The Matrix Online

"this is one of those MMO's that you'll want to avoid unless you're impressed by repetition"

I originally played this game in beta. I had tons of glitches, including: pathing errors, graphic glitches, sound errors, and various gameplay issues. Considering the trend in games nowadays, I quickly realized that very few of these problems would be fixed by release. Now it is about two years after the release. Since I had a station pass, and the game was less than $20, I decided to pick it up and see what Sony had done with it since its acquisition. Needless to say I was less than impressed.

Storyline:6/10 Part of the initial selling point was the storyline that they planned on developing.completely absent within the beta test, their resolution of this promise was to release a 30 second movie every two to three weeks or so. These movies utilize nothing more than in game graphics to protray some afterthought plot lines. Some of these are actually somewhat interesting though they just simply do not last nearly long enough.

Gameplay: 5/10 The gameplay is less than stellar. You literally have a very very very good taste of what it's going to be like for the next 50 levels within 10 to 20 minutes of game play. Combat is exceptionally repetitive every 10 levels or so you may qualify for a new combat style. And while combat is rather cinematic, you quickly realize that in close combat per style there are only three to five different combinations of moves which are repeated over and over again. Considering that there are only for basic martial arts styles, (which can be advanced over time) this means that usually you're going to get rather bored with what you're using pretty quickly. The main good point though however, is that the crafting system, called coding, is fairly simple to get into yet extremely diverse with what you can create. Essentially there are only three classes. These three classes stem off of the base class called awakened. There are coders hackers and operatives. Coders more or less focus on the creation of items and abilities within the matrix. Hackers, branch off into two major occupations: the nuker,and the pet class. Operatives, have two major skill branches.The first is the unarmed combat branch. This branch contains a minor branch which may be useful I've never tried it that contains, more or less,a thief wannabe. The main focus of this branch however is the soldier. You can focus on martial arts, each martial art also has a further advanced branch which gives you more moves in extra attacks that you can use in combat.The other major branch is gunmanship. Essentially you choose between three different major gun types and you can hit better with the one you're specializing in. All of that variety said though you can easily spend a couple of days simply getting one extra slot your program memory. This means that practically speaking, only every five levels can you really enjoy a major shift in what your character can do. This is not very significant, because regardless of what you're specializing in, you have to put up with the same five combat maneuvers every time you get into a fight. Guild raids were put in as an afterthought. And considering the sparse population on the servers you'll be lucky if more than three or four people in your Guild will be on at the same time. The game is mostly solo and considering the type of game it is they should've just gone ahead and made it a single player game and put in a multiplayer system similar to Diablo two.

Graphics: 8/10 This is where the game kind of shines. At the time of this review, most average to higher and machines can run the game with most of the options on and still experience at least a 30 to 60 FPS. With everything turned on your going to need a very high and system however with at least 2 GB of RAM and a very new video card. The sheer amount of clothing and customization between the characters is something that I have simply not seen in any other massively multiplayer online game. The only real gripe that I have with the graphics is that most of the landscapes look more or less identical. You cannot simply load up the game and then figure out where the hell you are. Even after playing the game for over a month and a half I still have a hard time figuring out where the heck I am. The in game at function doesn't really help whole lot. However I'll have to say, when first logging in all the graphics pull that really weird stuff that you see at the end of the first matrix movie where Neo sees nothing but code all over the place.

Sound: 7/10 Much of the music is pulled directly from the movies. When you are just wandering around without a mission to do, the music is some generic techno crap that you had never heard before from any of the releases. On missions however,all of the music is grabbed directly from the movies. During combat the sounds are more or less generic but the impact of melee combat really transfers very well. However it suffers from the same repetitiveness that the graphics and gameplay do.

Replayability:3/10 Ugh, this is where it really stinks.you will never need more than one character. I cannot stress this enough. While it is rather innovative that you can completely unequipp all of your abilities, it literally means that you can pick and choose whatever type of class that you want to play at any given time with your only character. If you feel like going out and to combat in whatever capacity that you choose simply make sure that you have all of the skills that you need and go to town. If you want to be a coder so that you can make abilities so that you can jump into any other class, simply had to the nearest telephone booth unequip all your skillsand then reequip your coder abilities. Same thing with hacker or awakened abilities. While it is nice that you can change your character to suit the occasion, once you hit the level limit,you have practically explored every aspect of the game and unless you enjoy the community which is sparse at best there is absolutely no reason to continue playing.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/13/06