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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.
...in order to stop the game from crashing completely...
The article submitter has seen games crash *partially*?
May we never see th
Honestly people, a Quick Google Search will reveal All
I'm not Seth.
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.
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.
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
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.
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 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.
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.