and save states more than trophies for PS1 games.

But as you asked: I find trophies makes me carrying on playing content I’m not interested in. If I’ve done the story and side-missions etc, I want to move onto the next game.

@Apfelschteiner already said, but I think for me: I find once I’m happy to move on: I would rather do that than play side content/chasing trophies (unless the game is exceptionally good-and even then: I’m playing for the game, not the trophy). And I really don’t care what anyone thinks of me in terms of gaming 😂

But each to their own etc

I'm finishing sotn, then it's syphon filter 1/2, then tenchu. Syphon filter is a great series, hope it gets re-boot/make/master.

@add286 I'll disagree with you there. I think adding trophies is a much bigger value add to these old games than changing the controls or adding save states.

I still think it's a missed opportunity they didn't call the top tier subscription "PlayStation Platinum"

@Milktastrophe yeah: I get people (modern gamers, perhaps) want trophies because they are used to it. But I think here: some of these PS1 games may not be playable without looking at the controls/save states (we are talking about some games that are approaching 25 years old that relied on memory cards). It is a question of priorities and resources: if Sony can do it all, ace. But I imagine they will need to get these games simply playable before adding in extra's like trophy support.

I've played Syphon on my Vita and the PS classic and its okay, but analogue support would be one thing they would need to look at, I think.

This will be awesome if they have trophies. If not I could care less. If they don't add trophies the premium service will fail. They will lose thousands of would be subscribers that are trophy hunters.

@Shepherd_Tallon should be no excuses not to add any game really, regardless of the developer

@Snake_V5 Or make you hate games and make them a chore because you have to finish them i have had a lot of games i never ever want to play because of trophies. Never had that issue when i was younger even if the games didnt have trophies.

The only thing i have with trophies is that if the game is great and trophies are fun i just like to get them.

Dragon Quest Heroes 2 after 200 hours and still not having the trophy i just finished it and quit the game. The trophies made the game worse for me in the end and was happy to end the game and never play it again ever.

Dark Mirror and Logan's Shadow are awesome, two of the best PSP games. Bend Studio was a tremendous developer of handheld video games.

@Flaming_Kaiser I understand where your coming from but I personally don't feel the same way. There's some people I've known that won't even buy a game unless it has trophies.

@Snake_V5 I would not play games without trophies but thats because im used to then but im not going mental to achieve them anymore i dead serious with the multiplayer of the Tombraider reboot i could not stand the game anymore after boosting it..... ☹️

@themightyant The difference is those games are old and if I wanted to play them enough I would have played them by now. I don't see the value of old games if there isn't any effort to update them. I hate the idea of just dumping as many games on the service as possible. I only care for a curated list of games and if it isn't worth going in and adding trophies, it really isn't worth putting them on the service and certainly isn't worth my time. I'm not really that interested in playing old games, and definitely not in their original form. I would probably try out an old game or two and sign up to the premium tier for one month to check it out if the games had basic quality of life improvements such as trophies.
Of course games are worth playing in their own right, but I love having the trophy record of the games I played. I'd only play the retro games out of curiosity, but if Sony wants me to play these games they better put in the effort to do small things to make them playable.

@Shepherd_Tallon Microsoft don't seem to have any problems..