When I rented, Enter the Matrix, I had extremely high expectations. A few of my friends that owned the Playstation 2 version were crazy about, claiming that this game was purely awesome, and was a must for everyone’s collection. I am a fan of the Matrix movies, however I have not had a chance to see Reloaded yet (due to sold out tickets, no free time), but decided to rent this game at my local Blockbuster store. It was constantly rented by someone else before I finally grabbed it, paid $6.86 (unbelievably high price to rent a game in my opinion), and dashed home. At first I did not like the game much, then started hating it, but soon I began enjoying this game more and more the further I progressed.
Enter the Matrix is related to the movie that was released on the same day as the game was released, but the game is not based on the movie. The game was directed and created by the Wachowski brothers, who are the directors of the Matrix movies. The main characters in this game are Ghost and Niobe, who are supposedly minor characters in the movie, but their actions in the game are interwoven with the movie.
This game is a third person action game. You choose one of the main characters and control them throughout the entire game. After beating the game, you will want to play as the other character to experience the entire game, even though most of the missions are shared, while only some are different. Basically, what you do throughout the game is you run, shoot, kick, kick, punch, shoot, run and kick some more. That is what the game is basically all about. You traverse a bunch of various environments, from Chinatown to a nuclear power plant to an airport. This game features many awesome guns, from hand pistols to all kinds of machine guns and shotguns (and you can even fire dual pistols), but the bread and butter of this game are the martial arts sequences. All of the different kicks, punches and body throws never seem to grow repetitive, even after you have done them for four hours straight.
The main advantage that you have over your enemy is “Focus”. One the right hand side of your screen, you will always have a focus meter. If you utilize your focus, your senses become keener, you become faster and stronger, and time sort of slows down. You can see bullets flying by, your aim is much better and you can climb walls, and kick opponents after climbing walls. And don’t worry, your focus meter will regenerate itself after a few seconds. Your health also regenerates automatically, so sometimes you will have to run away and wait to regain your health before bursting into combat yourself.
The missions are varied, even though the majority end up being just kick as many bad guys as you can, which is still pretty fun. Your enemies include cops, SWAT teams, a helicopter, evil vampires that can only be killed with a piece of wood, and agents that you cannot kill. Some missions involve sniping or protecting other members of the Matrix. A few missions are driving missions. If you are Ghost, you will do the shooting, while if you are Niobe, you will be the driver of the day. These missions can be a bit tedious and simple, but they were welcome by me. There were a few fights that are like boss fights, as you were one on one with a few people, such as Cujo, Vlad, that Chinese guy, and an agent. If you are Ghost, you even get to fights Trinity one-on-one. Some missions involve fleeing from numerous Agent Smiths, while the very last two missions have you in control of the Logos, a spaceship, and you must destroy all of the Sentinels and escape. The game itself is not very long, on Easy it took me about 11 hours of pure gameplay to beat the game with both Ghost and Niobe, while killing every single enemy. You can play on Normal or Hard if you wish.
The artificial intelligence is pretty bad. My biggest complaint is that fact that when you are fighting against a group of armed SWAT members in hand-to-hand combat, while you are punching or kicking one guy, the others never ever attack you. The just stand still and wait until you have kicked the other guy to death, making it very unrealistic. When you are Niobe in the driving levels, Ghost hardly ever shooting anything, which is pretty annoying.
Enter the Matrix has an interesting Hacking option, which puts you in control of a system that is showcased in the movies. You can explore this for a while, even though I had to use the internet for guidance, and can take a look at all of the weapons and cutscenes in the game. You can also cheat with it, with the invincibility and all weapons cheats being very popular. You can also unlock an extra mission, and if you are very good at the Hacking option and have beaten the game, you can unlock a powerful sword and use it. Unfortunately, I was not lucky enough to unlock it myself.
Also, with the Hacking option you can uncover something that is very useful, the multiplayer mode. The multiplayer mode is just seven or so one-on-one battles that involve kicking and punching only. You must have a friend to fight with, and these battles are fun for a while. The matchups include Ghost vs. Niobe, Trinity vs. Niobe, Cujo vs. Vlad, Morpheus vs. Agent Smith, an old Chinese sewing lady vs. an old Chinese guy, a cop car vs. a firebird card (bizarre yet fun) and Ballarin vs. that Chinese guy. The Ballarin battle was very slow for some reason, while the rest very fast paced and interesting. Sadly, Neo is not available in any of the battles.
