Enter the Matrix

"Another commercial? No wait it's a PC game"

The most anticipated game of all times is finally here, you're going to play as Niobe or Ghost, and together they will try to beat the Matrix, which enslaved all human on earth by robots, but who'd save the game ''Enter The Matrix'' from its flaws?

Gameplay 7/10
The default control in this game is slightly uncomfortable, thus you'll have to use your mouse buttons and while you're doing that you'll have to use the Focus and running-jump-action all in the same time, at least the developers gave the players an option to change that, in my opinion, get a fine joystick in order to solve this minor problem.
Furthermore, when you're fighting with another character you'd be immediately switched into fighting mode, which gives us (the players) new perspective with the fast movements of the characters (same thing goes for the driving scenes with Niobe and Ghost), but I must say that you'd get use to those new angles, but aside from it, there's a variety of movements here (for each character of course),which truly proves that the directors of the original movie really put in an effort, and you'd admire it once you'll play the game.

Story 3/10
I thought this game could have done something with the known plot of the movie and combine it into something mysterious and unknown to those who saw the movie, for an instance, the PC game ''Blade Runner'' had the same plot as the movie, but the developers made a major twist in the plot just to make it more interesting, and the characters (we're still talking about Blade Runner, just to get my point here) from the movie itself were just mentioned or made a brief role in the game, unfortunately ''Enter The Matrix'' does the opposite in this case, all the characters from the movie and from the game (Niobe and Ghost) are playing together, which obviously spoils the movie, if the developers wanted a great story, they should have cut out all those superfluous cut-scenes from the game itself (though the quality of the clips is pretty good).
In short, the developers made a slight interest in order to make a completion of the movie, but they did it, in my opinion, all wrong! Therefore I think there's nothing new here that could astonish nor revealing new facts about the movie (after you've seen it).

Graphics 9/10
Finally! There's a new revolution here ladies and gentlemen, the details here are astonishing and a real-life alike, the characters looks even better than the players themselves, moreover, if you'll set the game on higher details you could see the reflection on the bullet when you'd do the focus option. Furthermore you could optimize particle threshold and the particle density options as you please, as a result, you'd get smoother gameplay and a good frames per second (FPS) score, and during gameplay you'd see your bullets comes out without even focusing it, the graphics of this game will take an advantage of your video card, so you better get a good one in order to play the game at its glory graphics!

Sound 8/10
I may not have a good surrounding system nor a good sound card, but even without these equipments you can still hear the sound of the bullets falling from the weapons, and the well-known punching and kicking sounds, and if you'll turn up the volume real high you could even hear the conversations of your enemies, moreover, the background music is pretty much similar to the movie (a completion of the movie maybe?) so there's no argument here - the sound is good but not revolutionary as the graphics of this game.

Replay 4/10
As I mentioned before, you'll play two agents - Niobe and Ghost, meaning: you'll play this game only twice maybe three at the most, but the true lack of multiplayer option really damaging the quality of this game, I finished it after two intensive days, the action of the game will keep your eyes attached to the screen, but if you saw all the cut-scenes (the movie-quality cut-scenes) then you'd see what I'm talking about, the game itself isn't long enough and most of the cut-scenes takes away from your precious play time, therefore the true gamers out there would be truly disappointing but I can assure you'd come back to this game just to see the character's maneuvers one more time.

Final Recommendation
Unless you're true fan of the Matrix merchandise, I suggest you should rent this game for the weekend, the game is fun, but only for a short period, the lacking of the multiplayer option is a major flaw, it seems to me that the developers wants you to buy this game afterwards see the movie and only at the end you'll have to buy the online version of this game in order to play with other users (outrageous isn't it?), but even doing so, they could at least put a two player option (since this is an action game) or maybe putting a good ending to the game instead of telling to the player directly: ''Go see the movie NOW!'', believe me dear developers we would have done that without you telling us so, but now that I've seen your true purpose of this game (commercializing the title Matrix) I've decided not to go and see the movie, after all I'm not rich! And I'm not the kind of person to be pushed by others just because they want me to this or that.
In short, this game wasn't a true waste of time, but it's still very disappointing, I just hope that other companies won't fall for that commercializing trick again, like Shiny and Atari did, because that hurts the player's trust in the company.

Overall 6.2=6

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/03, Updated 05/19/03