I had high hopes for Enter the Matrix. Most likely, unrealistically high hopes. I had heard that the Wachoswki brothers, the very same writer-directors of the film, were behind the making of the game. This meant that unlike most spin-off video games, this one would be cool. It would be coherent and actually relevant to the mythos of the series. My hopes were raised further when I heard about how much live action footage was shot for the game. It soon seemed as if "Enter the Matrix" was not a video game so much as an extension of the film franchise, for all intents and purposes, it was a fourth film in the series. Or so it seemed.
When I was watching the Matrix Reloaded, I kept feeling like I wasn't getting the whole picture. There were references to the Osiris and there was that one character who was really clingy to Neo who I'd never seen before. I can't help but think this is because when I saw the film I had not at that point seen the Animatrix nor had I played the game. I thought to myself as I sat in that theatre seat, surely the anime and the game must fill in some of these blanks.
Does the game do that? Yes and no. It does but not very well. It tells you some things that happened off screen during Revolutions but it in no way helps bridge the gap like I thought it would. It's good but it's not great. I'm a large fan of the cut scenes in the game and that's good because there is a lot of them. However, it got a bit overboard at points where the cut scenes were going on for so long that I'd just put down the controller and wait to be able to play the game again.
And it was hard to wait. The game is fun. Or at least until it gets too repetative and boring. The gameplay itself is good and clean. Some of the missions made me scratch my head because I didn't care or it made no sense. But what bothered me the most was the quality of the rendered cut scenes. Some of the cut scenes were DVD-rom stuff shot at the same time as the movie. That stuff looks great. The game itself is very well designed and well rendered. But the cut scenes aren't as good (which I don't understand). Also, the voice acting is only so-so.
It is cool that you can play as one of two characters and that the gameplay switches between the two of them (not drastically but enough to warrant some replay). What annoyed me was the "hacking" feature. It was a cool way to offer a cheat menu and, again, to offer some replay value but the format of it was just annoying. I'm not a computer hacker because just the thought of typing in code frustrates and annoys me so I have no clue why I'd want to play it as a game.
All in all, it was good but not great. I rented it played it for four days and returned it. That's about all I can recommend it for.
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