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Enter The Matrix - Patches, No Reviews? 96

Posted by simoniker from the enter-the-stealth-release dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out a patch for the PC version of Enter The Matrix, just a couple of days after its release, and a FAQ which rather horrifyingly orders you that "The Vampires should be dispatched in the rooms you find them in" to stop the game from crashing completely. If you add to this the almost complete lack of official reviews, do we get a still-decent game that simply happened to stealthily launch in the week of E3 (when nobody was around to review it), or a rushed license that's deliberately trying to take advantage of gamers who buy based on subject matter? Spoiler-free opinions welcome, especially from those who've bought the game.
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Enter The Matrix - Patches, No Reviews? More

Enter The Matrix - Patches, No Reviews?

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  • Crashing *completely*? (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Saturday May 17, 2003 @08:58PM (#5983375) Journal
    ...in order to stop the game from crashing completely...

    The article submitter has seen games crash *partially*?
    • I have seen that, and so must many others. If I start Metal Gear Solid 2 and set the graphics to full detail, it only renders one buffer correctly, putting garbage in the second buffer. This makes the game sort-of playable. Lowering the detail makes it completely playable - except from the f'cking keyboard controls, that is.

      System Shock 2 does the same thing: access the map and it starts flickering madly (depending on settings, driver, and the phase of the moon, as far as I can tell). I can still play, I

    • yes, if, for example, the game would still run after you didn't kill those vampires in the room they were in but be impossible to finish then i would count that to be a partial crash, the plot system crashing in this case if it was just that and not the whole game coming flaming down.

      or if the character just became stuck somewhere.

      pc games have had their share of 'intresting' bugs.

  • Googling (Score:5, Informative)

    by Michael's a Jerk! ( 668185 ) on Saturday May 17, 2003 @08:59PM (#5983381) Homepage Journal
    Honestly people, a Quick [tinnud.co.uk] Google [techtv.com] Search [iwantitcheap.com] will [gamersunderground.net] reveal [amazon.com] [videogamereview.com] All [cheatheaven.co.uk]

    • Re:Googling (Score:5, Informative)

      by rogueMonkey ( 669464 ) on Saturday May 17, 2003 @09:18PM (#5983471)
      None of those reviews are Official. They are user opinions, many of them from people who haven't even played the game yet (!). The lack of any real reviews is disturbing though. I'm used to having reviews before I can even see the game on the shelves...
      • Yeah, there's something definitely wrong here.

        I start with gamefaqs [gamefaqs.com], which usually has pretty good user reviews. NOTHING. Just posting to the message boards, but no reviews to speak of.

        Then I check out Amazon. Only a few reviews, but by people that OBVIOUSLY haven't played the game, since they pretty much just copy and paste the Amazon information.

        It's REALLY freaky. I've never seen a game where it's been out for days, but no reviews at all. Hell, when MGS2 came out, there were actual reviews on

      • Re:Googling (Score:3, Informative)

        by SuperRob ( 31516 )
        There were no reviews because most game reviews are written before the game releases, then posted in time for release. In this particular case, the game was intentionally withheld from publications/web sites in order to save the surprises for the movie release (and presumably, to keep the DVD footage from being ripped and posted on the internet early).

        Atari gave away copies of the game to the press at E3, so expect to see reviews soon.
    • IHMO, I prefer just going to this one page, Enter The Matrix Reviews [gamerankings.com]. I Really like Game Rankings because it lists links to various reviews by differant sites.

      For those who are too lazy to click the link, the average rating is 81% from 35 articles.

  • Don't waste your money (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wonko42 ( 29194 ) <ryan+slashdot@noSpam.wonko.com> on Saturday May 17, 2003 @09:00PM (#5983385) Homepage
    I bought it. It sucks. Graphics are terrible, gameplay is like a half-assed version of Max Payne (which was SUCH a better game), and the hour of additional footage is complete crap (not to mention it's all encoded in shitty low-quality DivX). Plus the game's performance is absolutely horrendous. That's $50 down the drain.
    • not to mention it's all encoded in shitty low-quality DivX
      - they spent all their pocket money making the game and couldnt afford the high quality divX encoder ;-)
    • the PS2 version kicks much ass. It was really intended for the console anyway, i think. *shrug*
      • I'm gonna have to second that. I'm gonna try and return the PC version for a copy of the PS2 version. It seems like it would control much better with a gamepad. Would probably also get rid of a lot of the graphical problems as the hardware is standardized.

