11/27/05 >> The Matrix: Path of Neo (PC)

Genre: Action / Fighting

 

 

 

 

If you love games and movies the chances are you have heard of the Matrix. This is the latest offering in the franchise and for the first time, players can “be” Neo in this action packed game.

 

Gameplay
The gameplay is, for the most part, fairly fun and pretty nice to watch. Unfortunately on the PC version it is marred by several flaws that often detract from the gameplay and only cause frustration. It is obvious the that the controls were originally designed for the console versions of this game and that very little planning went in to porting these over for the PC. The basic idea is to use the mouse to look around and the buttons to perform the main actions, while the keyboard helps with special and combo moves and with player movement.

 

The default key settings are very cumbersome; especially when trying to perform moves that require mouse presses, focus and movement controls at the same time. Luckily you can customize the keyboard controls to try and find a configuration that will make playing the game comfortable and easy. The lack of being able to customize the controls for actual gamepad controllers (such as PS2 ones) is a shame as this would have made the controls ideal and a perfect match for the console versions.

 

During the game you are given hints and tips to help you, but these too often detract from the gameplay as they pop up in the center of the screen and halt the gameplay. This is not very good if you are currently trying to perform a rather complicated move. The most annoying thing about these hints is that you cannot turn them off.There are two main styles of combat in this game, gun fighting and martial arts. The former is cumbersome and leaves a lot to be desired. It is often far too hard to aim for specific enemies or environmental objects. The martial arts, however, is where the real joy of the game lies. Simply put, it’s wonderful. The number of moves that Neo can perform is varied and amazing, both in hand-to-hand and with melee weapons. Several of the moves from the movies are included in the game and can be recreated with random button mashing, which again highlights the problem with the controls. Creating combo moves is often just out of luck with random clicking of the mouse buttons and direction controls.

 

 

Storyline
The actual levels of the game lack any coherent storyline progression for most of them so the story relies on cinematics created from clips of the original movies. Again though, this is often handled in a poor manner with bad cuts and sound levels that do not remain consistent. The clips in the cinematics often jump all over the place in regards to where they are featured in the movie. Basically, if you haven’t seen the movies, the cut-scenes are not going to help you very much. The ending of the game differs to that of the movies and will either be an ending that you love or one that you loath. For the sections of the game that do follow on with each other (Neo’s initial escape attempt, for example) rarely offer any new insights in to the Matrix universe and are fairly standard fare.

 

Graphics
For a PC game the graphics are laughable to say the least. The characters are poorly textured with most cards often losing textures on the characters and the backgrounds. The characters are very poor representations of their movie counterparts. Morpheus, for example, does not resemble the movie character at all. Compared to Enter the Matrix the graphics are a step backward. Shiny Entertainment also lived up to their name; the graphics are very shiny. Although there are detail level settings, they do nothing to improve the graphics and the highest settings look almost worse than the lowest ones due to the shininess of them.

 

Sound
During actual gameplay the sound is ok, it’s clear and fairly varied, but during the cinematics, it randomly changes volume and is usually barely audible, there is a subtitles option though so you can still read what is being said.

 

Replayability
The game does offer a fair few extras to get you to play the game again, the novel difficulty selection system will challenge you to earn the higher difficulty levels, while completing the game on them will open up access to built in cheats to make the game even easier. It is possible to complete the game in less than 11 hours but you can replay any previously completed level of the game too, so you can play your favorite level if you don’t feel like running through the whole game again. So if you can put up with the poor controls and graphics then you will probably get a lot of replay out of this game.

 

Conclusion
In conclusion, if you don’t mind cumbersome controls and poor graphics while also being a fan of the Matrix, then you will probably enjoy this game. However if you do own consoles perhaps it would be better to consider renting the game on those systems instead of getting the PC one, the controls are created with a gamepad in mind and not a mouse so the console versions should be far easier to get to grips with. With its current flaws though it is not worth 50 dollars so if you must have the PC version, wait for the price to drop.

 

 

 

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Game Score: 5.1

 

 

Reviewed By: Staff