PlayStation 2

Enter the Matrix

I’d be lying if I told you that I wasn’t excited about this game. How could I not be? Just the thought of running along walls and flipping to the side as I unload countless rounds of ammo all through the patented Matrix slow-motion is reason enough to hyperventilate, lose sleep, and camp out in front of my local retailer a week prior to release. Throw in a new story written and directed by the Wachowski brothers, including live-action footage filmed exclusively for the game, and I’m down for the count.

So this game does indeed let us Enter the Matrix. We can live, breath, fight and die in the Matrix. But the real selling point of this game has to be video footage of the upcoming film, the graphics and being able to fight Trinity! It falls short on game play but the look and feel created by the music and cinematic style is truly engrossing. Can this game compete with the big boys? Well of course it can, what it lacks in game play hours and a multiplayer game it more than makes up for in style and variation of game play. This game is definitely worth a look if you are a Matrix fan and even if you're not, it's still a little beauty of a game!

Enter the Matrix is really driven more by its license than by the sum of its parts. For Matrix fans, the cut scenes alone might be worth taking the game for a test run. There's even a "hacking" mode for players to get lost in which mimics the mainframe from the first Matrix title. The disappointment sets in relatively quickly, though, when you first see the poor level design firsthand and after you've seen every martial arts move that the game has to offer after the third level or so. Enter the Matrix had a lot of potential—and rightfully high expectations, given the constant delays that the project saw. Shades of that potential are tapped by this game, but it still feels like it needed more time to get things right. A rental is recommended here, if only to just experience what the game has to offer, but a full price purchase just doesn't seem justified for what amounts to an ad nauseam game of repetition.

Wer befindet sich derzeit nicht im Matrix Fieber? All jenen sei gesagt, ihr versäumt was! Aber wem der Film nicht genug ist, der kann mit dem Game "Enter the Matrix" selbst mal in die Rolle eines Helden schlüpfen und sowohl in der Matrix als auch in Zion schauen wozu er fähig ist. Ob das Game das verspricht was der Hype von Matrix auslöst, verraten wir Euch in diesem Doppel-Review.

We all know how fast the gaming industry is growing and prognosis are that it will keep on growing along with the expansion of Information Technology to the so-called “Developing and Third World countries”. At the same time the movie industry realises that DVD’s, DivX, mp3’s, HDTV and other technologies are just the start of what’s to come. They know very well that they have to look forward and invest in the technological boom.

God loves, hype kills. Marketing departments everywhere are doing such a thorough job that it seems every other day, a new entertainment property emerges that is heralded as the be-all, end-all experience ever to grace a movieplex, television screen or concert stage. Usually, the "new best thing" cannot stand up under the weight of expectation.

Manages to provide some of the coolest hand-to-hand combat seen outside of the beat-'em-up genre, but the driving sessions are not as enjoyable, and the game can feel a bit incomplete. With more time (it had to tie-in with the Reloaded release date) it could have been a better game, but as it is, it is just something that just has not quite lived up to our full expectations for a Matrix game.

In light of that (and the sales of three million on a wave of hype), I think the final conclusion is that it is fun and action packed, with some excellent features, but it is still a film spin-off. If you are a fan of The Matrix, you'll love all the action, if not, perhaps Tron 2.0 is what you are after on PC, or the new Tomb Raider on consoles for something comfy and familiar. Will it add to your understanding of the Matrix universe? We'll have to wait and see - but whilst you are waiting, you can join in the action and quite literally, enter the Matrix.

Let us all pray, Morpheus that the meaning of your lives doesn’t rest solely on the fate of Enter The Matrix. While the original plot and movie footage are an interesting look into the backstory between The Animatrix, Reloaded and the original film, the lackluster action, replayability and glitches severely hamper this title from truly being great. The most hardcore Matrix fan will probably eat this game up, but for action buffs, a rental will probably be the furthest trip down the rabbit hole those gamers will go.

Enter the Matrix is an odd game in that it is only entertaining for short bursts of time. Don't get me wrong; surely any undertaking to make a Matrix game is a difficult one. The development team must make a game that keeps intact the spirit and style of the movies' revolutionary fight sequences and the mood set by the dialogue and dark, naturally lit locales, and (most daunting of all) it must fall in line with the lore that has been written and spoken of since the initial film's 1999 release and make sure all the salivating Morpheus followers are duly satiated. A tall order indeed - is developer Shiny up to the task? Wait and find out.

Enter The Matrix should have been kept in development for a couple more months, and possibly been released with the third movie in November. It's a good game that has some flaws but fans of the movies will likely forgive them for the opportunity to do some slo-mo damage..