    • I bought it for XBOX, and I can't stand it.

      I bought it mainly because all I heard (granted from the creators) was how cool their "Hacking the MAtrix" was going to be. I being a fan of that sort of thing believed them.

      Hacking the Matrix is nothing short of a simple "Do A, opens B, Do B, opens C, Do C, Opens D...". There might be a branch in their, and their might be a "you landed on on jail, go back to start do not collect 200 dollars".

      It _LOOKS_ like it's going to be cool, but it's _NOT_. And if your ear
    • What If I told you that the entire 'Animatrix' Episodes are available to view within the game?

      What if I told you you could play the game as Neo, Morpheous, or Trinity?

      Is it still a waste?

      This game is LOADED with extras and other cool stuff. The Warchowski Brothers are HARDCORE gamers and went to enormous lengths to make sure that you get your money's worth on this game.

      Of course, you'd have to use your brain a bit to find the hidden stuff I mentioned above.

      P.S. Read the PC requirements for this game
      • This game is LOADED with extras and other cool stuff. The Warchowski Brothers are HARDCORE gamers and went to enormous lengths to make sure that you get your money's worth on this game.

        It doesn't matter to me what character I play the game as. The gameplay is still crappy and not worth my fifty bucks. And I can download the Animatrix episodes for free.

        P.S. Read the PC requirements for this game before playing it. My money sez that you need to upgrade your PC.

        I never said the game was slow. I just s

  • Safari? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by DiSKiLLeR ( 17651 )
    Their websites don't even support safari! It loads up fine, then you suddenly get redirected to a page saying sorry, your browser is not supported, with links to IE, Netscape, and Opera.

    wtf?!

  • You know ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Coyote67 ( 220141 ) on Saturday May 17, 2003 @09:11PM (#5983436) Homepage
    I'd just like to say that I had to re-edit and dumb down the review cause it wouldn't go through the lameness filter. Big Words=Junk Characters.

    Ok guys, this is my review of Enter The Matrix. Hope you enjoy.

    The action is very well done. Combat moves look amazing. Try to think of all the combat moves that were done in the matrix. You can do them all. From neo's cartwheel gunshooting to trinity's cannonbal move. It really feels like you are controlling a zionian. The story is awesome because it starts right after the last flight of the osiris (the animatrix episode) ends. So it feels like everything thats out for the matrix is connected. Not a bad way to sell stuff imho. While you are enjoying the awesome action you also enjoy an amazing musical score. Its freakin amazing!! I have noticed that framerates get very-low in large area locations, but I think the recent patches will fix it. Its games like this that keep giving me a reason to say "I can live with windows and all its MANY faults as long as I can keep playing these games".

    I'm sorry if this reads
    weird, I've been doing
    bonghits all night.

    • Re:You know ... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Wonko42 ( 29194 )
      "I have noticed that framerates get very-low in large area locations, but I think the recent patches will fix it."

      The patch did nothing to improve my performance. In fact, after installing the patch, the game now crashes even more frequently than it did before, which was already too frequent. And whatever you do, for godssake, DON'T hit ALT-TAB while playing!

      • I don't know, I'm running the 1.51 patch with a crack so I don't need to keep the cd in, I have amazing performance. Its actually turned into a better game because of it. Moves are now smooth and when I use focus its not choppy at all. Also it alt-tabs just fine. However, there are some problems. For some reason by default with gamma on at any setting it goes to as dark as possible. I have to up the gamma through my gf's control panel. Other than that 1.51 is good :)

        • Re:You know ... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Yrd ( 253300 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @05:32AM (#5984820) Homepage
          I have no idea what version I have as I just installed whatever's on the retail disk in the UK, and it only came yesterday. My impressions:

          Upsides:
          The running/fighting levels inside the Matrix are great fun so far, there is little more satisfying in a game I've played recently than taking down five or six SWAT troopers armed with MP5s without breaking a sweat or losing more than 3% health.

