Enter Matrix Pc at Amazon
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You are offered a red pill and a blue pill. You are told that if you take the blue pill you will wake-up and do not forget not one thing in regards to what has just happened, if you take the red pill however, your life will modify eternally and that you will discover reality. Are you bold sufficient to take the red pill? Having become conscious of something called the Matrix through his illegitimate actions as a computer hacker, Thomas Anderson, beneath his computer hacker’s name of ‘Neo’ was ultimately contacted by Morpheus someone Anderson had himself been seeking assuming that Morpheus was the one person who would be competent to tell him what the Matrix was. Morpheus’ drive to find Neo is based on the fact that he believes that Neo is ‘the One’, is it coincidence that NEO is an anagram of the word ‘One’. The ‘One’ who will be capable to fetch an end to the war amid man and machines, a war that has seen mankind unknowingly enslaved to be not one thing more than mere batteries to supply energy to machines. Neo was brave sufficient to swallow the red pill and found himself awakened and freed from his neurological bonding to the Matrix, a gigantic computer scheme simulating the world as we recognise it and providing those who ‘live’ in the Matrix with the illusion of touch, sight, sound, smell – everything they have around them. Those inside the Matrix have no idea that it’s not one thing more than an illusion, nor do they have any idea that there is a rebellion being waged by the few survivors of mankind who live in the reality of Zion outside of the world of make believe that is the Matrix. Morpheus is one of these rebels and they may operate inside of the Matrix by reconnecting themselves neurologically. Inside the Matrix they may operate with superhuman powers but they are continuously chased by the Agents; intellectual programs who enter the Matrix in-order to protect it from the rebels and who possess closely boundless power. The Agents, led by Agent Smith appear as humans dressed in a highly stylised FBI Agent fashion (think Men in Black) and as they are linked directly into the Matrix itself, Agents may transform and take over any humane form. Awakening to the truth of what has happened to mankind, Neo joins the rebels and with Trinity and Morpheus as continual companions they embark on a number of adventures that result inevitably in the destruction of the Agents and freeing of mankind. The Matrix movies make outstanding cinema. But are you brave sufficient to swallow the red pill and adopt a Matrix movie theme for your next costume party? I’ve just had a thought (oh, the pain), bowls of red and blue candy (Smarties) would be a good twist, better if you offer them to your guests as they arrive – hopefully all in costume they will have to take the red ones. OK, numerous simple rules, wearing a costume doesn’t mean you may lead tall buildings (hang on that’s Superman) and more significantly it doesn’t mean that you may get involved in a lot of highly stylised martial arts without getting injure and as for dodging bullets forget it. BUT a few tricks may appear to make numerous of this possible. Dodging bullets: Well, OK a picture of you appearing to stop the bullets. There is a fantastic scene towards the end of the primary Matrix movie where Neo in discovering his unfeigned powers merely stops the bullets from hitting him by keeping up his hand. A reasonable fun shot would be to buy a plastic bullet belt with removable bullets, superglue very fine clear fishing line to the bullets – say 8-12 to fill the shot, attach the fishing line to a square piece of card that may be fixed to the ceiling and adjust the layout of the bullets to look clustered and group facing the spot where ‘Neo’ will be. In the film the shot was set in a hallway so close to a wall would be good. Some experimentation with the lighting will be required in order to make the bullets visible. The set is ready. Your guests dressed as Neo, merely assume the position with hand outstretched palm pointed to the bullets. When you’ve captured the effigy download it onto your computer ‘remove’ any fine lines left by the fishing line and input galore ripple effects around each bullet to give the right appearance. What a memento to send your guests after the party. And of course this works evenly well for all of the agents and hey why not for Trinity, Morpheus. Any guests who come in costume as the Twins could have a series of frames in motion as they procedure the power of speed in motion almost without any delay altering position in the Matrix. Having taken the shots, layer them, ghosting them through time (oldest has most ghosting) giving the aspect of rapid movement. For the costumes themselves, most on-line merchants who sells goods at retail have a selection of wholly licensed Matrix imagination dress costumes from the stunning full length flowing coat worn by Neo through to the very sexy black PVC/leather coat worn by Trinity. Clearly these are the main characters but Morpheus and the Twins are also available as are all of the stylised sunglasses favoured by most of the characters. For any Agent, including Agent Smith, a black suit, white shirt, black tie and black shoes finish with accessaries of shoulder holster, semi-automatic pistol and obligatory sunglasses ought to do the trick. And this is a perfective costume for any person who doesn’t actually like the idea of dressing up as it is simple and taking off the glasses makes you look like any other humane in the Matrix. In the main, the main characters inside the Matrix; Neo, Trinity and the Agents all had slicked back hair and hence a degree of time with the hair gel will be required. To finish the look for the Twins, there are long dreadlocked wigs available – without doubt or question a number of couples costume themes subsist here; Neo and Trinity; the Twins and any number of Agents. Most helpful customer reviews 15 of 16 people found the following review helpful. It’s possible I’m being a bit too harsh. Then again, Infogrames – scratch that, make it the renamed company Atari – spent reportedly (according to BusinessWeek) around $80 million US (including the purchase of Shiny Entertainment, the developers) to create this cross-platform extravaganza of mediocrity.
