Enter the Matrix

The Good
First off, lemme get this out of the bag first - I'm a HUGE Matrix fan. I love all 3 movies, and The AniMatrix. I think the movie/anime concept of the Matrix universe is one of the most compelling we've seen since Star Wars and Blade Runner.

That being said, "Enter the Matrix" (ETM) could have been a thousand times better if it hadn't been for the time constrains placed on Shiny Entertainment. I figure if it were given an extra 3 months to work out the bugs and improve the game's engine, it would have done much better.

But I digress. There are some good points to the game.

First off - the concept. Shiny had a huge amount of support from the producers of "The Matrix" and had access to virtually every piece of audio, visual, and the actors. The fact that you play from the end of "Final Flight of the Osiris" (from "The AniMatrix"), through the events of "The Matrix Reloaded" is cool. Video footage was shot specifically for the game, including the majority of the actors from the movie. And since the game runs parallel to the movie, it's part of the canon and continuity of the films. Plus, you don't get the Whole Story of what happens unless you play through the game and watch all the FMV cutscenes. I've noticed that Hollywood is taking a much more active role in co-operating with Game designers/producers in making sure what you see on your computer is as good as what you see on the big screen, and ETM is sorta on the right track with the blending of Hollywood and the PC entertainment industry.

The Graphics - if you have a PC fast enough (more on that later), are top-notch. Again, Shiny used photos and digital sources from the movie itself (first-generation Sound and Visual FX, along with high quality photos of props, sets, etc.) So the graphics quality (production-wise) is astounding. The use of Motion Capture is extensive. The Wachowski Brothers insisted that each actor wear the mo-cap suit. Normally one actor will perform all the mo-cap for ALL the characters in a game, mostly to save time and money. The difference is that The Brothers wanted to make sure that when you see a character walk on the Big Screen, that same character walks the same way in the game. Talk about a stickler for details.

The Sound/Music is top-notch as well. Don Davis' score is used extensively in the game, along with the familiar sound effects from the movies.

And one other part of the game that is really neat is the "Hacking" mode. Basically to unlock levels, cheat codes, messages from the characters, models, and other fun things are done by hacking a save file (within the game, of course). It's a fairly intuitive system, but it looks like it was designed for a console system, and not the PC game. You move around using pseudo-DOS commands, and you can gain access to a lot of behind-the-scenes, and background info. The one quirk I don't like is the fact that it DOESN'T quite operate the same was as DOS does. So it's a bit difficult if you grew up typing directory names, and it doesn't quite work the same way in the game itself.

The Bad
Wow. Where to start.

I think the failure of ETM cannot be blamed on any one department, person or entity. There are many factors that busted this game, but I'll list a few of the main ones. One of the MAJOR factors, I believe, is the fact that the game HAD to launch on the day of "The Matrix Reloaded" film debut. Time constraints are never good for programmers (for comparison, look at Blizzard for excellent examples of the "It'll release when it's done" motto), especially when trying to program a game that is trying very hard to break the "Movie-tie in: curse.

Gameplay - The game doesn't play very well on a PC. I believe it was designed for consoles, and perhaps it should have stayed that way. Frame rates were atrocious (even with all the graphics options turned down or OFF), glitches in the camera abound (especially when hand-to-hand fighting), basic button mashing (fighting - although it looks cool - is a joke), and the first-person shooting mode (due to the frame rate) is near impossible to play.

Control - It's not there. I've played a few Third person shooters, and the majority of them are very easy to play. ETM isn't. The controls swtich between over-the-shoulder third-person (i.e. Tomb Raider, MDK2), and side-scrolling style (i.e. Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat views). A neat transition, but nearly impossible to controll you character. And if you are fighting more that one enemy at a time, the game might not do what you want it to.

Graphics - the downside. This game is a system hog. I'm running the bare minimum to play game, and it's virutally unplayable. Clipping issues, control issues, pop-up (during chase scenes), and collision detection are the major issues in the game.

And there is a nasty bug (at least while I was playing), while playing Ghost - I finally made it through Concourse 2 (after defeating the helicopter). I go to exit the game, and it dumps me to Windows. EVERY DAMN TIME. I haven't even got through that level, and if the bug continues to exist (the game is "fully patched" on the DVD release), I'm gonna give up.

The Bottom Line
Now I've heard that the game plays very well on the console side of the gaming world, and perhaps it does. If that's the case, I might have enjoyed the game much more. I believe that the fact that Shiny pushed this game out on Mulitple platform all at the same time (with the same release date) really hindered their efforts. Perhaps they should have worked on one version of the game (a la GTA3), and after working the bugs out of ONE version of the game, they could port the game over to multiple platforms.

ETM tried to be a ground-breaking game. I think that between Shiny Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow Pictures, the PC industry is taking the right steps to making movie video game the best that the can be. It's been done right (take a look at "The Lord of the Rings" games by EA), but unfortunately, ETM wasn't done right at all - at least for the PC.