          Health recharges, so you don't spend all week hunting for health packs. Fits in with the Matrix too - after all, you're as healthy as you think you are, right? Of course, they turn this off at critical moments...

          Graphics are generally good, focus mode looks great.

          Downsides:

          Where the graphics aren't good, it looks like Z-buffering errors. I'm hoping the new patch will resolve these, as they're the only real detriment to the game's quality. Shadows look dreadful at the moment, it's like when you have two surfaces in precisely the same place in POV-Ray.

          The first level (the only one I've played as both Ghost and Niobe so far) sees the same role for both characters. Sure, the routes are ever so slightly different, but why couldn't we get to play both sides of this mission? I was under the impression that was the point of having both characters. They'd better make sure they do that properly later.

          4.3GB of disk space??????

          Why doesn't it come on a DVD?

          And can we please have a training construct?

          The sound glitches from time to time. Popping noises etc, then some of the cinematics in-game go silent, so I have to have subtitles on to avoid missing anything. Restarting the game solves it, but it shouldn't happen.

          Oh, and you can't change any settings except control settings without dropping out to the main menu or to Windows. Thus finding the right gamma setting was a very tedious business.

          For reference, I'm running it on an AMD Athlon XP 2100+, under Windows XP Professional without SP1 (too lazy). 512MB RAM, GeForce3 Ti200 with 64MB of memory, made by Creative, using fairly old drivers (the early 4x series caused hang on boot, must check the new ones out).

        • Runs better, with the no-cd crack, you mean? Like Morrowind did?

          For those not in the know, Morrowind for the PC ran, on average, ten to thirty percent faster through the simple addition of a no-cd crack; we're talking real frame rates here. Stupid macrovision CD schemes.

        • I have often tried to "up the gamma" through my gf's "control panel," but she will have none of it. I must be doing it wrong.

  • Mixed bag (Score:5, Informative)

    by jwriney ( 16598 ) on Saturday May 17, 2003 @09:11PM (#5983439) Homepage
    Note, my comments apply to the version I've played, that being the XBox version.

    Well, the game has some really brilliant moments (running like hell as various civilians turn into Agents all around you), but there are a bunch of annoying glitches that pop up every now and then.

    * You can get stuck in walls, floors, and other geometry,

    * you occasionally run into invisible walls that you have to walk around (?!),

    * occasional odd physics things like your character wigging out when landing on platforms,

    * random annoying enemy spawns, usually right behind me where there's no way somebody could naturally have gotten there...

    Also the Metal Gear Solid style "hide up against a wall and peek around the corner" is really picky about what sort of walls you try to hide up against.

    Overall, what I've played through has been fun, but pretty frequently you'll run into some sort of glitch that is relatively insignificant but takes away from the experience.

    --riney
    p.s. The "hacking" interface with the DOS prompt is kinda fun.

    • Re:Mixed bag (Score:2, Informative)

      by y0bhgu0d ( 168149 )
      the random spawns are the only thing on your list i have encountered on the PS2 version...

    • Re:Mixed bag (Score:1, Informative)

      by h0mer ( 181006 )
      I haven't had any of the problems that you've mentioned with the Xbox version, however it has crashed twice. The first time, it just straight up froze along with the sound. The second time, I was in the airport, and besides the starting room none of the other rooms were rendered.

      Other than those two problems so far, I think it's a great game. The controls do take some getting used to, and the "lock-on" (if you even want to call it that) needs some work.

      From what I've read here, it sounds like the PC versi

  • Just my opinion... (Score:3, Informative)

    by ehushagen ( 658426 ) on Saturday May 17, 2003 @09:11PM (#5983440)
    I've just picked up the PC version, and finished playing through what seems to be the first mission. Here are some thoughts that I have so far:

    - The intro was awesome, featuring some video (DivX) from the movie

    - Controls aren't really intuitive. I dunno how to explain this. I've got a feeling it was designed with a console controller in mind, as compared to mouse and keyboard.

    - Very, very short intervals in between level loads, although the load times are really short.

    - Yeah, I'll agree with the NY Times on this one - the level design (so far) is pretty uninspired. There were a couple times where I ran in circles (under a time limit duress) because the level didn't give me a good... flow.

    - Voice acting is great.

