Enter The Matrix

The world of the Matrix is such an ideal place to create a video game about. Its so vivid and large, you could craft a few good video games out of it in fact. So when Warner Bros. announced that The Matrix was indeed going to become a video game, it made way for some quite impressive anticipation from fans of the movies and cyber geeks alike.

But who was making this Matrix videogame, who was developing it? Well Shiny Entertainment got the license to develop The Matrix game, while Atari (Infogrames at the time) would be publishing it. When Shiny got hold of the license though, many fans became skeptical and doubted they could deliver what everyone wanted. But be it as it was, a Matrix game had to be made, and they were the ones to do it.

So how did the Matrix fair out? Well Enter the Matrix is a fairly decent game, the visual presentation of the whole title is fairly basic, character models are finely detailed but character animation is choppy and awkward. Levels are moderately nice looking, but textures repeat themselves too often, making levels look too similar and confusing. The only graphical aspect of the game that really “shines” is the bullet time. Slowing down time and watching bullets leave sound waves as they travel through the air is pretty amazing. And the real time damage levels take is also quite interesting. So ETM isn’t such a graphical glitch, it just has a lot of weak areas that don’t excel when they should.

This is presumably due to one thing though, the fact that Enter The Matrix’ due date was set in stone almost a year in advance. The movie was intended to debut simultaneously with the video game, a fairly clever marketing tool that worked very well, to an extent. On one side Shiny sold more than 2.5 million copies of the game within their month. On the other side though, it’s ultimately an unfinished game that didn’t get the proper care and attention it deserved. Atari may have impressed the folks at Warner Bros. from the good sales of the game, but they sure did let a lot of people down.

I was personally let down too, the game has way too many glitches in it. And I mean real glitches, not gameplay features, I’m talking about your character randomly sinking into the ground, walking through walls, and getting stuck in them too. The audio to ETM was also sub par compared to the amazing movie. The musical scores are all very unorganized and cut one another off, so the music gets very annoying while you’re playing. Instead of your favorite Matrix beats continuing on through a song, they’ll usually just loop an entire song with one line of music and then sound completely awkward and disorientating. The rest of the sound in Enter The Matrix is pretty good, all the weapons have a distinct sound and the voice acting is superb.

Voice acting, along with the actual acting is where this game succeeds the most. The Wachowski Brothers (directors of The Matrix movie) decided to include full cinematic cut scenes in between missions, and these cinematics were actually filmed on set with the real actors from the film. Though you won’t be seeing much of Neo, Trinity and Morpheus here. Enter The Matrix revolves around two side characters from the movie, Niobe and Ghost. They both appeared in Reloaded briefly, ETM basically explains where these two are coming from and what they were doing while you couldn’t see them on screen.

The cinematics in ETM are very well done, the production values look similar to that of Reloaded. And the Wachowski Brothers even went to the extent of writing a 255 page long script exclusively for the game. So fans looking to dive deeper into the rabbit hole will definitely be satisfied with the movie clips and intriguing plot.

Another interesting and cool aspect to the game, is how you have to play through the game twice with both characters, and the levels slightly vary for each character. This adds to the overall length of the game, and each character has their own set of unique movies (Niobe’s rule. She kisses Persephone in one!!). So it is well worth your time to play through both characters (Seeing as these movies are some of the games strongest points).

But what about the actual gameplay? It’s what makes a game after all isn’t it. Well as you could’ve guessed. Enter The Matrix uses a slow motion “bullet time” feature similar to the movies “bullet time”. Your character has a ‘focus’ meter, which is your energy for “bullet time” basically. While it is above zero you can use it to slow down time but continue to move your crosshair at normal speed. Giving your character the edge in a fully-fledged firefight. What’s missing though, is all the other cool “bullet time” effects, like when the camera zips around Neo at 100 miles per hour. Slowing down time is where the ability of your bullet time starts and ends, nothing more sadly. But while other games have tried to imitate the Matrix style “bullet time” (Some succeeding. Max Payne anyone?), it just feels right at home in ETM. And you also have the ability to use kung fu in slow-mo, which is very entertaining. The combat mechanics are fairly shallow, using a 2 button hit combo attack, but it certainly looks cool and accurate.
Second to the bugs and glitches the developers left in, the next biggest flaw in ETM is the driving missions and the rail-gun shooting missions. These are an absolute joke. Every second or third level, you have to play through a driving mission or a rail-gun mission, depending on which character you play as

Levels range from airports to sewers, to the Chateau straight from the movie. The locales are interesting, and a few are in fact very pretty looking. But most levels look much too generic, and all the enemies and textures repeat themselves way too much. But the worst of the worst is the horrible side missions you have to complete. Every second or third mission, you have to play through a driving mission or a rail-gun mission, depending on which character your playing as. The driving missions are a total joke, the physics are completely out of order (It’s like driving on the moon) and the enemy AI is very frustrating, to the point where you might break a controller or two. The rail gun missions are about as bad, though not worse, considering all you do is hang out a window blasting caps for 10 minutes while you drive on a highway that has about a total of 2 different cars on it. This can get frustrating sometimes, but more commonly it’s just boring.

Towards the end of the game though, there are some missions where you are being chased by some Smith’s (Formally known as Agent Smith). This is where I think the game plays at its best, the levels have you running through alleys, Chinatowns, and leaping through construction buildings, while numerous Smith’s keep popping up and smashing through walls to try and delete you. They were probably the more exciting missions, since they really sucked you into the game. But these chases are only brief and last about a level or two.

Once you complete Enter The Matrix, there is a hack option available. It lets you actually hack your console and import weapons and health into certain areas of levels, and there is also a 2-player fighting game in which players can battle their friends as Morpheus, and the rest of the cast. The unlockable features are fairly entertaining but nothing really worth your time.

So when you break Enter The Matrix down into the simple code it ultimately is underneath, it’s nothing special. Shiny had everything going perfectly on track, they just didn’t have enough time and the game shipped prematurely. This was the only thing holding this game back, you can see the potential of this title in some areas while playing. If only Shiny was given a few more months...