Enter the Matrix
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| Enter the Matrix | |
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| Developer(s) | Shiny Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Atari/Warner Brothers Interactive |
| Designer(s) | David Perry |
| Release date(s) | May 15, 2003 |
| Genre(s) | Action |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen (T) OFLC: M |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, Windows |
| Media | 2 Nintendo GameCube Game Discs, 1 DVD, 4 CD-ROMs |
Enter the Matrix is the first video game based on the Matrix series. It was developed by Shiny Entertainment and published by Atari and WB Interactive for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube game systems, and for the PC. It reportedly cost over $30 million to create, one of the most expensive games ever developed. It sold one million copies in its first eighteen days of release, 2.5 million over the first six weeks, and eventually 5 million copies.[1] Enter The Matrix was simultaneously produced with The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.
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[edit] Overview
First released on 15 May 2003, the same day as The Matrix Reloaded's North American release, Enter the Matrix gives players control of two of the minor characters in that film, Ghost and Niobe, members of the same group of rebels as Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo. Niobe is the Captain of the Logos, the fastest ship in the rebel fleet. Ghost is the ship's first mate and weapons guru, and is a deep-thinking, philosophical assassin. The game takes place at roughly the same time as the events in The Matrix Reloaded; a character may walk out of a scene in the film, only to walk into a scene in the game. Like the films, the game features martial arts, firefights, driving, and bullet-time. It also includes a "hacking system" that simulates the ability to hack into the Matrix by way of a simplified mimicry of DOS, exploring and unlocking secrets, weapons, maps, and skills.
[edit] Connections to the films
Enter the Matrix was designed, like The Animatrix, to be an integral part of the Matrix series. Many previous movies have been adapted as games, but in this case, the game expands upon the story told in the films. Enter the Matrix includes two hours of live action 35mm film footage written and directed specifically for the game by the Wachowski brothers (and later included as part of "The Ultimate Matrix Collection" on the "The Matrix Reloaded Revisited" DVD). The martial arts moves and in-engine cutscenes of the game feature actions captured directly from the films' actors and stunt doubles to recreate their unique fighting styles while suspended from wires while under the supervision of the series' fight scene choreographer Yuen Wo Ping.
The player learns that Neo is not the only target of Persephone's predilection toward trading kisses for esoteric information; Niobe and Ghost are both put into positions where they must submit to her whims in order to gain critical information that she offers them in return for their favors. Significant also to the continuity of the Matrix universe is the first appearance of actress Mary Alice in the role of the Oracle. (Gloria Foster, the original actress, died of complications related to diabetes early on in the production of both The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions). The game includes a film sequence specifically explaining her change of appearance, as a result of an attack on her by the Merovingian, a malevolent character introduced in The Matrix Reloaded, who also appears in the game. Another film sequence reveals that the Merovingian's attack was facilitated by a sacrificial trade with the compassionate program Rama-Kandra. Allowed to occur by the Oracle, the Merovingian acquired the deletion codes for the Oracle's external "shell," and in exchange, he gave Rama-Kandra's daughter Sati her freedom and safety in the Matrix, despite her lack of purpose in the machine world, though the Oracle foreshadows that Sati will play an important role in both the Matrix and the Real. What role Sati will play is yet to be determined in The Matrix Online.
[edit] Characters
Aside from Ghost and Niobe, there are numerous secondary characters in Enter The Matrix.
Sparks — The operator. He gives players tips and information throughout the game.
Agent Smith — A program who can absorb human bodies and humanoid programs to make copies of himself. He chases the player through an abandoned skyscraper, and later, Chinatown.
Agent Jackson— An agent who appears frequently during the game. He is defeated multiple times by means of blowing up his helicopter, and knocking him out of a plane.
Agent Johnson — Another agent with frequent appearances in the game. He was the leader of the upgraded Agent trio in the films.
Agent Thompson — The least-featured Agent in the game, who only appears in cinematics, and the only opportunity to fight him occurs at the end of Niobe's missions at the power plant.
Seraph — A martial arts master who protects the Oracle; he fights Niobe or Ghost once during the events of the game.
Morpheus — One of the members of the rebel group Niobe and Ghost are part of. He is Niobe's ex-boyfriend, and is captain of the Nebuchadnezzar.
Trinity — Another rebel, she is a good friend of Ghost, referring to him as "dear brother".
Neo — One of the more important rebels. He is "the One".
Axel — A rebel you must rescue from Agent Jackson at the airport, in a plane, and finally after a car chase.
The Keymaker — An old man who guides players through certain portions of the game.
The Trainman — An old man who carries multiple wristwatches on his arms. He controls the link between the Matrix and the machine city, and works for the Merovingian.
The Merovingian (A.K.A. "The Frenchman") — A man who has a chateau in the mountains. He has the Keymaker imprisoned. The Merovingian's henchmen are early Matrix programs, and are rumored to be "vampires" and "werewolves".
Persephone — Wife of the Merovingian. Often betrays him out of catty spite.