    - The animations are pretty cool - I think they'd be a lot more fluid if my computer had a little more horsepower.

    - Awesome in-game cut scenes.

    - Great music. Sounds like it was ripped right from any of the movies.

    All in all, I wish I had bought it for one of my consoles instead, but I've definitely played worse games. My recommendation? If you aren't anti-console, get it for one of 'em, but don't play it till you've seen the movie.

  • Want a review? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phleg ( 523632 ) <stephen.touset@org> on Saturday May 17, 2003 @10:17PM (#5983725)

    I posted this on another forum several days ago.

    A word of note before we begin: I've only played a developers build. It's the complete game, and AFAIK, it's extremely similar to the one that's being shipped out for retail. There may be minor differences, but most of my beefs with the game are not ones that can be fixed through minor bugfixes.

    Save your money and spend the $50 or so on something more worth your time. Worth a rent if you've got that opportunity in your area, especially if you're interested in finding out the (supposedly) deep and intricate parallell plotline that only it will contain.

    As far as the game is concerned, it's somewhat like Max Payne, except catered towards the lowest common denominator. In other words, it's got piss-poor graphics (which run choppy anyways, even at mid detail, and are full of lots of bugs), the fonts are ugly as hell, the Matrix "screen" (green, reversed katakana characters sliding down the screen) is pathetically done (not just bad, but absolutely pathetic--I've seen screensavers do a FAR better job), the gameplay isn't too hard (if you stand for approx. 5 seconds, you start to regen health and "Focus" (bullet-time juice)), and the controls are clunky at best. For instance, there's no crosshair to aim while on foot (although there's a fairly crappy autoaim), in the car, your crosshair jumps 10 pixels at a minimum when you're riding shotgun and shooting, and in the car while driving, it handles like a souped-up Yugo on ice.

    There's a few interesting things however. Some of the moves you can do are downright nifty. However, they aren't nearly as cool after the fiftieth time you've used them on the same level. There's a nifty "hacking" mode available from the main menu. I've done a bit of tinkering in, and it's kind of fun. It basically drops you at a DOS-ish shell, and you tinker around from there. However, the keyboard tends to flit between being unresponsive (missing keystrokes entirely) or over-sensitive (typing letters twice). This wouldn't be so bad, except there's no tab completion (for us BASH lovers) and there's no command history (so you can't hit up or shift+up for instance, to recall the last command you typed). This makes it a bitch to type long commands, especially since you have to type full directory paths for everything (there's no 'cd' command). Once you get used to it's quirks, however, it's worth fooling around in. Finally, the FMV is pretty good. The acting's as good, or better than in any other game's FMV. Also, they used a good codec, so there's no blocking, bleeding, or other graphical glitches in the FMV. I have to say, however, that I've been unimpressed with the meager bits of story I've seen so far, although admittedly, I'm only ten or so levels in.

    I suppose had they had more time to work on it, it could have been an amazing game--one to go down in time as a classic. Alas, this was not the case. Also, in my opinion, Shiny was probably not the best developer to have chosen for the project. They aren't exactly known for their top-quality engines, and I would have far preferred seeing them use Max Payne's completely capable engine instead of trying to develop their own under limited time constraints.

    To be honest, I'm horribly disappointed. With the incredible franchise they've got going, I expected more. After being wowed by The Matrix, having heard amazing things about The Matrix: Reloaded, and having seen the incredibly well-done Animatrix episodes, I've been nothing but impressed with the franchise. I'd been expecting the world from Enter the Matrix, having heard that the Wachowski Brothers viewed it as just as integral a part of the storytelling of the Matrix as the movies were. Now I'm beginning to feel that that was just marketing bullshit.

    Rating: 4/10.

    From a post of mine later on:

    Interesting.

    I cranked all the details up to max and entered the game, just to see how the graphics looked with full antialiasing, max resolution, etc. Oddly enough, a

  • WTF? Did Dubya also start the Office of Homeland Video Games? Where does one go to become an "Official" video game reviewer?
  • opinions welcome, especially from those who've bought the game
    Oh, um...the guys in my dorm have had it for about two weeks now...is it OK if they post, seeing how they have, like, double the playing time of everybody else?
  • I have a lot of respect for the folks who made Earthworm Jim and Sacrifice.

