"Lackluster movie-based title"

My brother bought this game the day it and the movie came out in a rush of Matrix excitement. He got a free ''making of...'' DVD. He then saw the movie while my other brother and I played this game. The game is the quintessential ''rental-only'' game.

Gameplay -- To be honest, I think the ''focus meter'' which allows you to slow down time and pull off some neat tricks was reasonably well done. Using it, you can increase your accuracy with firearms, dodge bullets, make mighty leaps, float through the air, and deliver devastating hand to hand attacks. It nicely simulated the powers of the heroes, but still required some skill to use.

In fact, it's downright awesome when you do a wall run, flip, dive, and nail two dudes with your SS Shotgun, all while dodging their bullets, and land in front of another guy whose face you break with a massive roundhouse kick. This doesn't always work, however, and using Focus is no guarantee of success.

Major sections of the game are terribly repetitive. There's a lot of ''sewer-crawling'' which is highly unoriginal. The game sometimes asks you to save with great frequency. There are both live action and polygon cut scenes liberally placed throughout the game. The load times (on PS2 anyway) are atrocious. The game is very short--a few hours for each character (quite similar missions) should be all it takes to ''beat'' the game. The ending is an anti-climax.

Some of the missions just seemed goofy. We often had little idea where we were supposed to go or what we were supposed to do and sometimes just stumbled into the next save opportunity. I don't know if the movie (Matrix Reloaded, which I haven't seen) contains vampires, but the game does, and we had to do our best Buffy impression by staking them each in the heart.

Missions include trying to protect one or two other people by sniping their assailants, trying to follow an airplane from a truck, finding a baggage conveyor switch, blowing up fifty or more police cars on the highway, fending off sentinels, running for your life to find a phone while multiple agents are after you, taking down a couple of helicopters, fighting off hordes of vampires and taking on their boss, beating up on Trinity in a tranquil garden, and a whole lot of just making your way through one industrial area after another. The game is perfectly linear.

The controls are pretty intuitive after a little while. The hand-to-hand combat involves a lot of button-mashing, but it still feels pretty good to slap people around (even Trinity in one scene). The driving scenes, however, suffer from poor control and unclear objectives. AI is completely mindless. We got physically stuck in a couple spots and had to reset the game.

Overall, there is not a lot of innovation in the gameplay department. There is shameless tedium and monotony in large doses, however.

Story -- I have not seen the newest movie, and to tell the truth, this game has kind of spoiled my anticipation for that film. Oh, I'm not saying I now understand the story, because it's impossible to fully know what the film is about from the random splashes of cut-scenes contained in this game.

Your characters are Niobe and Ghost. You have an operator as well. I was really hoping these folks were just hired for the game; but no, they're actually in the movie as well. Basically, many of the live-action scenes come off as forced and amateurish, with just mediocre acting.

I don't know how well this game serves as a ''supplement'' to the film, but as someone who hasn't seen the film yet, I was hopelessly lost. Maybe that's to be expected; just know that the story in this game is nonsense if you haven't watched the film, while I can't comment on how cohesive it is if you HAVE seen the film.

Audio/Video -- I'm still not sure why my brother bought the PS2 version. There's a perfectly good Xbox sitting in the other room we could easily move. On the other hand, I'm not too sure an Xbox could do much with these drab graphics either. It's not that the graphics are awful, it's just that they look like something you'd expect to see in a first generation Dreamcast title.

For some reason, it was difficult to read the white text in this game. A whole lot of the texturing was dull and bland. Character models were acceptable but not great, while animations ranged from marginal to pretty cool. The driving scenes didn't stand out except for the fact that we finally got to see the sky and get out of the darkness below. There was a scene aboard the ship in the ''real world'' where we apparently had to fend off some sentinels which looked very smooth. The frame rate could get stuttery in spots but was mostly a non-issue.

In general, this was not a good or inspired-looking game, and certainly not a game you'd buy for eye-candy or to impress your friends. Then again, perhaps the PC, GameCube, and Xbox versions have something on the PS2 version.

The audio was mostly fine, although we did turn off the orchestral music halfway through and opt for our own tunes. It wasn't bad at all, it just seemed a little inappropriate at times, and, like the graphics, a little vanilla. Some of the combat sounds were quite visceral and satisfying, actually. In addition, there was some sort of glitch that gave an echo (unintentionally) to a few sounds here and there.

Replayability -- There are two characters with which to run through the game. Some missions vary between them, others are very similar. I think you'll have enough motivation to at least start the game over with the other character once you beat if with the first; but I doubt the game holds much in the way of true replayability for many people. Honestly, since you're allowed to replay any scene you've already beaten whenever you please, we actually did go back and beat up on Trinity several times after the final cut-scene, so there is that. But that's hardly enough to bring people back after a day or three of owning/possessing this game.

Buy/Rent -- I'm sure my brother regrets buying this game. There are many much better ways to spend $54, and some of them actually involve other video games. This is a rental, a game you'll burn through in a few hours, a game you'll get a few laughs out of and one which contains a few unique and even cool elements (the Focus meter and some of the moves, for example). On the used market, if you're a fan of the movie series AND of this type of game, and you can pick the game up for $20 or under, it won't dilute your collection too badly.

Overall, I wouldn't even have rented this game myself. I played it because it was there and my brother told us to have at it. And as it happens, it does absolutely nothing to change my opinion of games based on movie licenses. Please, do not buy this game new. Rent it if you must.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/21/03, Updated 05/21/03