4 CDs and 3 gigabytes of installation love later, it’s high time to finally play this highly anticipated game. In essence, Enter the Matrix is the Matrix Reloaded Sideshow, unraveling bits and pieces of the movie’s plot that got no or very little celluloid time. I won’t reveal any of it here except the game starts out with an attempt to retrieve the drop-box package left in the Matrix by the crew of the Osiris, the ship featured in the anime DVD tie-in, the Animatrix. The package, later revealed as a video message, contains intelligence information that the machines are boring their way to Zion, the rebel stronghold in the “real world.” This information is then revealed in the movie.
The interweaving of the plots between the movie, the game, and in a few parts the tie-in anime DVD, is really one of the bright spots here. The plot of the game unfolds in conjunction with the movie, though really not much of the real plot of the movie is really revealed, which can be disconcerting, seeing that the game is said (I never timed it) to contain about 70 minutes of footage shot during filming of the movie. When you finish a level or get past something important, you’ll see more of the footage – or footage of an in-game cut scene, which can be really annoying.
Players can pick and choose which character they want to play, Niobe or Ghost, and the game is somewhat different, depending on the character. For instance, in the driving scenes, Niobe drives while Ghost shoots. At another, Ghost acts to distract enemy snipers while Niobe navigates around them to get inside a power plant complex.
Much of the game therefore consists of a behind-the-back third-person action game that really resembles Max Payne. The 3d environments are, like the rest of the game, a mixture of good things and bad things – most of the environments seem empty and very nondescript, while others (typically smaller environments) are well-crafted and detailed, featuring polished marble floors and the like. A few feature destructible objects and structures, though they seem to have no real purpose except to make players say “wow that’s cool.”
Gameplay is very combat oriented; you’ll frequently encounter a host of human civilians, guards, police and military types, as well as the occasional agents and other rogue programs. Enter the Matrix offers a variety of weapons to use, as well as a fair number of hand-to-hand combat moves. For instance, you have your standard hand or kick-type attacks and combos, as well as disarming attacks, behind-the-back attacks, and so forth.
On top of all that, there is the slow-motion “bullet-time” Focus mode you can enter, which allows your character to do more fantastic or hard-hitting moves, aim better, run on walls, and other nigh-impossible things. You only have limited focus points that regenerate slowly after time (health is the same way incidentally), so use it wisely.
The use of weapons can be a bit of a problem – in default third-person mode aim is very much accomplished by an internal auto-targeting mechanism, so you don’t really get to aim but aim generally, your character takes care of the rest. Since enemies go behind cover frequently, a number of shots will typically go astray. This means going to first-person mode, though it hardly feels interactive at all – there’s no recoil, just a stream of boring bullets; remember Duck Hunter? You can’t move forward or backward in first-person mode either.
Since combat is important, the interface should be equally up to the task, but it isn’t. In fact it feels clunky at times, and the third-person camera switches to inconceivable action-camera-style views and other angles at the worst moments, sometimes even blocking your view. It sure helps that the enemy won’t try to attack you while doing these super-cool moves.