If you have a very (I'm talking at LEAST a 3.0gz) high-end system, you might be able to enjoy ETM the way it was meant to be enjoyed. Those of you with low-end systems should pass on ETM until you upgrade. And even then, I'd play it ONLY to get the story behind the game, not the game itself.

The Good
The hype was monumental, the idea ambitious and the anticipation high but as it screams out of the gate on all major gaming platforms on the same day as the Matrix: Reloaded hits cinemas, Enter the Matrix manages to trip on as many hurdles as it clears. Although the game treads the potentially dangerous path of tying in with the 2nd film, it takes the rather smarter approach of treading largely unfamiliar ground as the action is played out from the perspective of one of two of the films minor protaganists, Ghost or Niobe. The games story actually fills in a lot of the holes the movie leaves open and was written by series creators and directors, the Wachowski brothers. In fact a big selling point is that most of the games cinemas are actually additional film footage specifically shot for the game that is not seen in any of the Matrix movies. This isn't cheaply done in a Star Wars fashion either. The films cast are present and the footage was shot alongside the two sequel films so what's on offer is of a high quality. All well and good but it's the game itself that will really decide whether all was for naught or not and here it's a decidedly mixed bag. On every count there is an upside and an anitclimactic downside so since this is the good section we'll look at the upside first. Visuals (on the GC version at least) are pretty good for the most part with some beautiful combat animation in parts that mimmicks the films trademark action scenes. Music is all taken from the films score so it's fits the bill perfectly and the sound is dead on with all the thwacks and bangs you'd expect to hear. Gameplay consists largely of Max Payne style run and gun but with liberal amounts of very kick ass hand to hand combat that really works well, allowing for a punch kick and defend/grab button. Use of these buttons in various combos along with directional pad use allows for loads of different moves and when the fire button is involved that arsenal is only expanded upon, eg: Punch a guy hard in the stomach and then pull out your gun, lift him up with it and shoot him. Of course there is bullet time presented here as focus which allows you to do the slo-mo thing as well as run up and along walls, perform stunts and elongated jumps as well as the most potent and interesting combat moves such as the ever popular 'off the wall' kicks. There are also driving stages in which you either steer or shoot from the window of a moving vechile depending on which character you choose to play as which brings us to our next point. Playing the game as Niobe is substantially different to playing as Ghost. Even though the story and scenario is the same the stages are often totally unique to each character and when they're not they are often played in a different fashion. Coupled with some different cinemas and plot points unique to each scenario and the game is well worth going through with each of them.

The Bad
visuals can sway from very good to atrociously average in a heartbeat as some areas seem like they weren't finished, indicating a rushed development. In one cutscene, the character models seem to be older versions and look dangerously worse than the regular ones. Animation is also patchy with some truly appaling work and speaking as an animator myself, some of the dodgy looking animations could have easily been fixed in no time to look better which makes them seem all the more inexcusable. Driving missions are poorly thought out with Ghosts shooting stages particularly average. In one scene the enemy pursuing your car cannot be destroyed and so it becomes more luck whether or not you escape than anything since the computer often makes some terrible driving decisions that can easily cost you the game. As for the final ship flying section in the real world it's so much worse than anything else in the game it comes as a truly horrible anti-climax. Cues that link the music together are poorly realised and result in some tracks repeating so often it becomes annoying... and then there's the bugs. ETM has some of the worst bugs I've seen in a console game. On the GC at least these bugs won't make the game unwinnable or anything (see ps2 version) but they do most definately detract. In one cutscene the entire building that the characters were in disappears so they're left talking in the sky over a black box. Characters can get stuck in tight spots, becoming immobile and although this is very uncommon it still can happen. Visual glitches also appear on occasion and agents can often get you into corners where you can't move or do anything except die.

The Bottom Line
It's not that ETM is a bad game. It's a great companion to the films and it has it's moments when it's actually a lot of fun, it's just that the game can sway from wonderful to awful a little too fast and often. Fans of the films and Max Payne would do well to take a look but try before you buy. Everyone else may as well give it a miss as there are better examples of the genre on offer.

The Good
STORY When the Hovercraft Osiris discovered a large mass of machienes digging into the ground the Captain Thadeus sent a drop package containing evidence of this into the matrix shortly before they were killed. This is where you come in. The mission of the crew of the Logos is to firstly find this package, the story is then woven into the plotline that is Reloaded, filling in a few gaps here are there. Like the movie's plot it is confusing and while you understand what's happening, the reason for why it's happening does not make much sense.

GRAPHICS A very mixed bag... The characters are very well done, the LOOK like their live action counterparts and are pretty reconisable. The textures for the characters tho are another story. Ranging from pretty damn good, to very poor in quality belonging to a game 6 years ago it's a very mixed bag. The game engine is interesting. On it sits different modules for different parts of the games, like driving, fighting, flying and so on. The engine is pretty powerful when you have a good hard look at it, the animations are very well done and blend in pretty flawlessly. It's a shame that in some aspects - like when they exit via a phone they don't go all sparky and fade away. Bullet time is...well interesting. Instead of the nice clean ripples you get in the movies, you end up with weird stretched out ripples that don't look too brilliant, but the move between bullet time and so on is very well done with all animations playing well in slow-mo. Other graphical features of this engine are reflective objects - like sunglasses and apparrently bullets. Explosions and fire are far from spectacular, and smoke is usually large transparent white dots.