  • MY REVIEW (Score:4, Informative)

    by JDizzy ( 85499 ) on Saturday May 17, 2003 @11:24PM (#5983987) Homepage Journal
    Ok I got this game today on an impulse buy, over at BestBuy while looking at dvd's. I has very high hopes for this game due to all the hype its generated over the past few months in development. I was lead to believe that the game was developed in in parralle to the movie, and they intermingle somehow. That might be true given the cinematic sequences everywhere in the game (aka sceens from the movie). Granted I've only gotten into the game for about an hour, and this is my knee-jerk reaction to it thus far. First off, the controls are static, and cannot be adjusted to my personal tastes. The Xbox version is designed around the s-controller, and that all fine and dandy if you have a late generation xbox, but I got an early generation that came with the bigger (original) controllers. It would be highly desirable to modify the layout of the buttons so that they made sense in my configuration. Secondly is the choice to go with a 3rd person mode, as opposed to a first-person shooter style. Granted the game actually can jump between a 3rd, and 1st person mode, but the 1st person mode can not actually do anything except orbit the cross-hairs around the character. To move (aka run/walk/crawl) *requires* you be in 3rd person mode. I think they only have 1st person mode for shooting weapons like sniper rifles with the true affect only achievable in FPS mode. The game doesn't allow you to arbitrarily save your progress in a way conventional to most other games, like pausing the game, and saving it. No, you are only given the option to save at specific check points in the game. The game is only a single player venture, which means there's no fun to be had in a death match with my friends!

    On the positive side of things, I can say that the game looks awesome! The lack of FPS is made up for in some really awesome character moves. Being able to put your characters back up to a wall, and peek around corners is refreshing. The punch/kick combos are enjoyable to mixup, and the matrix rule-bending is just like the movie; the characters have a bit of extra power in their kicks, and punches, and the style they use is like the Yee Woo Ping style kung-foo as seen in the movies. The music is good! I enjoyed listening to that techno band from Las Vegas (Crystal Method?) during the first sequence of the game, and I'm sure they got other good music too! The game is in High definition to the order of 1080i, and thats really good for an Xbox title. It might be the first I've seen go that high res.

    All in all I'm about 50/50 on this game thus far. As I've stated above, it really annoying to play with the controls configured they way they are, but the quality of the game seems to *almost* makeup for it. I definatly rate "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" much higher, but I guess they are two differnet types of games (apples/oranges).

  • Never, never, never... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @02:29AM (#5984491)
    ...buy a game before it has been on the shelves for about a month and you can read a bunch of reviews by magazines and real people. I violated this rule once in the last five years for Master of Orion 3, and it turned out to be crap. If a game is really good, you can afford to wait another three or four weeks; if it is bad, you're better off letting other people find out.
    • Or simply, never never never buy a game at all. They are all crap. They cost too much money, and take too long to play through. And they almost never work perfectly on my (or anybody elses) computer.

      If you absolutely need some games, download them from kazaa. The games that are easiest to find there, are the most popular ones, and therefore likely to be better than anything you pick up in the shop after reading a few reviews. Besides, they are more likely to be running at all, since they are cracked versi

      • I can't agree with your statement. Max Payne, Medal of Honor, Deus Ex were not crap. I could list many others. You say they cost too much money AND they take too long to play through? Most gamers want lengthy games. Paying $60 and getting 8 hours of gameplay isn't my idea of money well spent. They almost never work properly? Back in the early-mid 90's this was true but in the last 5 years I've found that the majority are pretty stable at release.

        Cracked games on Kazaa usually lack the sound and vide

      • "If you absolutely need some games, download them from kazaa."

        Yeah, I always find downloading .exe files from strangers to be a very safe thing to do...

        The last time I tried downloading a pirated ISO was when C&C generals came out - after my virus scanner had identified 1 virus and 2 trojans inside the file before the ISO download was 40% complete, I decided that installing the warezd version wasn't such a great idea.

        If you can't afford the latest and greatest games, wait 6 months and get them fro

        • "The last time I tried downloading a pirated ISO was when C&C generals came out - after my virus scanner had identified 1 virus and 2 trojans inside the file before the ISO download was 40% complete, I decided that installing the warezd version wasn't such a great idea."

