The Matrix Online

"A great MMO for fans of the movies and fans of the genre alike."

The Matrix online (MxO) is a game that had a lot of hype from fans of The Matrix movies, and MMORPG fanatics alike. The game has flaws, but it has originality also that makes it stand out from the rest of the MMORPGS on the market. It is an exciting game to be a part of. Be warned, this game requires a very good computer to play. This may be the games biggest flaw.

Graphics: 9/10

When you turn on the graphics to the highest possible setting, they are fantastic. The surroundings all look real. Everything is just as I imagined it would look in the matrix world. There is even a green tint that worked so well in the movies. There are two drawbacks in this section. The first is that you need a powerful computer to experience these awesome graphics. Around a gig of memory. Luckily, I have this, so I cannot complain, but I realize that not everyone does. This may mean that you may not be able to see the same beauty as I do. The other drawback is that the buildings, inside and out, get repetitive. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on how you look at it. From a players point, it may bore you to go into the same looking apartment over and over during missions. But then again, everything is supposed to be similar or the same in the matrix. It was made by machines, and this is how it was probably intended by them.

Sound: 9/10

The sound effects in this game are incredible. You can hear the fists smashing into faces and the feet whacking heads. The sound effects are some of the best I have heard. I just can't get enough of hearing the fists whizzing through the air and landing on its target. The guns are also very good and believable, however each gun class (pistol, shotgun, rifle and SMG) sound the same. The guns in the class may be different, but they will not sound it. This isnt a big problem because they still sound awesome. The flaw in the sound is the background music. While it isn't bad, its just... the same. There are various techno tracks taken from the movie that I did enjoy originally, but after hearing them so many times, I just tune out the repetitiveness. Fortunately, the game has an ingame radio. You can listen to the game supported radio station of Radio Free Zion(RFZ) that not only plays good music, but will give news as to what is going on in the game, so if an event starts without your knowledge somehow, and you have RFZ open, you will soon find out.

Controls: 9/10

The controls are pretty easy to master. There is a standard WASD for movement(or you can use the arrow keys) so it is similar to an FPS in that way. There are also buttons that you can press to bring up things like the map and missions menu, etc. This will come in handy and will be used often. There is also a hotbar which you can set things like abilities or weapons or tools to. to activate them you just need to click on them or press the corresponding number. This is also very useful. Other things, like picking up loot, or $information(the games currency) or opening doors are usually done with the mouse. It should not take long to figure out the basics of controls.

Starting off: 8/10

You start off in the game as a human. You get to choose exactly how you will look. You choose things like hair, body shape, tatoos, skin color, hair color, and clothes. There are so many options that it is very unlikely you will run into someone exactly like you. You are then given a choice for your Matrix Alias and your 'real world' name. You also choose personality types, such as troubled intellectual or true believer. These boost one attribute and take away from another. After you choose all that you are found by Niobe who give you the choice to take the redpill or bluepill. Once you take the redpill(assuming that you do of course), you will see a brief cinematic that implies you went through the same process as Neo did in the first film when he was awoken. You then go through the Tutorial. It is very helpful to do this, so you can learn the basics of combat amongst other things. After the tutorial is finished, you get to jack into the matrix. The only flaw here is that the tutorial does not cover the whole ability deal, which may be somewhat confusing to first timers of the game.

Combat: 9/10

This game has an original way of fighting in the MMORPG genre, called interlock or close combat. This was a risky move to make, coming away from the standard click on the monster and your sword swings, but I'm sure glad they made it. In interlock, you and your opponent each choose an attack. The standard choices consist of Speed, Power, Grapple and Block. Speed tries to get in as many hits as possible, Power tries to get in powerful hits, Grapple tries to throw you off balance and just plain throw you, where block boost your Inner Strength and rids you of any downgrades you may have. The other choice is to use an ability, which use inner strength. I will go more into this later. Once you have decided which move you will perform(you have a matter of seconds to make your decision, more than enough time) there will be a roll in which you will get a number. If your number is higher than your opponents, you will hit him. If their number is higher than yours, they will hit you. Your number roll will increase when your level does, or by using tactic boosters or other objects. During interlock, you can use your fists, or you can use a gun. The animations that are made for successfully hitting or being hit are whats most incredible. It is awesome watching yourself kick so much ass in these fights. It's even more awesome when it slows down into bullet time for a slow mo beating. That being said, the best has to be the animations for the abilities. In most games you level to get better, in this game, most of my motivation is to get a new ability because they look so damn cool. The flaw here is that after you are constantly fighting, the animations begin to get repetitive.

There are other ways to fight in this game besides interlock. For example, the guns can also be used in free fire. This is pretty easy to explain, as it is just you using your gun on your opponent. You must wait a certain amount of time before you can fire your weapon again. Like I said, its pretty easy to explain, but a very necessary part of the fighting system. The other main way to fight in this game is via hacking. In this, you upload viruses into other players.

Inner strength is what you might refer to as mana in other games. You have a bar displaying your inner strength, and it will decrease when you use an ability. Run out of inner strength and you cannot use an ability. Luckily it regenerates.

