You'll keep installing this game because it's the Matrix. And you'll keep deleting it because it's annoying.
But first things first. In the game we get to control either Ghost or Niobe, operators of the Logos ship. The story is placed somewhere during the events of The Matrix: Reloaded. Basically, you will understand the movies without even touching the game, but if you're a real fan, the title will show you in more detail how did Niobe and Ghost serve Zion before the machines attacked it. I can tell you right now that the story is nothing impressive, really. The game was directed by the Wachowski brothers, which is a plus, and it does contain dramatic moments, but its depth comes nothing close to the movie. Still, I think that the fans may be satisfied with it.
The graphics. They're both good and bad, it depends on what you focus on. Let's start with the good things. First of all, you can divide the game into three parts – the FMV cutscenes, which look just like taken straight from the movie, but in fact they're brand new footage recorded especially for the game (huge plus), the cutscenes using the game engine, and the game itself. Almost every animation in the game was done using motion capture, and the cutscenes were done in a professional studio under the eye of the famous brothers. Therefore, every time when we lose control of Ghost or Niobe and a cut-scene is triggered, we experience action scenes which look as professional as the ones from the movie. The actors move very natural, and when there's a shooting scene done in slo-mo, you'll quickly realize few games have as impressive in-engine movies like this one. The camera angles, flying projectiles – this all makes you feel that this is the Matrix. Motion capture also looks great inside the game during close combat. Unfortunately, when it comes to anything else in the game, it looks… funny. Running looks very unnatural, and when your character moves along a wall – I have no comment. The game suddenly becomes a mix of comedy and ADHD.
I've got two other serious accusations concerning the graphics. Firstly, detail. I simply cannot accept that the locations in the game look like freshly bought – always the same walls and floors, and furniture yet absent. What is the purpose of 50 rooms in a post office when most of them contain only a desk and a plant? The second flaw – marketing. I liked it in Max Payne, where you had those funny fake companies and satiric commercials coming from everywhere. But in the Matrix world there are apparently only three major companies: Powerade, Nvidia and Intel. You can't escape them and they don't make the game look more realistic. Green and grey ads on green and grey walls take the word "dull" into a new level. Other than that, I can say the character models are pretty well done. A whole TEN of them. Why does every enemy look the same? It's not an 80's beat-em-up, dammit! Dull, dull, dull.
But what about the sound? The music in pretty nice, as it's taken from the movie. But most of the time you'll hear songs in a similar mood, and it gets boring pretty soon. Also, I don't know if the music is trying to be interactive, but except a few moments it seems overdramatic. I know that running from one end of the room to another may be a thrilling experience when your legs move like a poor motion capture job, but please, leave the pumped action music alone until something actually starts happening! As for the sound effects, however, I am happy to announce that the makers of the game couldn't find enough time to screw this up. The bullet "swoosh" and "zing" are there as you miss them, you hear the flakes bouncing off the floor, and every kick in the face makes this satisfying sound you know so well but never have enough of it. The speech is very well done – you can hear the actors acting rather than reading, and it's the same crew taken from the movie. That's pretty sweet.
But enough of the appearance. We all know that we can treat it with a grain of salt when the gameplay is good, right? Right? Why am I smiling?
Although the beginning of the game may seem nice, you'll quickly notice one thing – the game is too easy. Just standing in one place regains your energy and concentration. The latter determines the time you can stay concentrated. While you enter this mode by holding the concentration button, the game enters slo-mo, you are a bit faster, better at aiming, you have a bigger spectrum of moves you can choose from, and see projectiles coming at you so you can avoid them. I like bullet time in games, and back then it was a pretty awesome feature. You can fight in two ways – hand-to-hand and using weapons. As I wrote before, the close combat moves look impressive, though the camera gets easily stuck in a weird position. But because the game is a shooter, you'd expect some weapons. So you pick up the first gun in the game and – oh my God. Since the game is a port from a console version, you can only aim horizontally, and you don't have any dot to indicate in which direction you'll be shooting. I suppose there's some auto-aim, as I've managed to kill somebody a couple of times, but generally your character sucks at shooting. You can enter first-person view, but this greatly restricts your moving capabilities and view. The mouse acts strangely and feels shaky when you're striving for some precision. When you're shooting from behind a shield or wall, you lose the control of the camera completely, so you can only press the left mouse button hoping to kill somebody. So you're standing behind a wall, and three guards are running through the corridor in your direction. So you begin to shoot. You hit the floor (!) five times and the surrounding walls also get punishment. Eventually you manage to shoot one guard in the leg before he punches you. The control is so awful, and it's not only during combat! You get generally so little ammo during the game, and the hand-to-hand combat is so much more effective that gunfight, that you better stick to kung-fu and forget about weapons.
The controls are also weird during running (too drastic movements + too lousy camera) and driving (no comment, this is hardcore). Generally, I find it very difficult to configure my keys for comfortable play. The buttons' functions are not efficiently planned. I wish I could play on my gamepad, but there's no support of it in the game.
As you progress further in the game, you discover that the game is too difficult. Forget what I said before. There are moments in the game where you get literally flooded by enemies. Although they're stupid, they have far better aiming skills than you and take advantage of the fact that you have a hard time of controlling your character as to face more than one foe. So you mostly die for stupid reasons and for the game's poor design. And the game never has the decency to tell you that sometimes the enemies will spawn forever, so you just waste time an ammo hoping it's going to end sometime soon. The flow of the game is so inconsistent. At least there's a save function. No, not a quicksave function. That would've been too logical. Instead of that, you can restart the game from the beginning of a level. Even though it takes less than a few minutes to get to the place where you died, you'll probably be so annoyed by the time you do it, you'll refuse to continue and leave the Matrix.
Actually, I was attempting to finish the game three times and always gave up. If only Atari spent more time on just one of the following things: enemy planning, saving, controls. If one of the three above was fixed, everything else would be less of a problem, and the game would be playable. But no – in an attempt to create a game for everybody, especially the Matrix fans, they've proved that license-based games equal to poor quality and pissed off all of their target audiences. There should be an uninstall option in the pause menu. I may have been a little harsh on some points in this review, but it's very disappointing that a game you want to play and finish sometimes just gives you the finger. Jacking out, Moto200.
GRAPHICS: 3/6 (x1)
Nothing impresive, and the detail level is terrible, but the cutscenes own.
SOUND: 4/6 (x1)
On the positive side, but could've been better.
GAMEPLAY: 2.5/6 (x2)
The game's suffering from weird controls and unconsistent difficulty level. It get's half a point extra because of the Matrix universe, bu that's about it.
FINAL SCORE: 3/6
Not recommened, Matrix fans should just watch the cutscenes on the Web.
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*[please note this is my first review in English, I'm very open to ratings, so tell me what do you think]