          Must be your bad luck, I didn't have any problems at all. Generals is a fun game also.
      • IAAVGP (I am a video game programmer).
        I'd like to disect your argument, if I may.

        First, the issue of never buying a game. While that may save you some money, it is the reason why most games are crappy and require 12 bagillion patches. If we don't make any money on our products, we will not continue to make them. I make video games because I want to. But, if I cannot make enough to eat and live, I will find other employment. So keep stealing from us, and we'll keep turning out crap. You vote with your doll

    • Re:Never, never, never... (Score:4, Informative)

      by bmnc ( 643126 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @04:08AM (#5984676)
      ...buy this game for the PC. Its quite awful in its current state. 3 patches in 3 days is telling you something about the state of development its in. Its a beta release, period. A quick review follws:

      System: ASUS-A7N8X deluxe, AMD2400+, 512M 400MhzDDR, GF4ti4200 etc...

      The fighting is AWESOME, motion capture has been put to very good use, and its always fun, fast and fluid.
      Running, dodges etc are also very cool.

      Shooting is atrocious! Both in 3rd and 1st person, there can only be a few more painful games, with non-linear acceleration of the mouse and discretisation of movement.

      Driving is worse. The physics is crap, and the AI worse (esp. for Niobe who insists on crashing into all those nasty stationary things like buildings. She CAN hit the broad side of a barn!)

      The game has many "features" such as floating objects (this is the matrix after all) and invisible walls etc...

      The movies are divx5, but encoded poorly (everyone I know does a better job). The acting is crap, the dialogue stilted, the camera work boring. This is not the matrix ppl. Nor does it have ANY of the qualities of the films. The special effects are non-existant. When humans leave the matrix via hardline, instead of fading out like in the movies, the picture goes black for a second, and then brightens again: voila, the person has gone! These are special effects bought from the $2 shop.

      It was hard to follow the point of the campaign (ive only beaten it as ghost so far tho), and the frequent cutscenes don't really string it together. I've guessed whats going on in the game cos I've seen the movie.

      Only 4 boss fights? And all beatable on the first attempt?

      Crap DX7 graphics. Clipping and texturing problems all over the show. Shadows also buggy. There isn't much that isnt buggy. Low poly count. Lack-lustre textures. Poor, uninspired level design (apart from the chateau of the morovingian).

      Several other things that aren't very complimentary. Oh yeah, crappy camera "AI". If it can get it wrong, it will.

      Summary: A crap game with cool fighting. Don't buy it for more than US$15. Wait for the mod makers to take all those cool fighting animations and put them into a decent game. And Max Payne does better bullet time.
      • Shooting is atrocious

        Yes, it is, unless you use focus properly... then accuracy goes way up and you get to kill lots of things very quickly. Although aiming the sniper rifle is a bit of a nightmare.

        Driving is worse

        I've only done one driving level where I had to drive so far, as I'm playing through as Ghost so he's normally doing the shooting. But the car handled like a hovercraft or something stupid like that. Not a patch on the fighting levels.

        The acting is crap, the dialogue stilted, the camera work

      • "This is not the matrix ppl. Nor does it have ANY of the qualities of the films."

        That's what I've been saying about Reloaded all week.

  • This is what happens... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @05:50AM (#5984839) Journal
    ...when you actually enforce programming deadlines. This game was rushed to be out on the same day of the movie, but as we all know often it's simply not that simple with code!

    Lets hope they get it patched up pretty soon - I'm looking forward to playing it.

    Anyone know if it contains movie spoilers? I heard it's linked with the plot etc. so I don't want to play it until the movie comes out in the UK (21st)
    • It's got spoilers in it in a way, as the plot intermingles with that of the movie, so you get some kind of general idea of some of the plot... but not all of it, and the game is clearly meant as an addendum to the movie, because the primary plot feels very much like it's wrapped round something that's missing. That would, of course, be the movie's plot, so I'm glad I've booked tickets for the 21st so I can see it as soon as possible.

      So you may wish to wait until you get to see the movie.
    • I agree that making a very ambitious, multiplatform game under a strict deadline is just begging for problems. But that's not the only pace where they were begging for problems!

