The Matrix: Path of Neo

The Good
Soundtrack, voice acting, combat animations, amount of combos, it's not entirely boring.

The Bad
Pretty much everything else.

The Bottom Line
Isn't it just beautiful, when someone manages to develop a solid game based on a movie? Shiny guys managed to create entertaining, though buggy and technically kind of repellent game, Enter the Matrix, some time ago and although it wasn't completely satisfying as the first interactive contact with this world, it was fun and one didn't even regret spending his/her time with it. Anyway, someone was complaining about the absence of the main trio and so Shiny boys and girls decided to create this sequel, through which they manured they name, unfortunately (they probably didn't make it for this reason, but I like to believe it).

Sure, they gave as Neo, hoping in the complete player's satisfaction. But I definitely didn't feel anything like the chosen one. Why? Because the game Neo is an incredible turd, looks freakishly, controlling him is very uncomfortable and learning some cooler foppery with him requires tons of time and practice, which does make sense, but in this game, motivation to learn anything is nonexistent. The list of dirt goes on though. Most of the missions alone are pure stupid, level design is disgusting, objectives are usually pointless and often very frustrating as well, and the sequences, which are direct recreations of the best moments of the movies, are completely destroyed by lousy elaboration and some incomprehensible changes.

Apart from all that, the whole game also looks extremely ugly. With the highest resolution and the detail level set on 10 (which are the only two ways to adjust the graphics) the game still looks hideous and in addition there's no wide screen support. That's more than acceptable in most of the games, but this is really just a pain for your eyes. It's not that I'd care for visuals too much, this game is just nasty and would be nasty even if released couple years before. From time to time, some textures randomly disappear as well, and the official patch didn't fix that (actually, it didn't fix anything as far as I can tell).

But, to say a nice word or two about the game, the combat animations definitely deserve some applause. Hand in hand it goes with the amount of combos, which is definitely beyond satisfying (that is, you will pull many of them by pure accident and never manage them again). The soundtrack identical to the movie's one is logical, but I still appreciate it (eyes were in pain, at least the ears enjoyed something). The identical voice acting is also nice. And, the game isn't really boring. Sadly, portion of fun is way lower than the portion of frustration and nausea from the game's presentation and looks.

As far as I can remember, I've played only three good games based on a movie, and there sure are many more. But Path of Neo is just too quickly put together, and therefore it simply doesn't work the way it should.