My explicit Enter The Matrix review

[Sidez]

Just my honest opinion without the bs. This was typed up extremely quickly with no direction or purpose, so allow the spelling and grammar errors:

I loved the Matrix and Matrix Reloaded exceeded my expectations. Cool gun fights, badass martial arts and a deep plot: this is Hollywood at its? finest. Videogames based on films are never any good and represent everything I hate about the casual gamer demographic. Surely Enter The Matrix is different, after all it has had a huge budget, plenty of development time and the best license around. Well no, the game is no different to all those other cash-ins. Giving the job to an F grade developer like Shiny was a faux pas from the start.

The first mistake was the playable characters involved: Niobe and Ghost. I mean seriously, who gives a **** about these second rate zeros? I?m sure the Wachowski brothers thought it would be a good idea to have the game from a different perspective instead of following the film plot but if a film was made based on the game, noone would watch it. Agent Smith and Neo are likable characters with charisma and a cool attitude whilst Niobe and Ghost are flat and uninteresting.

You have a health bar and a focus bar. These are replenished when you?re not being attacked or using focus. This works quite well however the ability to regenerate health is taken away during boss battles, which is really really ****ing stupid and reeks of poor design.

The framerate is a smooth 60fps however in some levels it gets very choppy, with slowdown very noticeable. Optimisation was obviously not high on the agenda despite the environments being incredible sparse and empty. There is NO atmosphere to speak of, no sense of urgency and no effort in terms of design. This doesn?t feel like a game based on the Matrix, there is no attention to detail and no decent set pieces. I hate clich?s but this truly is gaming by numbers, a rough template is there but the game is far from being a labour of love.

Now the animation is really ****ing stupid. I feel like dedicating a paragraph to it, it?s that bad. The running animations are ridiculous and if you need a good laugh, try jumping up and down whilst firing an mp5. It?s like they didn?t even try. Apparently motion capture was used but I bet they?re lying about that one or just hired a bunch of chimps and strapped them into harnesses, whilst dangling bananas from the ceiling. Their next mistake was to give the monkeys loaded mp5s who then took out half the development team. Sadly Dave Perry survived, and development on the game continued. Well that?s my theory as to why this game is so irredeemably ****.

The combat system though is really ****ing sweet. You can do some really nice combos which do look very good. Using focus modifies the attacks so there is a lot of variety. Your character can jump off walls for height and then deliver a sharp kick to the head. Enemy weapons can be disarmed, throws can be executed and when using focus, bullets can be dodged whilst advancing with cartwheels, jumps and flips. Very satisfying, fun and well implemented.

There are way too many cutscenes and save points. This gets really tedious and auto saving would have been far better.

I wanted to like this game, I really did but overall this is rushed mainstream crap for all the casual gamer sheep out there. Thank **** I only rented it.

3/10

[Afterbirth]

I agree with most of the review, apart from the 'F grade developer bit.
Shiny ain't that bad.
MDK 2 was good, as was Sacrifice.

[Sidez]

I forgot to mention the terrible AI and the awful driving sections. With a game budget of $80 million I expect better and this game proves Shiny's incompetance.

[Sidez]

Oh and to save people from playing this game but want to know what happens, here's a summary. As you can see, Niobe and Ghost mean little in the grand scheme of things and don't add much to the plot.

Niobe and Ghost invade some building to get a package, when they retrieve it they find it's some sort of video of the last transmission by some ship telling mankind that there's a huge army ready to invade Zion. They then go to an airport to help out one team. Once rescued it cuts to the start of the film with all these teams meeting up before the agents arrived when Neo roughs up them up. All the teams disperse to their exits, Ghost and Niobe go by the sewers. Once out of there it's the rave orgy scene from the film.

They then go to the French pimp's castle to retrieve the key master. He gives them a key to give to Neo that will enable him to go see the creator of the Matrix. They fail and French pimp destroys the key so their efforts were useless. Persephone kisses both Niobe and Ghost (depending on who you're playing) as in exactly the same way she kisses Neo in the film. In doing so she retrieves manz data so she now knows everything about them.

Car chase against the twins. They escape. Keymaker gets put back in his cell and makes a new key for Neo which he will give to him in the film.

Once back in Zion they go back to their rooms, Niobe talks to Lock (the commander dude and her lover) whilst Ghost jacks into a simulation and fights against Trinity (as friends).

Ghost and Trinity were freed from the Matrix on the same day so they refer to each other as brother and sister. Ghost however loves Trinity and the Oracle knows this saying he will never have the woman he loves. Niobe loves Morpheus.

Scene from the film where Niobe accepts to go after Morpheus' ship.

Scene from film where Niobe drives up to the place where Morpheus is fighting the agent on the truck.

Part from film where Niobe and Ghost have to blow up the power plant for Neo.

Scene where there's loads of dead bodies on a ship but Bane who is really Smith is alive. The ship that picks up Neo and crew at the end of the film discover this.

Niobe/Ghost meet the Oracle then get chased by loads of Agent Smiths.

They escape.

Once on the ship they get surrounded by loads of sentinals.

