Taking a walk through the history of computer games serves as an appropriate reminder that most games based on a movie license are crap. Goldeneye stands tall and proud as a shining example of how they should be done and the Blair Witch Project games had a decent stab at it as well, but these aside most other licenses are well, rubbish.

There are a number of reasons for this including the need for a cross-platform releases meaning most movie tie-ins are no more than poor console ports, although the strict deadlines needed to launch the game to coincide with the movie tend not to help things. All of which sets us up nicely for Enter the Matrix, which was supposed to reverse the trend and provide us with a game worthy of the films (well the first one at least).

Graphically the game isn’t much to write home about and could easily be passed off as a game produced a good few years ago. Whilst this can be explained due to the numerous consoles it’s also being developed on, this isn’t really much of an excuse not to take advantage of the extra power PC’s have. The inclusion of numerous FMV’s is a welcome one for once as the cut-scenes are well acted and feature actors from the film lending the game some welcome authenticity.

Unfortunately for Matrix die-hards you don’t get to play as any of the principal characters from the films, instead getting stuck with Anthony Wong’s character Ghost and his female sidekick Niobe played by Jada Pinlett-Smith. You can play through the game as either character and whilst their paths do invariably cross and there are different paths to be taken depending on who you choose to play it’s hardly worth the game’s claim that it is in-fact two separate games.

The bulk of the game is played in standard action/adventure style gameplay with a third-person camera and the genre traits we’ve come to expect. Added into the mix are all the cunning special moves and abilities that you’d expect from a Matrix game and obviously a variant on Max Payne’s bullet-time which itself was ripped off from the original Matrix film.

Although Max Payne undoubtedly does it better, the bullet-time mode (or Focus as it’s known in the game) is essential when faced with a group of enemies and also looks damn cool as you walk up a wall, flip over and take out three baddies mid-roll all in slo-mo.

Combat is a rather murky affair with an apparent 3000 different moves on offer although you’d be hard pressed to find more than a basic three: punching, kicking and throwing. As a result fighting opponents often boils down to that age old skill of button bashing and whilst the special moves that are activated often look impressive you never get the satisfaction that normally comes with pulling one off as you don’t really know how you achieved it in the first place.

Another smaller irritant we had with the game was the constantly regenerating health which may be ok over in console land but over here in the world of PC gaming we like to think we’re a bit above this, as health which is always regenerating makes the game much too easy to play through. Taken a battering? No problems just run off and hide in a corner until you’re recovered.

This means that the health packs that are scattered around the levels are useless and the sense of satisfaction that comes with completing a particularly difficult part is practically non-existent. Another nod towards console gamers comes in the form of limited save game points which are normally used to increase tension in games (Silent Hill, Resident Evil) but here it just turns out to be annoying as there seems to be no logic in the placement of these parts meaning you can be killed towards the end of a sequence of the game and have to re-play vast chunks over and over again before you can progress.

The objectives in most missions are mostly basic and normally involve simply getting to the end of each level whilst taking out as many enemies as possible. Some locations will be recognisable from the film whilst the rest are standard computing gaming locations like sewers and abandoned warehouses.

The impression that the development time of the game was severely limited in order to get it out in time for the films is further increased with the annoying bugs that pop up such as the loss of sound in cut-scenes and enemies which have a worrying tendency to walk into walls. You can see the meetings now. Look, just get the game out now, and we’ll worry about patching it later. Unfortunately for this particular game no amount of patching is likely to fix what is ultimately a deeply flawed game.

The gameplay tends to lean towards the repetitive so the developers have included some driving sections in the hope of bringing some much-needed depth to the game. Whilst these sections are fun enough to play through they are rather simplistic in execution and hark back towards the old-skool gameplay of on-rails shooters such as Virtua Cop.

Ultimately, if the game didn’t have the Matrix license no one would buy it. As it is, people will buy it despite there being much better games around in similar vein. There’s no doubting the production values that have gone into the game and as such fans of the films will probably find more than enough here to justify spending some hard earned dollar on, it’s just everyone else who will feel let down by the game which had the promise to finally shorten the gap between games and movies.

68%

Fanboys Only

Enter the Matrix Review

68%