Slashdot Mirror
Enter The Matrix - Patches, No Reviews?
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.
Honestly people, a Quick Google Search will reveal All
I'm not Seth.
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.
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.
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
No comment.
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!
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).
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
...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.
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).
Miri it is whil Linux ilast...
I just saw this posted on The Shack...
AllOutGames.com has a review out.
They give a 78% to the PC version.
"Anyway, long story short... is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling...." - Abraham Simpson
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 dumbfounded when you run on the walls, agents casually dodge your hits and then beat the snot out of you). Difficulty: I thought it was a little too easy Overall 6/10
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
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 Rumblepad. I've only played the first level (post office), but I am really enjoying the game. Sure, it's very easy in parts, and maybe the graphics aren't state-of-the-art, but isn't gameplay and fun more important?
This game is FUN. I absolutely love beating the crap out of people in and out of focus mode. It's an absolute blast, and the animations for the different moves are tremendous. As I said, there's some button mashing involved, at least until you get the feel for how to create combos. They should have included a training mission so you can learn all the moves (like Splinter Cell) instead of dropping you right in.
I have an AthlonXP 1600+, geForce4 ti4200, 384MB ram. I recommend it.