Enter the Matrix

Matthew Preston is Kung-Fu fighting... Hoo! Haa!

Time to jack-in, join Neo and Trinity and give Agent Smith some major trouble... Why oh why didn't I take the red pill? Atari has the answer.

Infogrames has relaunched itself, Atari is reborn. What a way to relaunch yourself, jump into the Matrix universe and give everyone an excuse to "live" the film. Now, before I continue, many of you will already own the game or have read a review. Many a web site has already slated the game on various grounds, mainly by comparing it against the latest PC games. My answer to this is to review the game from a different view, mainly a gamer, but also as a film buff. The game does suffer a lot from the console-to-PC compromise that is occurring these days. Let's face it, games are expensive to produce and if you only have to do it once then it is going to cost less. Consequently the visuals are not the best they could have been, I've seen worse though and I have to say I am not sure where the four CDs of data went? Still, the game is real fun and anyone who attended this year's Jagfest UK will know all about that...

The game is identical whichever platform you choose to own, PC, Xbox or PS2 so controls are a minimum to learn. I have the PC version so I had jolly fun updataing my system to run the game. It needs DirectX version 9 and compatible drivers for both your sound card and video hardware. The nice thing is that the hardware specification is not that high and most modest PCs these days will cope. You will benefit from at least 256 MB of RAM as the textures are quite large.

The first screen you will see when the game is run is the DirectX console from where you choose the screen resolution and other refinements. I think this is where many a reviewer has gone wrong and accidentally selected the low texture button. This forces the game to run in an extremly low texture and polygon mode making the wheels of cars almost square and curves practically non-existent.

Choosing a character blasts you into the Matrix with the screen focusing to a single dot, wham, you're in, cool! There is a small animated short with Ghost and Niobe talking to each other, then the scenery gradually builds around them and they speed off in an American muscle car to the postal building. Now it's up to you.

Instead of just producing a movie tie-in, the game blurs the first film into the second, making for an individual story line. There are extra scenes that have been shot during filming the movie "Matrix Reloaded" and these have been used in the game to link one level to another.

By far the weakest part of the game has to be the driving part. As Ghost you wildly shoot at things while the car goes all over the place, as Niobe you attempt to drive an impossible car with the mouse. However these levels are quite short and maybe I don't like driving games too much?

Having played the game all through I was disapponted to have done it in a couple of days, but then I do play an awful lot of these games. The important thing to remember here is that I could not tear myself away from the game. I admit it I was addicted to the game the minute I switched on the PC. No matter what the critics say, I witnessed the game's magic at JagFest UK, where the pumping music and mad visuals gathered a huge crowd. A couple of youngsters had to be literally dragged away from the PC while playing it, it's that addictive!

If this game is a look into the future of things to come from Infogrames, sorry, I mean Atari then all I can say is "Wow!" because it has fulfilled what I look for in a game: fun, great music, fun, Kung-Fu, guns, car chases, fun, amazing visuals, did I mention that it is also fun?

I just can't wait until they release an engine for designing your own levels, then fun really starts. On-line gamers will have to wait for the next Matrix release from Atari, this game is strictly aimed at the single player and for that I commend them. Many games these days are built around the "on-line experience" leaving the single player with a weak alternative, this game redresses the balance.