All of this would sound cool generally, but there is a lot of things that really drag this game down. The driving sequences, on a whole, really [stink]. It’s hard to conceive of a worse gameplay mode Shiny could have put into this game. The use of Focus mode suddenly makes everything very choppy, while it should be smooth and even – like Max Payne. Some levels feature unlimited hordes of people to fight; others have the typical console-game boss creature. There is only level-based saving, no in-game saves. Some of the stupid plot points of the Matrix Reloaded make their way into the game, more than once. It’s very, very easy to waste ammunition, and you’ll also spend a bit of time running away from something. Finally, there’s even an homage to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Okay, the tip system is very handy (though it gets in the way at times) and there is an entire Hacking mode which is devious and harkens back to old DOS days, letting you unlock things in the game before you get to them, if you’re good enough).
After tallying off some good and bad points, you can see where this is a pretty cool game, though it’s got so many negatives against it that it’s very hard to recommend. If you’re a Matrix fan, sure, why not, but maybe this is better served as a bargain bin game. Still… 80 million, for this? 53 of 65 people found the following review helpful. I recommend renting and trying it before you buy it. All your getting is a single player game (no mods, expansion or online gameplay) for a high price and not all that great at that.
Story is somewhat slow and confusing. I haven’t completed it yet so we will see but so far nothing to make me sleep with this game under my pillow. You are given tasks in the beginning but not told why or what for so you don’t understand.
Graphics were a disappointment on the PC. This game was made for consoles and the PC was an afterthought. Knowing this, the graphics will probably look fine if not ok on the consoles (probably look the best on the xbox). It would have been nice for the graphics to take advantage of PC video cards and processor power.
Sound is not a distraction and actually is the best part of the game. Adds to the mood but is more often instrumental taken from the first matrix. There are some times when the music is heavier and makes you feel more pumped up and ready to take on all the bullets. Best part of the game (which is sad)
Controls are wierd. Perhaps this is because of it being on the PC but I think even with a gamepad it would feel wierd. Your character runs EVERYWHERE. Kind of annoying when going into a tense situation. Guess your not suppose to sneak or be careful but go in with guns blazing. Which would be cool but the fighting is reduced to button mashing. There is no training center or dojo to learn how to master fighting, focus (bullet time) or shooting. Instead you are given ‘tips’ as you move through the game. The controls are clumsy and found myself at times with my back to ememy strugling to face them to fight. Seems the game would rather show you how cool you look than let you actually do something useful. Seems to be very big on looks but lacking on substance. 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Honestly, most of what you’ve heard is true. I’m still enjoying it, nonetheless! It’s not mind-blowing great, but it could have been if they’d spent more time on it. Still, it was an interesting experience playing a game so closing tied in with a movie.
Specifically, I’m impressed with what they did do right with this game: The graphics are really impressive in some regards, especially the players. The cut scenes are well done; the voice work and score/sound is great and the movie clips you get are also a nice treat. The hacking utility is a neat addition that I haven’t played around with much yet, and although Max Payne also utilizes bullet-time very well, Max doesn’t run up the walls and do back flips. He doesn’t do half of what these characters will do with just a little practice. All of the nifty moves in the Matrix from the wall-walk to the shooting cartwheel can be done. My favorite is when you fly through the air, spinning and shooting. The first time I managed to do that, I smiled and said, “Okay, that was cool.”
However, that being said, they could have done a lot better. The driving sequences are pathetic with a capital P! Switching between hand-to-hand fighting and shooting is somewhat annoying, but not as annoying as the first-person mode that’s difficult to get out of quickly. Furthermore, your aim in the game is absolutely horrid unless you use Focus, and even then it’s not stellar. It uses auto-aim and it’s absurd! If you come from the FPS world, you’ll be really annoyed and probably want to stick with hand-to-hand fighting. That was my biggest frustration and I can’t for the life of me understand why they don’t allow us to aim for ourselves??? It’s really not that difficult.
Also, the game is also a bit glitchy, so make sure you download the patch! It’s worth the download time if you have a slow connection.
All that being said, I’m still glad I own it and even though it’s not perfect and doesn’t live up to its potential, I don’t feel like I got ripped off like I did after I played Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring-another rush job. I’ll keep this one and probably play it again from time to time.
If you’re considering buying this for the Matrix fan in your family, do so-they’ll love it, just make sure their PC meets the system requirements and they have access to the Internet so they can download the patch. |
Enter the Matrix (PC) Review