The movie Matrix Reloaded has just been released, the buzz everywhere is, “Have you seen it?” “What do you think about it?” “Can you understand the stuff toward the end?” “Can’t wait until Matrix Revolutions is released!” The Wachowski brothers have created a cult-following, and frankly speaking, hardcore fans aside, who doesn’t want to go “bullet-time” and kick some serious behind. The game, Enter the Matrix, promises to deliver gamers, and fans of the Matrix, some serious kung-fu/gun-ho action within the Matrix universe, with additional movie footage shot exclusively for the game, to provide a “complete, all-encompassing” Matrix experience. When first loading the game, you get that feeling that you’re tumbling down the rabbit hole and entering the world of the matrix, but once you start the game, that cool matrix feeling is replaced by true frustration and disbelief.

Gameplay:
The story is great. If you like the Matrix and have already seen the Matrix Reloaded movie, you’ll enjoy the story being told from another perspective. For those who have seen the “Final Flight of the Osiris”, you’ll understand fully the reason why Niobe and Ghost are doing stuff in the game. And yes, as promised, the game delivers the whole Matrix experience to a new interactive level. There are three control schemes, but none of them are adequate. Control scheme A is the most simple and the easiest to get use to, having the “focus” mapped to the left trigger. Scheme B and C have “focus” mapped to the left thumbstick, meaning you have to click it down to activate, which is a pain when you encounter levels which require jumping across buildings and which if done incorrectly, will result in death and a restart from the closest save point. Control scheme C is the best out of the three because of the strafe function, mapped to the left and right trigger respectively, but then again, having the focus button mapped to the left thumbstick is simply a hindrance in terms of controlling the characters. If the gamer could customize the controls to his or her own liking, then the limited pre-set control schemes wouldn’t have mattered, but with the lack of customization beyond switching between the 3 available one, to me, that screams irresponsibility from the developers.

Graphics:
Both movies up to date, Matrix and Matrix Reloaded have raised the standard of cinematography to the next level. The special effects, the action sequence are simply ground breaking to say the least. But that effort doesn’t translate into the game at all. The graphics are reminiscent of older generations of console games, not the ground-breaking, earth-shattering cool effects in the movies. The environment is dark and dreary, as it’s suppose to be, the liberal amount of “matrix-green” color has also been used to good effect, but that’s about it. The textures are average, nothing to point and say, “cool.” The character models are what makes the game suffer the most in terms of graphics. They look like puppets with joints at odd angles. When I first saw the preview for the game, I commented on how they run funny, but since it was an early build, I thought the problem would be fixed before the game was finally released. Unfortunately, that was not the case, the characters, both Niobe and Ghost, run with their elbows at awkward angles and hands with all the fingers glued together. The ninja chop hands also translate to the fight scenes and make the punches seem very awkward. The very disappointing score for graphics is especially true for the Xbox version. Being the most powerful console on the market, the Xbox is capable of delivering beautiful, breath-taking graphics. But from this game, gamers would think that the game is on a lesser console. For those who say that the graphics are on the level of PS2, I couldn’t disagree more. The PS2 is also capable of delivering astonishing good graphics with careful programming, even though it may not be the most powerful console, hardware wise. I can only assume the mediocre graphics is simply lackluster effort from the developers. Final word in terms of graphics, even Max Payne (Xbox version) didn’t look as bad as this.

Sound:
Nothing special here, the sound aspect of the game is neither good nor bad, just average. The music suits the mood nicely, but there are some instances where the background theme music changes abruptly simply because you triggered it by entering a pre-set location. The sound effects, in general are okay. The sound effects of bullets whizzing by, hitting the wall or other materials is nicely done. The sound of tinkering glass is quite real as well. But the annoying effect of the characters climbing on ladders is simply grotesque.

Longevity:
Die-hard Matrix fans would definitely want to go through the game at least twice, playing as Niobe and Ghost. But that would be about it. In addition, this being a single player game, gamers can’t spar against one another using cool focus moves or the like, which severely limits the “have friend come over and play” factor. As for going through the game more than once, besides using different characters, I fail to see the point, there aren’t many secrets besides the hack codes and that’s about it. Coupled with the frustrating controls and the mediocre graphics, it’s simply isn’t enjoyable to go through the game again. But hardcore gamers would perhaps enjoy going through the game more than once to simply perfect their “focus-moves” derived from back-flipping off walls and cart-wheeling while unloading lead.

Round Up:
For those who are die-hard fans of the Matrix, proceed with caution. You might want to rent it first; or play it at a friend’s who already owns the game to see if you really want to put down the cash. The exclusive footage might be reason enough to own the game, but if you’re looking at “Enter the Matrix” as a game and nothing more, then it may not be worth the full price. On another note, if you have noticed, recently Infogrames changed its name to Atari, to bring back a sense of nostalgia to older generation of gamers. In a way, they followed their new name by giving gamers a game that has mediocre graphics, frustrating controls, average gameplay, and almost no replayability. Were it not for the Matrix license and exclusive footage, this game wouldn’t be on the radar at all.