Enter the Matrix (PlayStation 2) review "I believe at least 90% of gamers out there in the world know about how bad movie-based games are. Just take a look at the Harry Potter games for crying out loud, and the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Examples like these tell us about the heinous atrocity that we get from playing such games. And then there was this, Enter the Matrix. The game is based off of The Matrix: Reloaded, in which I think was a pretty awesome movie, even though I've personally never watched the movie myse..."

I believe at least 90% of gamers out there in the world know about how bad movie-based games are. Just take a look at the Harry Potter games for crying out loud, and the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Examples like these tell us about the heinous atrocity that we get from playing such games. And then there was this, Enter the Matrix. The game is based off of The Matrix: Reloaded, in which I think was a pretty awesome movie, even though I've personally never watched the movie myself. I suppose the creators of this game knew that there simply HAD to be a game based on the movie. I believe they were thinking: ''Ah, this game doesn't have to be good! Let us rush it as quickly as we can with tedious levels and the such, but that won't hurt anything. It has MATRIX in the title! Haha!'' Shame on them.

So anyway I rented this game at Blockbuster, thinking from the cool cover that it'd be a great title, and then I went home and immediately turned my TV on and thought it'd be a blast. I was drawn in by the first real-life cutscene from the movie at the beginning. I was then disgusted to a certain extent by the massive loading time. And then I got to the first level. It was similar to kicking my grandpa, having him fart, and then him crashing down onto a piano. Really, it was. The camera system just drove me mad, I was quickly bored by kicking countless enemy's asses OVER AND OVER again. Not to mention there were so many loading times, such short missions, and the game was repetitive as hell. Bah.

The storyline of the game is average at best. It's still pretty lame to say the least. At the beginning you have a choice of two characters to pick for the game: Ghost or Niobe, two characters from The Matrix: Reloaded. The game starts out with your character in a post office, going to steal some box, escape from the police, and then get out. At some times, the character you did not play as will appear and help out. The game goes through hundreds (I am hardly exaggerating here) of dungeons with the police guarding them, and your characters just have to kick them senseless. The dungeons are usually extremely straightforward too. There really isn't much more to say about this game's storyline, except one thing: it is hard to understand and is therefore only average.

It's not like the gameplay is any better than the storyline either. In actuality, it is worse. Most of the game will be going through several dungeons, and occasionally between them, you'll get a scene from The Matrix Reloaded. And what is the bad thing about these dungeons? In all of them, there are just countless, tedious enemies. There are three ways to take them out: kicking them, punching them, and shooting them to death. Sometimes in a few levels, taking actions like kicking and punching will just use your character's health up. And shooting enemies is a total waste of time. Not only do the attacks do very little damage (except on bosses of course), but the guns run out so quickly that you will only be able to pull off a few shots. A decent gun would have about 100 in it...

Controlling your characters itself is a big chore too. Sure, there aren't that many problems with the controls, but the camera is awful. It always moves right ahead of you, and then you can't see that guy shooting you from the right side when you're trying to focus on some enemies right ahead of you. When you finally get to the right side and decide to kick that guy to death, the police officers right ahead of you before will get right on you and shoot you, and the percentage gauge of health on the left side of the screen drops like hell. Finally, you can't hold down all the enemies and then even more arrive! Soon, you get hit so much that your character finally dies. How rotten.

The enemies themselves aren't very imaginative either. Just about the only enemies are the police officers, the people at the post office, and the occasional guys that you'll find around here and there. There are also extremely difficult enemies called the Agents, who are total nightmares to fight. They just follow you, and you try to run away but the horrible camera is fixed on the enemies and you can't see where you're going, and together with the graphics, you'll just fall off of a high area and die at the bottom. There are also occasional bosses you'll fight. With Ghost, they are usually helicopters and with Niobe, just some occasional person. Most of the enemies (especially the helicopters), can just be shot down with a gun and destroyed in a few hits. It's a shame.