Ability Trees: 10/10

One of the best parts of this game would have to be the diversity. You can switch what class you are in a matter of seconds. Honestly. You're not stuck with being a soldier the whole game. Remember in the original movie when Trinity had Tank upload the info to her on how to fly a helicopter? All you need are the abilities and the cash to buy and upgrade them. You just need to open the menu and choose which ones you want loaded. you can go from a hacker to an operative in seconds. If you decided you need to code something, then go for it. You can become a coder in a matter of seconds.

There are also many branches in the three main trees. Operative goes from spy or soldier. Spy goes to infiltrator or assassin when Soldier goes from gunman to martial arts. Even after that there are many more branches. In Coder you can go from Code crafter to even AI crafter. That is when you make yourself guards to fight for you. Hacker can choose from patchers or viroligist, awhich also have many separate branches. There is a lot of diversity here. You dont even have to stick to one tree. You can be part hacker part soldier if you like. The only restriction is your memory. You can only hold as many abilities as you memory will allow. You memory will increase with each level.

Coding: 8/10

I've heard people bash this system, but I don't know why. Sure it has some flaws, but it is still an excellent system. I love how you dont have to go about finding someone to code something for you, you can do it yourself. Just upload the coding abilities and then you can code things. However, unless you are going to code an ability, you will need a recipe. For example, if you want to code a specific pair of shoes, you will have needed to decompile it first in order to learn the recipe. Fortunately, all you need to do is get an item decompiler, decompile it and there you go, you have the recipe. All coding will require Code Bits. These are pretty easy to come across. NPCs will drop them, and you will also gain them when you decompile things. The only complaint about this is that I constantly seem to run out of certain code bits while I will have others in abundance.

Story: 9/10

This game is made so awesome because of the story. We get things like exciting live events, new cinematics, and even actual changes in the environment. For one of the last events, we had gangs replaced by fake agents for days. Events will shake the foundation of the game for the duration of the event(usually 5 days). They are also extremely fun and highly anticipated. One of the draws to this game is that anyone can change the course of the matrix, regardless of level. This is true. I attended this event where people were looking for code shapers for their faction, and when I was a lvl 15 or so, I found one. There was only one around on my server at the time. I had the opportunity to change the whole event at that time, but unfortunately I messed it up. I was supposed to lead him to a place, but lead him to the wrong one, so I lost him. The point is that regardless of your lvl, or even play time, you can change the course of the game. In a big way or small one. If they were to make a move based on the history of this game, they might have to cast someone to play your character. How sweet is that?

Missions: 8/10

Missions are extremely easy to get. They are the main way of gathering experience(XP) in this game. There are many types of missions you can do. You start of doing critical missions for Zion, but you get to choose another organization if you wish after a period of time. Doing missions will gain you XP and $info. You also gain reputation with your organization, and lose it with the opposing organization. Even when an event is not going on you can still make story history by carrying out missions for Morpheus or someone else that you follow. These missions are ideal for any kind of player, casual or hardcore. You can choose small, medium or larger missions as well as easy, medium or hard. You can solo them fairly easily or go with a group. The only downside is that they tend to get repetitive after doing too many of the same ones, but that goes for most MMOs.

Customer Service: 10/10

At first, this game did have many bugs. But that goes with any recently released MMO. The devs in this game are fantastic. They have fixed most of the bugs in the game now, and have even upgraded many things to make it much smoother. There are constantly new patches to upgrade and fix things. The devs listen to the people also. About a week ago, they introduced a new format of mission XP. People didn't like it and complained. They listened to us and compromised a new format in less than 2 days that everyone liked. Just yesterday, I encountered a bug that made me invisible for some reason(it was actually a lot of fun, but thats not the point) anyway, I submitted a petition and in a matter of minutes, they had replied. I went to go watch a movie thinking it would be about 6 hours before any reply, but when I checked back, they had replied in 3 minutes. I did what they said and they replied again in about 3 minutes. They care about the community like no other MMO.

Replay/Value: 9/10

I have been playing this game for about 4 hours every day for a month and I haven't gotten in the slightest bit bored yet. Infact, I am still discovering more things and areas. There are a lot of live events scheduled down the line, so the story will continue. The only thing against it is that when you reach the lvl cap(right now it is 50) I cannot imagine that there would be as much to do. Sure you will still need to get money and things, but not as much need to play. The player vs player would be most fun for you at lvl 50, but pure pvp can only go so far.

Final thoughts:
This is a great MMO. Fans of the matrix series are going to love this game, even if it is their first MMO. MMO fans will enjoy the breath of fresh air also, as it is a lot different from most MMOs, but similar enough so that they will know what to do and still feel at home. This is also a great game to start off your MMO life. It is my third MMO game, but easily my favourite. Overall, I give this game a 9/10, because it is a very good game, but does have minor flaws that may dissuade some people from the game. Also, you should think about gettin at least 756 RAM to play this game, for it will not be as enjoyable on 512.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/03/05