Enter the Matrix Review





Developer: Shiny Entertainment Publisher: Atari
Release Date: May 14, 2003 Also On: GCN, PS2 and Xbox

Ever since GoldenEye on the N64, no game based on a movie has been able to be very good. Some games, like Spider-Man and some Star Wars games have been okay, but nothing that match the greatness of GoldenEye. Then comes Enter the Matrix, which had a lot of hype during pre-release. It was both written and directed by the makers of the Matrix trilogy. They made sure everything looked the best that it could to resemble the Matrix universe the best as possible. With an off ramp basically of the Matrix Reloaded, you are Niobe and Ghost of the Logos trying to help out in anyway possible. Could they be the next big thing since James Bond or the biggest bust ever in the movie gaming world?

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Enter the Matrix looks very well done in the beginning. Not many gaming companies get to use the actual actors/actresses that are in the movie for designing their games, but that is not the case for Atari. They worked side by side with the actual cast and directors in order to create the greatest likeness possible. Both Niobe and Ghost look almost exactly like their life-like counterparts. The cops and agents are not so lucky. They are very poorly done and have no detail at all, especially the cops, since every single one looks the same as one another. The environments in doors look real, but outdoors looks like complete trash. Luckily, the only parts in the game that are outdoors are the driving missions and there are only two of them. You can barely tell the difference between the guns sometimes. They all pretty much look the same except for the sniper rifle that has a scope.

The voice acting is well done for all of the main characters in Enter the Matrix. They got to use their actual person to portray their voices in the game, but all the cops and people running around are not very well done at all. Not that many games have these people done; it could have been a lot better if it was. The guns sound decent, but not great. They used the basic noises you would have heard on GoldenEye back in the N64 days. The bullet rounds dropping and hitting the floor are a nice touch and the music was remixed and redone well to tie in with the game. All of these melodies are heard in the movie, but sound just a bit different to give it that extra flavor. Why have hamburgers when you can have a steak?

Enter the Matrix is basically a beat-em-up, shoot-em-up 3rd person action game. It combines arcade style fighting with a twist of the bullet-time slow motion seen in the Matrix movies. The guns auto-lock to the nearest target around, allowing you to fire the gun and aim at your desired target, unless you switch to first person mode and aim yourself. The game is fun, yet repetitive. You walk into a room, beat everybody up, then go into the next room and repeat. Boss battles are okay, but not the greatest. They don’t require much skill to defeat and are just thrown in there to change things up and take a time-out from the normal boring game. Bullet-time/focus is cool to use in heated gun battles to see all the bullets fly by, but there is one flaw, when people use focus, they believe that they are invincible since every time in the Matrix movies you see this, the characters never get hurt. This is not true in ETM, if you don’t keep moving, you will be shot and killed. If you find your health is running low however, find a hiding spot and it will regenerate on its own. This is good for after a gun battle with low focus; which also regenerates.

There is no multi-player in Enter the Matrix unfortunately. Fighting your friends would seem kind of fun, but Atari didn’t think of this obviously, since most people would find fighting your friends as fun. Also, with all of the different people in the Matrix, you can only control 2 characters that you barely ever see. At least have some secret people in the game like Neo, Morpheus, or Trinity. The hacking feature is well betrayed seeing as once you figure it out; you can hack into the actual game and make things easier for yourself. This would be awesome if it wasn’t so hard to figure this stuff out. Overall, nothing here really attracts the people other than the title on the box, which is why it has sold so much to begin with.

Overall, this game is really weak in length. Enter The Matrix can be beaten on any difficulty in about 3-4 hours tops. Once you beat it on the hardest difficulty, you’ll want to throw this title out in the trash, since you will never touch it again. Why play a game that lacks two-player action and has repetitive game play over and over again. It’s not really worth it, especially for the fifty dollar price tag. This is a rental title only, unless you are one of the people on the block that likes to collect every game out there. For budget gamers who only want to buy good titles, move along; this isn’t the game for you!

Graphics: 8
Sound: 8.5
Gameplay: 7.5
Creativity: 7
Replay Value/Game Length: 3
Final: 6.8
Written by Shawn Review Guide

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