Enter the Matrix is extremely short too. If you aren't put down by occasional long rooms or the loading times, this game could be completed in one short day. And if there were NO loading times at all, the game could be rushed and finished in five hours or less. But now that I'm at it, I'll speak about the loading times. They are awful. You could probably give a dog that's been rolling in a wet puddle of slop and mud all day on the streets a huge bath and then dry it within a couple of the loading times that this game features. And sometimes it's a huge waste too, cause in one level, the exit is right next to you. Others are just kick a couple enemies and that's one level completed.

The PlayStation2 has a tendency to make game's really easy too, and Enter the Matrix is no exception. You could probably just use Focus whenever you were even the slightest bit worried, jump over any gunfire in the process, still keep it held down until you got to the enemies and then kick and beat them senseless, and finally just demolish practically every level in the whole game. If you aren't put down by certain features of the game like its choppy control, mediocre graphics, or sheer boredom, you will have a hard time searching for the challenge that is to be found in this game. If there is any, it is in trying to look for the reason that you got this game and why are you playing it in the first place.

However though, Enter the Matrix isn't a 100% loss when it comes to gameplay. If you want to get out of being shot or if you want to be careful, there's an option called Focus. This slows the game down by a considerable amount, but all in all it makes your character move away from enemies quicker, and it also makes it easier to shoot, as well as the fact Ghost or Niobe can do some unique kind of moves, like doing backflips and huge jumps and the such. There's also an option called Hacking, where you hack into the Matrix, and sort of do codes like commands to do certain things. However, I never really did this option much due to its complexity but I suppose if you devoted time to it, you could understand it well. This feature could get really fun, but unfortunately these are the only two good points of the gameplay.

Graphics are not the best that the PlayStation2 has ever seen, and not on the rank of incredible either. The characters themselves do not look very... well... interesting. Both Ghost and Niobe look like pretty basic adult human beings. Ghost wears a blue-black suit and black pants, has a moustache and is male; and Niobe is dressed in red and is female. Those are basically the only differences between them. I don't really understand why in the real-time scenes from the Matrix: Reloaded, Ghost was white and in-game he was black. I'm not a racist or anything, but I just found it curious. Niobe was black in the in-game scenes too, but her face is a bit brighter than Ghost's. Weird. Both Ghost and Niobe ALWAYS wear sunglasses too. Why the hell is this? I just don't know. (I have never watched the movie.)

The area designs aren't very good themselves. This game just looks plain and repetitive. As I have mentioned many times, there are tons of places like a post office, houses, endless sewers, etc. Most places just have regular looking floors. In some places they change the floors in color, but that's it. They look cool at first but they soon begin to look annoying. The walls look pretty blocky too, and sometimes there are glitches where you can see right through them. The enemies look okay in some places though. The police officers look acceptable, and it's funny watching one of your characters (especially Niobe!), just kick and punch them to death. You can also see the enemy drop onto the floor and you'll see them dead as well. Graphics are in my opinion, only average.

The music and sound of Enter the Matrix are acceptable, and they definitely save the game from getting a lower score. Most of the music is pretty good, although they definitely could have put some more tunes in the game. There were about 10 or so pieces of music in the game, so seeing how long you have to hear the music, it definitely grows quite repetitive after a while. Still, it is good on the first or second times hearing it. The sound is a little better, and I have nothing to complain about here. Guns sound like guns, kicks and punches sound like kicks and punches, etc. The voices in the game aren't that bad themselves, and they're probably the strongest part of the game. Too bad there weren't more strong parts.

Overall, Enter the Matrix was below average. The storyline goes alongside the movie's, the gameplay is tedious, repetitive, boring, and the game just isn't fun besides the Hacking feature, the graphics are blocky and just plain dry, the music gets old quickly, and the sound is good. Good sound does not make a great game. What makes a game is its gameplay, and the gameplay sucked. It just... sucked. I recommend if you see this game and you are a hardcore Matrix fan, you might want to rent it. If you like the game, you can buy it. If you aren't a diehard Matrix fan or something, steer clear of this game. This game is a huge downfall for the PlayStation2.

Community review by gbness (April 24, 2004) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.