Overall, this game is really weak in length. Enter The Matrix can be beaten on any difficulty in about 3-4 hours tops. Once you beat it on the hardest difficulty, you'll want to throw this title out in the trash, since you will never touch it again. Why play a game that lacks two-player action and has repetitive game play over and over again. It's not really worth it, especially for the fifty dollar price tag. This is a rental title only, unless you are one of the people on the block that likes to collect every game out there. For budget gamers who only want to buy good titles, move along; this isn't the game for you!

If Shiny and Atari had decided to push the game back and set it for release with the Matrix Reloaded DVD or with the Matrix Revolutions theatrical release and addressed the game’s many problems, then Enter the Matrix could’ve been a substantially better game for it. However, what we end up with is a rushed, unpolished disappointment. If you’re a big Matrix fan, rent the game and play it for the story. Otherwise, let it alone.

Enter the Matrix is a game that, done right, could have been something special. Never before have games and movies tried to come together in this way, and the concept is a cool one. However, the game serves as little more than an advertisement for the film--it doesn't have a story that stands on its own, and the gameplay doesn't really offer anything that we haven't seen in better games. If you're a huge fan of the film, it's worth renting to see the few additional sequences, but for the rest of you, it's just another licensed game that doesn't do justice to its source material.

"Enter the Matrix" é uma corajosa empreitada para melhorar a qualidade dos jogos licenciados de filmes de Hollywood. Por um lado, ela pode ter sido um fracasso por criar um game mediano para qualquer um que não seja absolutamente fanático pela trilogia cinematográfica - mas não há dúvidas de que seu conceito de produção será muito imitado no futuro.

Enter the Matrix took the red pill before it was really ready to know the truth. A few more months in the kung-fu simulator would have done this smartly-conceived action game a freakload of good.

Quelle déception que ce jeu d'action. Il est clair que ce titre est sorti à la hâte pour profiter de la sortie de Matrix Reloaded et cela est clairement visible à tous les niveaux. Mal fini, répétitif, ennuyeux, des temps de chargement interminables, Enter The Matrix ne fait vraiment pas honneur à la série éponyme.

Conventional wisdom tells us that there's only one thing worse than video games based on movies, and that's movies based on video games. But conventional wisdom isn't always right, and I can name a bunch of really good games that happened to have movie licenses. (Uh, I'll have to get back to you on the list of good vidgame movies.) Certainly, we've come a long way since the days of the reprehensible Total Recall for the NES, and Shiny's Enter The Matrix is a new breed of movie-licensed video game. The game makers worked closely with the Matrix movie staff to take their production to a new level of authenticity and game / movie integration. Unfortunately, playing Enter The Matrix served as a painful reminder that all the authenticity in the world can't help when the game is completely unpolished and the core gameplay is weak.

Så vem vill då ha Enter the Matrix? Det handlar om att välja mellan det röda eller det blå pillret. Tar du det röda pillret gillar du antagligen filmerna, konceptet och karaktärerna. Tar du det blå pillret är du intresserad av bra actionspel. Och då ska du titta åt ett annat håll.

Like most film tie-ins Enter the Matrix is a third person action game where you run around participate in simple combat sequences, do a bit of this and a bit of that as the developers try and fit multiple genres into the gameplay. None of it is brilliant but on the other hand none of it is particularly bad either. As a game designed to compliment the films it does it's job and fans of the Matrix films will probably have picked this up on the day of release, which accounts for the high sales, and be reasonably happy with it. Looking at the game from a gamer's point of view though it's distinctly average in every department and for your money there's a lot better to be had than this.

If the Wachowski-directed movie scenes woo you into the game or you are blatantly curious about the subplot movie, then rent it and watch it as you mindlessly play. If you are wanting this to trump Max Payne, you will be disappointed and are better off borrowing Enter the Matrix from your friend who was already duped by the hype into buying it.

Enter the Matrix is an unrealized dream that tries to bring movies and games together and comes up far short. It's blatantly obvious that this game isn't quite finished. Unfortunately, that tends to happen when you tie in the release of the game with the film. While it does have its moments and diehard Matrix fans will drool over the extra videos, this game receives the blue pill.

Let's be fair: Enter The Matrix has almost its fair share of good bits. The hacking mode is a bit of a laugh, the combat can be quite fun (and if you haven't played Max Payne you'll probably enjoy it even more), it's reasonably lengthy (more than the seven hours we've seen quoted elsewhere, especially if you play it on Normal and go for both campaigns), it has slow-motion sniping and some madcap running-away-from-agents rooftop chases, and it plugs some of the gaps in and poses more brain-teasing questions about a storyline that has most of the world hooked, but it is blighted on so many levels by the blundering stupidity of its malformed stillborn design that recommending it is beyond us. The blue pill never looked so tasty.