The Matrix Online Hands-On - Getting Started

Go into a massively multiplayer game and you'll usually find one or more of the following: a persistent online world, the ability to create a character you'll develop over time after successfully enduring battles and quests, other like-minded players to join you in your adventures, or elves. In The Matrix Online from Monolith, you'll find all but one of these (and we'll let you guess which one). In the game, which is based on The Matrix motion pictures, you won't play as a virtual computer character. Instead, you'll play as a real live person...who is playing as a virtual computer character. That's right. You'll take the role of a person recently awakened from the embryonic tanks of "the Machines" (the killer robots with whom the humans struck an uneasy truce in the third and final motion picture) who stays jacked into a virtual world where martial arts, small-arms fire, computer programs, and leather pants are all commonplace. The game is currently in a beta test state, and we're pleased to announce that the leather pants work great.

For the moment, you start out a new game by creating a character and customizing his or her five attributes (belief, perception, reason, focus, and vitality, which currently govern your character's abilities to use special powers, fight in hand-to-hand combat, hack programs, perform stealth activities, and survive battles, respectively) with a character trait that boosts one attribute and penalizes another. You then choose your character's appearance, male or female, from a pool of appropriately "dark" and "edgy" choices, which include sunglasses, knit caps, overcoats, and the aforementioned leather pants.

This is followed by an introductory cinematic sequence in which you're "fished" out of the clutches of the Machines by the character Link (played by movie actor Harold Perrineau Jr., who portrayed the character in the movies). The sequence involves a few fancy computer screens on which Link fiddles with his ship's online interface before he spots your character wandering around a city that resembles a modern Earth city from the 1990s. Once you're fished out, you're given the option to run through a series of tutorials that cover the basics of early gameplay, which involve combat, quests, and your inventory. When you take your first step into the Matrix, you'll even be greeted by a lengthy, and cryptic, speech from Morpheus, played by none other than actor Laurence Fishburne.

There are three primary ways to battle, and you'll need to be skilled with at least one of them to survive a virtual world infested with computer exiles, machine agents, and other enemies. The first and most well known is hand-to-hand combat, which you initiate by getting close to your enemies (and which you can actually use to disarm them if they try to pull guns on you). Hand-to-hand combat includes four basic attack types: quick, power, grab, and block. However, you can also learn advanced combat techniques in schools of martial arts like kung fu and karate, as well as learn some dirtier tricks like good old-fashioned head-butts.

Different attack types have different qualities (quick attacks can "daze" opponents to set them up for advanced attacks, for instance), but your success in the round-based battles depends on random results that are affected by your character's skill levels. With each round of combat, each time you or your enemy attacks, the game generates a number for each of you. Whoever draws the higher number successfully attacks (or defends). As you may have seen from previous videos released from the game, the hand-to-hand battles involve plenty of punching, kicking, backflipping, and other flamboyant fisticuffs you'd expect from a game based on The Matrix.

The second way to battle is by packing and employing heat. You can carry pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, and assault rifles--among other weapons--to blast your enemies either from a distance (using "free-fire mode," which lets you fire without engaging a specific enemy in combat) or up close (using a quick/power/grab/block system that resembles hand-to-hand combat). As of the time of this writing, hand-to-hand fighting styles and guns seem about even in power (this isn't real life after all...just a simulated version that the Machines want you to believe is real), though at this time, free fire seems to let you get the drop on enemies from a distance, thus putting you at an early advantage.

The third way to battle is with computer programs, which make heavy use of the "reason" attribute. Hacking not only lets you craft items, but also lets you battle with computer programs that barrage your enemies with data. This is represented onscreen by a variety of flashy special effects that involve the trailing number streams so commonly associated with the movie logo, as well as other brightly colored particle effects that recall the motion picture Tron (though in a good way). Hackers are a bit like the game's equivalent of sorcerers. They waggle their fingers to produce elaborate, otherworldly effects that can blast their enemies into oblivion. However, they can also craft clothing with hidden slots to hide extra ability enhancements. (And, yes, this even includes the much-sought-after leather pants.)

Once you've figured out the basics of combat, you can head off to the vast, foreboding city in which all characters "live." Here you either fight random battles with enemies that appear on certain streets (which is similar to the groups of thugs found in NCsoft's 2004 game City of Heroes), or you engage in quests. You'll have no shortage of quests to start out with, since you can use your characters' links to their "operator" to get an ongoing set of missions, which can include such objectives as talking to specific characters, picking up and delivering items, escorting VIPs to safety, or assassinating key targets. All quests are handled in a three-part log that gives you a description of the quest and lets you know which objectives you have and haven't finished. Quests also place the location of your next objective on the game's mini-map, in addition to placing a floating cursor off in the distance that counts down how far you are from your target (again, similar to City of Heroes).

In addition to the basics, there's more to exploring this virtual-construct world than just kung fu and experience points. There is also item and clothing crafting, along with nightclubs and other venues that serve as player meeting spots where you can chat with other players about such pressing topics as how passé leopard-print cowboy hats are. All the game's activities take place in a huge, four-part city that resembles an amalgam of such famous world cities as Hong Kong, New York City, and Tokyo (remember, this is a reality that the Machines guessed would be believable based on what they learned from humans). The world is filled with towering skyscrapers, and occasionally it rains. The world of The Matrix Online is bleak, stark, and grim, which perhaps stands to reason, considering the cataclysmic events of the third motion picture.

The Matrix Online is clearly attempting to distinguish itself through its setting, decor, and unusual combat models. The game has been in a beta state for some months and will be released later this year. For now, be sure to watch our exclusive new trailer (linked above).