The end.

[Streets Of Rage]

sounds crap, thanks for the plot, they are pretty pointless in the scheme of things i have to agree i wish they'd made a game with neo that might have actually been good, maybe

[replicant]

It is indeed one of the worst games released in recent years. It makes a mockery out of the official PS2, and official xb magazines after they awarded it a glowing review. Can anyone say bought?

Shiny have been highlighted as a bunch of wannabes AAA devcos with this title. Its obvious that there has been developmental problems with this title. With the amount of capital investment, and time investment in this title it should have been spectacular. Instead it has turned out to be a bug ridden, badly designed piece of trash. I would be more forgiving if Shiny had struggled to release one format. That would have highlighted any time constraints and the pure pressure of getting it on the market. However it has been poorly developed for every format under the sun in an attempt to pimp it to every sucker. There is no sympathy.

Anyway, Im sure Shiny aren't bothered. Its selling bucketloads which proves that the casual gamer doesn't know anything about quality, or gaming. As the saying goes...theres one born every minute.

[marcus]

Cheers for that Sidez.

I must admit to being surprised you even entertained this game in the first place Sidez. Virtua Fighter 4 Evo...Soul Calibur 2...Psyvariar...Enter The Matrix??? It always looked very poor to me, ever since I saw those pictures of that car with square wheels (!), and film tie-ins usually are abysmal. A game rushed out to latch onto Matrix fever, its gona sell ****loads Im sure, youve just reconfirmed by suspicions that the game is bad. NTSC-uk review will be online very soon btw...

[Sidez]

I love a good action game and I love Matrix, so I kept an open mind. I really tried to be optimistic about this and wanted to like it but it is blatently poor. Anyone who cannot see that this game is below average has really poor taste in games, I don't mean to be dogmatic but it's so blatent. I couldn't be arsed to play beyond the sewer level, the design is shocking and I couldn't bare going through another driving section. That plot summary was gleaned from the transcripts on Gamefaqs which was very long winded so I saved you guys the hassle. As you can see, the game doesn't add much at all to the plot.

My review owns, brutal and to the point plus I save you the hassle of playing it to get the extra plot details :P

[samoht]

I agree with most of the review, apart from the 'F grade developer bit.
Shiny ain't that bad.
MDK 2 was good, as was Sacrifice.

Didn't Bioware do MDK 2?

[JibberX]

Nice one Sidez, I still can't believe you bought it though, by buying it you have justified the existence of the game, surely?

Is a 3/10 too nice?

[Sidez]

Nice one Sidez, I still can't believe you bought it though, by buying it you have justified the existence of the game, surely?

Is a 3/10 too nice?

I think you missed the last paragraph dude.

It gets 3 marks for the good combat system, the rest is trash.

[Henning]

Sweet and nasty Sidez, more reviews like this please.

I?ve had it with this game. I pumped it full with every cheat available and walked through it. And I can tell it doesn?t gets better later on.

[Saurian]

This game made me laugh! XD

Sidez put it on after Viewtiful Joe which made it even more shocking!
There is no game in there, in Viewtiful Joe for example you are rewarded for slowing down time and creating impressive sequences - in Matrix you get nothing, there is no incentive to play the game with skill or flair. Even a simple grading system at the end of the stages would have helped, TBH I dont understand what part of that software is a "game". I compare it to Viewtiful Joe for this fact - Viewtiful Joe takes Bullet Time and makes it an integral part of the gameplay, where not only are you are rewarded for finesse, it's a tool for defence (Joe is invincible during, but dodging in this mode drains your power) and timing too, like the fast spinning fruit machine in stage 1 - you slow time to line up the icons.

In Matrix it slows the screen down and activates a few more animations - that's it.

Smithy's Review:

1/10

[goldbricker]

Now the animation is really ****ing stupid. I feel like dedicating a paragraph to it, it?s that bad. The running animations are ridiculous and if you need a good laugh, try jumping up and down whilst firing an mp5. It?s like they didn?t even try. Apparently motion capture was used but I bet they?re lying about that one or just hired a bunch of chimps and strapped them into harnesses, whilst dangling bananas from the ceiling.

Have you seen the animation when you "run" up a ladder as well it looks like something has crawled up their ass.

I agree that the fighting system is well done you can dodge bullets perform jump kicks off walls which all looks pretty swish. The shooting though is badly done. There's a stealth element to it where you can hide against walls then peep round a corner MGS style. From there you can shoot at enemies which is good except that the direction that you fire is locked and seems to be completetly random.

It's a shame that the game is so poorly done as the potential is there. There are a couple of decent set pieces in the game and you do get footage that adds to the story of the film even if it is mostly about less important characters.

[Sidez]

Naw man, in bullet time you can dodge bullets at a press of a button (I don't think I showed you this though to be fair), run up walls and it modifies all your attacks. Even the disarm move changes from being a simple disarm to grabbing their gun, throwing them to the floor then shooting them in the face XD It makes you far more powerful and the moves really cool.

It does add a lot and is well implemented but yeah, it badly needed a grading system.