Enter the Matrix

Matthew Preston is Kung-Fu fighting... Hoo! Haa!

Time to jack-in, join Neo and Trinity and give Agent Smith some major trouble... Why oh why didn't I take the red pill? Atari has the answer.

Infogrames has relaunched itself, Atari is reborn. What a way to relaunch yourself, jump into the Matrix universe and give everyone an excuse to "live" the film. Now, before I continue, many of you will already own the game or have read a review. Many a web site has already slated the game on various grounds, mainly by comparing it against the latest PC games. My answer to this is to review the game from a different view, mainly a gamer, but also as a film buff. The game does suffer a lot from the console-to-PC compromise that is occurring these days. Let's face it, games are expensive to produce and if you only have to do it once then it is going to cost less. Consequently the visuals are not the best they could have been, I've seen worse though and I have to say I am not sure where the four CDs of data went? Still, the game is real fun and anyone who attended this year's Jagfest UK will know all about that...

The game is identical whichever platform you choose to own, PC, Xbox or PS2 so controls are a minimum to learn. I have the PC version so I had jolly fun updataing my system to run the game. It needs DirectX version 9 and compatible drivers for both your sound card and video hardware. The nice thing is that the hardware specification is not that high and most modest PCs these days will cope. You will benefit from at least 256 MB of RAM as the textures are quite large.

The first screen you will see when the game is run is the DirectX console from where you choose the screen resolution and other refinements. I think this is where many a reviewer has gone wrong and accidentally selected the low texture button. This forces the game to run in an extremly low texture and polygon mode making the wheels of cars almost square and curves practically non-existent.

What follows is a video and sound onslaught reminiscent of the film itself, cool! The Matrix zooms into view, wham the title page appears, very cool!

There are two games in one here. You can go on and play the arcade game or try to crack the Matrix itself at a command prompt, similar to the old DOS mainframe games of old, great fun and many gamers have overlooked this real fun game in its own right.

Getting back to the arcade game, selecting a new game gives you the choice of playing as either Ghost or Niobe. Choose carefully here because Niobe has to do the driving later on in the game and it is quite hard to drive a car with a mouse.

Choosing a character blasts you into the Matrix with the screen focusing to a single dot, wham, you're in, cool! There is a small animated short with Ghost and Niobe talking to each other, then the scenery gradually builds around them and they speed off in an American muscle car to the postal building. Now it's up to you.

I have to say I play an awful lot of first-person shooter games and this has a habit of making them quite easy to play. The keyboard layout is a standard WADS system giving you a third-person perspective and control with the mouse. Something new is the "focus" key that acts a bit like "bullet time" in Max Payne. This is where reviews have totally missed the point. You can run around doing basic punching and kicking and get through the game, but set the game to a high level and you must learn the key combinations to pull off some really cool moves. The game has used some amazing motion capture to generate some really cool Kung-Fu moves. As someone who enjoys Kung-Fu for both self defence and a way of keeping fit I must say that the programmers have taken the film footage and done some amazing looking stuff, but both Ghost and Niobe are using quite an open style of Kung-Fu and apart from the agents a lot of guards just stand there and get hit, a lot! Not very realistic but it does look cool! Amaze your friends and pretend you're Jackie Chan!

While I am on the subject of cool moves, the focus key gives you access to running up walls and some of the acrobatics of the film. Take a look at Ghost doing a sideways flip while fighting against Trinity.

A lot of time has been spent on making the backgrounds look dark and moody, even inside a building it has the feel of the film. Most objects are breakable and the use of light in the game is used to great effect. I did notice some tearing in the game graphics engine, but it does not spoil the game at all. There is often too much going on to worry about that. I must mention the great pumping musical score that goes with most levels. As a fan of rock music it is fun to hear actual rock music playing in the background and not some watered-down session stuff. This adds to the game and makes it feel even closer to the film.

Instead of just producing a movie tie-in, the game blurs the first film into the second, making for an individual story line. There are extra scenes that have been shot during filming the movie "Matrix Reloaded" and these have been used in the game to link one level to another.

By far the weakest part of the game has to be the driving part. As Ghost you wildly shoot at things while the car goes all over the place, as Niobe you attempt to drive an impossible car with the mouse. However these levels are quite short and maybe I don't like driving games too much?

Having played the game all through I was disapponted to have done it in a couple of days, but then I do play an awful lot of these games. The important thing to remember here is that I could not tear myself away from the game. I admit it I was addicted to the game the minute I switched on the PC. No matter what the critics say, I witnessed the game's magic at JagFest UK, where the pumping music and mad visuals gathered a huge crowd. A couple of youngsters had to be literally dragged away from the PC while playing it, it's that addictive!

If this game is a look into the future of things to come from Infogrames, sorry, I mean Atari then all I can say is "Wow!" because it has fulfilled what I look for in a game: fun, great music, fun, Kung-Fu, guns, car chases, fun, amazing visuals, did I mention that it is also fun?

I just can't wait until they release an engine for designing your own levels, then fun really starts. On-line gamers will have to wait for the next Matrix release from Atari, this game is strictly aimed at the single player and for that I commend them. Many games these days are built around the "on-line experience" leaving the single player with a weak alternative, this game redresses the balance.

mpreston@myatari.net

MyAtari magazine - Review #1, July 2003