Enter the Matrix (XBX, GC, PS2, PC)
Jack into the blockbuster movie tie-in.
By Susie Vee

PLATFORM: XBX, PS2, CG, PC

PUBLISHER: Atari

DEVELOPER: Shiney

GENRE: 3rd-Person Shooter

ESRB: Teen

SCORE:

Talk about hype gone wild. Perhaps more hyped than the Matrix Reloaded movie itself, this new game is far from being as good as promised or as bad as the critics say.

Largely a 3rd-person beat-em-up title, Enter the Matrix, is sadly a few years too late to properly use the bullet time concept the Wachowski brothers popularized. In the meantime, games like Max Payne and Dead to Rights have already done it to death.

With more live action video than we’ve seen since 1999, Enter the Matrix features footage shot on the set of the Matrix Reloaded movie, mostly starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Anthony Wong as Niobe and Ghost, two minor characters from the film.

The plot ties in the movie, as well as some of the Anamatrix animated shorts. With little attempt at telling the backstory, you’ll be lost unless you’ve seen all the movies and animated shorts. But, the game does offer us some additional insight, and worth playing through for Matrix fans for that reason.

We hoped to see more of the main cast, but they are relegated to very brief walk-ons, usually in footage copped from Reloaded.

The main problem with the game, apart from the generally unoriginal gameplay, is the rushed look and feel of the whole project. Despite a couple of years of massive hype, the game looks ugly, with blocky textures and stilted character animation. One wonders if this has anything to do with the simultaneous release of Enter the Matrix on all three game consoles, as well as a PC version at the same time.

The controls, in any version, are not very intuitive. Even worse, character movement feels watery and disjointed. You never really feel like you’re in control as you button mash to knock your way through wave after wave of anonymous foes.

Hand-to-hand features lots of cool Matrix-style moves, but the gunplay is a chore, lacking the finesse of the movies. Even drawing or holstering your gun is a hassle.

Overall, if it was not connected to the Matrix franchise, this would be considered a mid-level title. Not great, but not terrible. But with the Matrix brand name behind it, we expected so much more.