SOUND None of the guns sound realistic - then again it IS The Matrix and none of the guns there sounded too realistic either. The sound is pretty average, walking on steel sheeting placed across a gap sounds just like the concrete you step off onto on the other side. What was really missing was the clinks of shells, and ammo clips, and all the other small details that games like Max Payne were able to use. The music was pretty much very ambient, didn't really do much, the only rare cases was when the music was taken from the movie (the fight in the tea house level) and a bit in the FMVs - but really there was not much to it.

GAMEPLAY Ok - here we go... Two words - Console Port It plays like it would play on a console, VERY limited keys, button mashing, combos galore, horribly linear - yet - somewhat entertaining....somewhat

Most of the game consists of you following directions from Sparks - your operator or an arrow on the top of the screen - it's very hard to get lost and if you do...well....that's just luck. Fortuantly there's some viarity in all this - Ghost and Niobe have their own different tasks in some missions, and in a few cases work as teams. The game also features a beat the boss kind of mission, with Niobe being up against them more than Ghost. There also features a few driving missions and when you're riding shotgun - Niobe's driving is very scary. Combat is irritating, firstly you cannot aim freely, save being in first person mode and that's another headache all together. You auto aim onto things, and that's...a bit weird to the point of having bullets fly out of your gun at 45 degree angles from what the barrel was facing, You're also woefully inaccurate to the point where shooting at a door from point blank you're bound to miss.

Fighting is fun....and repetative. I ended up thinking "12 weeks in a MoCap studio for this" There's sadly little difference between Ghost and Niobe - which is a shame. With Ghost being more the peace loving monk of the two you'd expect a different form of martial arts from him - no while a kick or two is different, some of the more elaborate moves - like jumping through glass firing both weapons while spinning in the air is the same for both of the characters. Fortuantly some of the other major charactres - Seraph, Agents and Trinity have their own reconisable moves and styles that were from the movie. There are quite a few moves that each characters can preform - tho I don't think it's the 1200 moves per character the marketing fluff advertises. But all the cool moves are there, from disarming your foe by grabbing his gun and wacking it into his face, to running off a wall and doing a kick into the guy's face, to wall running and limited bullet doding.

The other aspect of gameplay - is hacking. This is a small..uhh game...that requires you to "hack the matrix" using a semi-dos prompt style interface. This does little to lengthen actuall gameplay. Upon finishing it you are rewarded with the ability to view images, FMV's and profiles that have text that is too big to properly fit inside their boxes. There's also a few useless options like - Vibrate.exe - which makes your controler vibrate - hardly handy when you have a PC. Other things - like Multiplayer do not work as well.

FMVs Well it seems that FMV's live - though they are rarely seen with today's games, and when they are, they're usually poorly acted, CGI sets, campy lines...but this game's FMV's are a bit different.

Firstly the claim "featureing the main cast" is a bit of a lie. The only main member from the main cast who does do extra stuff for the movie is Carrie-Ann Moss - Trinity. She appears fleetingly in a scene where you fight against her as Ghost. The other major cast members do not show up - with the teeny exception of Morpheus when he appears in the bit where he falls onto Niobe's car. All of the other cast are the secondary cast who are glimpsed in the film - but are given a slightly "larger" role. Plot holes are also answered here a bit - you work out what the plan was with the ships against the machines and why that failed and you get to see the new Oracle who raises more questions that answers. These are all professionally shot, and well acted - a pity they could not have done the in-game cut-scenes like this. There are a few scenes that were shot enterily in-game.

The Bad
Looking at all this you have to ask - what's lacking? You have a plot written by the guys who wrote the original film, you have passable graphics and sound, brilliant character details and animations and a game that is pure action....what's missing?

The answer is polish. Firstly the game was made so that EVERYONE could play it, X-box, PC, PS2 and GameCube...that's a lot of platforms for one game, the problem is - working out an engine that will happily work for all of these platforms. That's one reason The other one is - marketing, this game would have been fine if it was released a month ahead from the movie's release. they might have even worked out a few bugs. But no - a tight schedule meant the game could hardly get up to the game that it was meant to be. Some of the bugs I occured were, game crashing, sound missing or heavily distorted, large parts of the level missing, items that could not be picked up and were mission specific and other random graphical glitches. Yes it's bug ridden - and how so...

The Bottom Line
Hire it out - don't bother spending money on this - while the game is hardly a winner it is not a loser... If you're a Matrix affectionado - like me - then you will prolly enjoy this game, if not - put it back on the shelf and buy something like BloodRayne that also features bullet time - plus the fun ability to sever people with long blades.\

In short this game hit the bottom of the rabbit hole too fast, broke it's legs, and can't get up again.