The primary reason for my original disgust of this game was the control scheme, the worst that I have met on a console game ever. First of all, the controls were inverted originally, and it took me a while to figure out how to change it to normal. Punching and kicking are assigned to the Y and B buttons, while X is the action button, used for opening doors, disarming opponents and putting away your gun. A is reserved for jumping. The directional pad is used for switching weapons. Now here come the problems, the left thumbstick is used to move and look simultaneously, which is a major pain and frankly doesn’t work, while the right thumbstick is for looking in first person view. The white button is for throwing grenades, while the black button is for shooting. Who the heck came up with the crazy idea of assigning shooting as the black button? Incompetent fools, that is who. Since Blockbuster does not provide you will the manual, I only found out that you can zoom in with X and zoom out of A, which made sniping much easier. The left trigger is for using your ‘focus ability’, while the right trigger is target lock.
The graphics in Enter the Matrix can’t be described with one word. The environments appeared to be extremely dull to my eyes, everything was either gray or black. When you are in focus mode, everything becomes dark grayish green. The characters were drawn very nicely, I really loved the SWAT team members, and how “cool” Ghost appears, with the glasses, black trenchcoat, and deep voice. Niobe is very detailed, everything from the hair to her trademark crocodile skin trenchcoat. The character animations were somewhat disappointing. The running looked pretty good, but the jumping looking ridiculous. Whenever they jumping in place, it looked like they were dancing and it was very goofy. When Ghost climbed the stairs, it looked like Tomb Raider 2, which is not a compliment. The guns were cool, but due to the dark environments, they all looked alike. The punches, kicks and wall climbing were awesome, as if though they were taken straight out of the movie. You could also perform some real neat tricks while in focus mode, my favorite being the focus, jump, forward, shoot combo, which sends you flying headforward and spinning in the air while shooting a bunch of bad guys, ending with you doing a mini-flip. Enter the Matrix was meant to be a game that looked cool, and that is exactly what was pulled off.
The camera angle was a little messy and you being stuck in a wall and not seeing anything was common. There were some glitches, although rumor has it that the Xbox version has less bugs than the other versions. One such annoying bug was when the bad guys walked were moving their legs, in running motion, but never inched closer to you, which gives you the idea that this game might have been rushed.
Enter the Matrix was created by the same pair of men that made the movies, so they wanted to give you the full Matrix experience. This was done by shooting a couple of hours full of Enter the Matrix exclusive real world clips, not seen in Matrix Reloaded. These scenes are sure to attract Matrix fans, as they truly are remarkable. Many cartoon cutscenes were made as well, thereby enriching the Matrix experience even more.
The soundtrack in Enter the Matrix is very stirring and compelling. The music is very fitting and added to the gameplay. I think that a few songs are taken from the soundtrack of Matrix Reloaded, as I own the soundtrack myself. The in-game sounds were done fairly well. Each weapon has a distinct sound when it is fired, when you walk over a metal surface, you hear a realistic clink, and when you hit an enemy, the sound that they emit is realistic. I am not an expert in the sound department, but I really liked the sound in Enter the Matrix. Also, the characters were voiced perfectly in the cutscenes.
Overall, Enter the Matrix is a very unique game. It has done extremely well saleswise, as more than 2.5 million copies have been to Xbox owners already, partly because the game was so hyped. The game itself is fairly short, and if you rent it you should be able to extract the entire experience without burning a hole in your wallet. The game is interesting, and the gameplay is repetitive yet amazingly fun, the sounds and music are incredible, while the graphics are nice but many glitches are apparent. If the game was released just a few weeks later, than most of these glitches could have been fixed, but Enter the Matrix was rushed to stores. I recommend this game to gamers above the age of 13 (mostly due to the mature rating). I recommend it to all that love a good action game, and this would be a perfect rent at Blockbuster. Hopefully the Matrix games to come will only get better from now on.
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