      The inclusion of a driving portion was just stupid. Mixing genres is almost always a curse, and this is no exception.

      On the otherhand, many of the animations are just killer, and of course the bullet time is an awesome feature. The integration with the story (I would say there are no spoilers, so far as I've gotten) is really quite

  • Hacking Console (Score:3, Insightful)

    by someguy ( 23968 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:37AM (#5985137)
    What I'm disappointed with is the lack of support for the hacking console. There are a few urls referred to as places to look for more codes for the hacking console, but one of them [danielinstitute.com] has never been a registered domain and the other [omegahardw...utions.com] just has a graphic about the company being shut down. I was really looking forward to having an interactive portion outside of the game.

  • Actual Review (Score:3, Informative)

    by captainstupid ( 247628 ) <dmvNO@SPAMuakron.edu> on Sunday May 18, 2003 @12:19PM (#5986134) Journal
    I just saw this posted on The Shack [shacknews.com]...

    AllOutGames.com has a review [alloutgames.com] out.

    They give a 78% to the PC version.
  • I'm about half way through the PC version of the game, and the impression that I'm getting is that of an average console port. The fighting/shooting is very automated, which lends the controls a very imprecise feel. You are never totally sure whether your shots will hit your target, and although the game makes very liberal use of Autoaim, it just doesn't feel right for a PC game. Graphics-wise, it leaves a lot to be desired. First of all, it was somewhat difficult to get the game to even run well on my com
  • 1982. Atari produces several million gaming cartridges, based on a blockbuster movie that hit the big screen only days before the release of the game. 5 million cartridges ended up burried in the New Mexico desert. The game was E.T.

    2003. Atari produces several million copies (4 million, to be exact) of a game, based on a blockbuster movie that hit the theaters at roughly the same time. The response is less than lukewarm. The movie is The Matrix Reloaded.

    If I were Atari, I'd try to buy some cheap d

  • The Xbox version is a total blast.

  • Blah! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by reignfir3 ( 674265 )
    I've just finished playing the game for the ps2 yesterday... it only took me 24hrs to finish it. I'm so disappointed with Shiny for putting out this game which feels half finished, uninspiring and buggy. I was expecting some tougher bosses, i didn't even have to move the cursor to shoot at anything. rating: 5/10

  • Ok, read my review (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ryan Amos ( 16972 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @11:31PM (#5989496)
    I bought the PC version the day it came out. It's probably one of the most disappointing purchases I've ever made. Why? It essentially boils down to the fact that it's a Max Payne ripoff, except it doesn't play nearly as well as Max Payne. Some of the levels are ridiculously difficult (anyone who's played the Chinatown levels knows what I mean) while others are really easy.

    The sad part is this game could have been so much cooler. As it is, it's riddled with bugs, graphical glitches, and a really annoying sync bug that makes the audio go WAY out of sync during some of the rendered cutscenes. This is not a finished game, which is surprising because it's been in development for almost 2 years. One would think they would have had enough time to finish it.

    That said, the game is a must-play for devout fans of the Matrix. The game follows the path of Ghost and Niobe and takes place during the Matrix Reloaded. The plot intersects with the movie over various parts of the game, and stuff IS made more clear through playing the game. In short, the story is pretty much an essential part of the Matrix saga, at least as much so as the Animatrix.

    They've even included a "Hacking" game, which is a relatively short and easy CLI puzzle where you have to "hack" the Matrix, but it can give you some nice goodies like weapon drop points, cheat codes, and a secret level. It's relatively amusing, though unfortunately it's not totally finished yet. The game redirects you to search a few websites to find some information, but it seems as though those sites aren't up yet. One of them (which now redirects to the game's official homepage) even sported a "This domain has been registered by: " temp page.

    In short, this game was obviously rushed out the door before it was finished. The fact that there were patches available the day after release is a testament to that. No game should be released with this many bugs or a control system this flawed. The PC version of the game seems like it was an afterthought, a port of the console versions that wasn't quite given the care that it should have been. Which is disappointing, because it turned what could have been a spectacular game into simply a mediocre one.
    • Er... Wasn't Max Payne a Matrix ripoff in the first place? I mean, the term 'bullet-time' was coined for the first Matrix movie effects.

      (I think that's what Max Payne called it...)

