Enter The Matrix

Red or blue pill? Bennett Ring would rather take the arsenic pill than play this game.

Games like Enter The Matrix are the reason mags like Atomic exist. If it wasn’t for said magazines, you’d probably rush out and buy Enter The Matrix thinking if it was even half as good as the first movie, it’s still going to be a kick-arse title. And then you’d be feeling a mixture of both betrayal and extreme anger after laying out $109 (yes, $109!) for this fetid, abortion-left-in-a-bucket-in-the-sun-for-a-week, of a game. . .

When you first fire up ETM, it’s hard not to be impressed by the overall Matrix-ness of the game. Yes, it really will feel like you’ve just slammed a 6in metal plug into the base of your neck, and can pull off moves that even Superman would be envious of. However, within minutes you’ll soon realise that it isn’t a plug for the Matrix jacked into your central nervous system; but a cheap wooden skewer wrapped in Aluminium foil with the dregs of a chicken satay stick still dripping from the crinkly bits.

Being a Matrix game, you’d expect to be playing the central hero of the films, a certain god-like character that goes by the name of Neo. Nope. You have the choice of playing as Ghost, the resident gunslinger, or Niobe, a tough chick who likes nothing more than to drive cars at insanely high speeds. Once you’ve chosen your character, you’re stuck with that avatar until you finish the game. Playing as either character can make each level a very different experience. For example, during the levels based on driving missions, as Niobe you’ll be doing the driving, while if you play as Ghost, the abominable AI takes care of the car negotiating as you hang out the passenger window and blow stuff up. But more about the retarded AI later. . .

Much like the Die Hard games, ETM has three distinct modes of play. Most prevalent is the third-person action scenes, playing very similarly to Max Payne, but nowhere near as good. Then there are the drivey bits, and finally the flying bits, where you take control of the Osiris. Sadly each of these game types suck just as hard the rest. Three crappy game types do not a good game make.

After seeing the Matrix rip off in 3DMark2001SE Pro (the lobby scene), which was developed two years ago, we had high hopes for the visuals in Enter The Matrix. When the opening scene reveals a car with octagonal wheels, we knew that things weren’t looking good – literally. Probably the biggest disappointment of the whole game, the graphics in Enter The Matrix are quite literally shocking. Everything has a chunky, blocky feel to it, with incredibly bland and repetitive usage of a handful of textures. The motion captured animation goes some way to redeeming the woeful modelling, but even this is ruined by some severe clipping problems. It’s rather funny to watch a guard fly across the room after your spin kick misses him by several feet. . . guess he was just scared you might actually hit him, so faked it to avoid bloodying his pretty face. Speaking of faces, enemies are grouped into generic models. So all cops look identical, as do all SWAT officers -- in all, there’s a remarkably small number of character models. Walking into a room with five identical bad guys reinforces the notion that you’re playing a crappy game.

Crappy graphics would have been acceptable if the gameplay was mind blowing. And the gameplay does blow one thing -- a herd of mountain goats. The control system is quite frankly atrocious, making us question whether or not the developers have ever actually played on a console. The camera tends to get lost on corners or present you with the worst possible viewing angle. Level design is incredibly plain and boring. The driving model looks like it was a straight copy and paste from Outrun on the C64. I’m sure the AI code for ETM took up all of 100 lines, both friendly and enemy -- it’s about as dumb as AI can get. The only redeeming feature of the gameplay is the cool moves you can pull off when using ‘focus’ (think of the bullet time in Max Payne), allowing you to do spinning kicks off walls, cartwheels and other assorted funky stuff. However, after watching the same move for the hundredth time you’ll soon realise just how few of these special moves there are.

Yet after reading this, people are still going to buy Enter The Matrix -- probably for the 50 minutes or so extra Matrix footage filmed at the same time as Matrix Reloaded. But is it really worth paying $109 for 50 minutes of mostly boring, conversation-based footage? Hell no. . .

We had high hopes Shiny could pull off a successful Matrix game, especially after it was reported to cost $30 million to develop. After enduring ETM, Shiny has proved itself to be a money-hungry, franchise-destroying monster, releasing one of the worst movie tie-ins the gaming world has ever seen.