Syphon Filter(tm): The Omega Strain Official Strategy Guide Paperback – May 10, 2004

This strategy guide is helpful but it could be much better. Overall, this is worth using as a tool to help get through Syphon Filter Omega Strain. The level maps are helpful and the alternate methods which are detailed in this guide are fun to explore. There needs to be more emphasis on how to beat the par times and some of the screen pictures are too small to make sense of. I'm glad that I bought this but I wish that it was better. I used this guide and also watched tons of videos on YouTube and I've accomplished all of the single player par times and objectives. Note that there is a multiplayer server running again so you can now accomplish the multiplayer objectives.UPDATE - The online server is no longer running. As a result, several of the multiplayer objectives for the game can no longer be accomplished. This guide is still useful for the single player missions.

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An open letter to writers Mark Androvich and Greg Off: This is without a doubt one of the worst strategy guides I've ever used.The consensus is that Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain is an incredibly difficult game, so a strategy guide is essential for those of us who don't fancy spending four hours trying to solve one part of a video game.To give this book a little credit, I was able to follow 50 per cent of the general directions on when to go where in the game. But the layout and writing are so horrible that I ended up sitting there, with the game on pause, desperately trying to interpret what the writers truly meant when they wrote a certain passage. I'm not talking grammar or syntax here; I'm talking about "right" when it should have been "left"! After about two levels in the game I realized that the writers' sense of direction is plain wrong and began exploring the game on my own, using the book only as a loose tour book, and that helped. They also adore giving you the second-worst solution to many of the activities: Their recommendation to use the K-bar knife on Thae-bok Jon in the Yemen Arms Bazaar cost me 10 replays of the game until I realized you could simply shoot him with a silenced rifle. Aren't strategy guides supposed to spare you the pain by giving you the easiest, quickest solution? If I'd listened to my own instincts, I would have finished the level long ago.I'm still using this guide to help get past this overly difficult, design-flawed game. Without any kind of signpost, this game is just too nonlinear and confusing to warrant a try. However, having to "interpret" the writing, and wade through the bad advice, is something a reader of a strategy guide shouldn't ever have to do. A very bad job, Mr. Androvich and Mr. Off.

I don't just say this because I wrote a FAQ for this game, but I am an experienced gamer at SFOS. Early on in my gameplay, I decided to flip through this one day after trying to get through the game with some FAQs online and having a bit of the same types of troubles. I thought for sure this would be more helpful.Aside from the "pretty pictures" and lists/charts, this really didn't have anything useful like you'd expect. Besides, there are too many free FAQs online (mine included) that are just as (if not more) helpful. Some of them aren't any more detailed, but at least have their stuff straight.Heck, by the time you get to Yemen 1 you should be able to get the neck snap and not worry about the knife. But yeah, the sniper rifle in the tunnels you can use anywhere, so long as nobody sees you...