  • Well its no MGS2, but... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...It's very obviously rushed to get out on the deadline.

    I bought the PS2 version to get a better frame rate than my PC and because I figured it would be easier to play with the PS2 controller. Well the later part was true, but I'm not so sure about performance. It gets major frame lag in large areas (inexcusable for a console game!). To top this off theres plenty of other bugs (echoing voices in cutscenes, bad clipping, invisible walls) that just shouldn't be there. And as mentioned alot of the level desi
  • This game is boring and buggy. The presentation of the story is crude. I bought it with no expectations of novel gameplay and was still disappointed.

    Save your money. My copy has already been sold back to EBX.
  • I have the Game Cube version. I thought the game was pretty cool. Was it the "best" game I ever played? No. But it was fun, and the extra content was cool. I didn't experience any of the "bugs" people are talking about on the other platforms. Graphics: They could be better but the animation is fairly realistic. Sound: Gets a little repetative but it's well scripted Gameplay: Controls were easy to grasp and very responsive AI: Computer AI was pretty diverse (police do really stupid stuff and look dumbfounde
  • Three of my friends were playing it all week-end, and they seem to like it. Looked pretty cool to me, although the replay value didn't look as good as something more free-ranging like Halo or the Tom Clancy game. The levels all seem very scripted.

  • I like it (Score:2, Informative)

    by jathos ( 170499 )
    I played the XBox version at my friend's house on Saturday, then went out and bought the PC version for myself on Sunday.

    The XBox version's controls are a bit more intuitive. Also, you don't have to worry about choppiness. Strangely, I thought that the movie clips looked better on the XBox, too. However...

    On the PC the in-game graphics look much better due to the higher resolutions (I play at 1024x768). I gave up on the mouse keyboard controls because it was much easier to button-mash with my Wingman Rumb
  • Again, I say: ***HUGE SPOILERS***

    The failure of this game is almost tragic in my opinion, because there are moments that are just fantastic, and would've made it an instant hit had the game not been so unpolished. The first of these of course, is encountering an Agent. And they do it in an early, shock-value fashion. The Agent smashes through a door you're opening (this is in slow motion of course) and you're not even sure what's happening because you're falling backwards and can't see the door.........wel
  • Someone should start a petition to have a Special Edition version of the game.. Let's face it.. the game is unfinished. This would give the developers time to fix the bugs.. improve the textures, which are bland and boring.. add some lighting effects, cuz there are none.. and just polish the game enough to be memorable. Maybe throw in a couple of bonus levels like Splinter Cell for PS2 did. Frankly, I think Shiny should hand development over to a better production group, but short of that, they should at l
  • I think ETM has gotten far more flak than it deserves.. Not being a fanatical gamer these days I still try to play games in between. (The problem to me seems to be the games, none of them hook me for more than a couple of hours at the most.)

    Anyhow, after a friends recommendation I tried ETM out, and I was pleasantly surprised ! It is unlike all the other people here say, playable, the graphics are definitely good enough to give a good feeling of the Matrix, and the plotline is action packed to say the leas
  • I was going to buy Enter the Matrix, but after reading these reviews, I'm well and truly put off.

    If you don't care much for the Matrix connection, and are looking for a fighting/shooting/bullet-time fix, you can probably do a lot worse than try Bloodrayne, which is pretty much Max Payne with Nazis and lots of flying limbs. There is a demo out, and it's quite easy to figure out if you will like the full game from that one level.

    Alternatively, there is a fantastic Kung Fu mod for Max Payne, which makes it a
  • simoniker:

    This wasn't just a "license" title. It was written and directed by The Wachowski Brothers themselves and is meant to supplement the events of Reloaded.

    The rush, as others have pointed out, was because the release date had to coincide with the release of the movie.
  • A proud xbox owner, I'm on the Airport level of Enter the Matrix, and thus far there have been some great moments.

    For example, there was a section of a level where the character on the 2nd floor surrounded by SWAT teams with machine guns. In order to get to the 1st floor, you can take the escalator, or, in true Matrix fashion, take a running leap over the edge of the balcony in bullet-time, guns drawn, firing at the enemy on the way down, hitting the ground, tucking and rolling and making a quick escape.

    W

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