Cain and Abel — Two henchmen of the Merovingian. They are encountered by the player in the chateau dungeon.
Vlad — He is the black-clad, pale-skinned leader of the Merovingian's vampires. During the game, he captures Niobe, and locks her in the chateau's attic. Vlad decides not to take Niobe to the Merovingian, for reasons unknown. Niobe breaks free of her ropes and fights Vlad, who is in the next room. After a lengthy fight, Vlad knocks Niobe to the ground and leaves, saying he has better things to do. Vlad and Niobe later fight a second time in Persephone's bedroom. The only difference this time is that Niobe wins, killing Vlad by stabbing him through the heart with a wooden stake.
Cujo — He is the menacing leader of the Merovingian's werewolves. Aside from that, he guards the chateau's dungeon. The player encounters Cujo in a pit in the dungeon. In the end, Cujo dies from impalement upon a wooden stake.
The Twins — Employees of the Merovingian, who are encountered as the player leaves the chateau. The Twins chase the players down a long tunnel, before they are finally evaded.
[edit] Cheats
Like many other games, Enter the Matrix has cheat codes; these codes are the same for every console version. The cheat codes for Enter the Matrix can be activated, and deactivated, in the Hacking portion of the game, using the "cheat.exe" command.
As is the case with many games, cheat codes are known to make the game unstable, but can be easily deactivated to fix problems caused by their use. In some cases, the programmers have included anti-cheating mechanisms to prevent their use at certain parts of the game. The mechanism manifests itself as a bomb placed at the beginning of a level that will explode — and kill — your character.
Also, a mode in which the player can use a sword to attack is achieved through a process of hacking. You can also unlock concept art, and have conversations with multiple characters as you make progress through the hacking engine, a mini game resembling a DOS computer set
[edit] Soundtrack
The game´s music is composed by Erik Lundborg and Don Davis. The soundtrack also includes some licensed tracks. However, some of the licensed tracks are rare and hard to find.
[edit] Tracklist
Andy Hunter - Go
Celldweller - Switchback
Celldweller - Symbiont
Chris Vrenna - Take The Pill*
Clawfinger - 15 Minutes Of Fame
Elite Force - Mainframe Wrekka
Evanescence - Going Under
Fluke - Atom Bomb
Fluke - Absurd (Whitewash Edit)
Ged Grimes - Dodge This*
Herrera Productions Inc. - Bullet Time*
Juno Reactor - Badimo
Juno Reactor - Dante*
Juno Reactor - Mona Lisa Overdrive
Juno Reactor Feat. Gocoo - Teahouse
Karl Fredrik Lundeberg - The Hummingbird*
Rob Dougan - Clubbed to Death (Hybrid Mix)*
Rob Dougan - (Kurayamino Mix)
Tracks marked with * are rare
[edit] Original Soundtrack
A CD had been released which contained music from the game that was originally composed by Don Davis and Erik Lundborg. However, it is difficult to find; therefore rare.
[edit] Tracklist
01: Kick Jab Stab
02: Get Out of My Face
03: In My Path... You´re Dead
04: Eat This, Jerk
05: You Don´t Scare Me, Bucko
06: I Do Not Like You
07: Fist Fight
08: Smelly Sewer
09: Be Prepared
10: A Sickening Feeling
11: Something´s Wrong
12: Uh Oh... What´s That?
13: Stuck in Muck - Escape
14: What the Fresh Hell is This?
15: Not Agent Smith - Again!!!
16: Zen Garden
17: The Big Distraction
18: Elevator is a Trap
19: Tear Gas
20: Piano Escape
21: Swat to Phone
22: No Rest for the Wicked
23: Merovingian´s Office
24: Attic Opens
25: Going to Church
[edit] Reaction
Despite the heavy hype surrounding the Matrix movie franchise, the game was generally met by mixed reviews from critics. Metacritic, a movie and game review site similar to film's Rotten Tomatoes, reported that the game had an average mark of 64 out of 100. Two critics from Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it "bad" scores; another later admitted that his "average" score for the game was too high. Mark MacDonald's comments were especially scathing:
"In more than 20 years of playing games, I have never seen a console game as obviously unfinished and rushed to market as Enter the Matrix. ... This game is a complete mess, and that's the only thing complete about it."[citation needed](EGM, August. 2003)
GameSpot listed Enter the Matrix in several of their "Dubious Honors" lists at the end of 2003, including their five most disappointing titles of the year.[2] One common complaint was that players wanted to play as Neo rather than the films' secondary characters, an issue Shiny Entertainment addressed with their later Matrix game Path of Neo.
Steven Poole, in his column in Edge, described Enter the Matrix as "Max Payne with celebrity scriptwriters," and said that the films' fluid fight choreography could not be matched by the game's control system, and that the game's centred view, while practical, was not as interesting as the "kinetic montage" of camera angles used in the movies' action scenes. He also expressed other concerns:
"The most worrying new precedent that Enter the Matrix sets, though, with its massively hyped synergy and narrative overlap with Reloaded, is that it seems the film itself has been deliberately made to suffer, to donate some of its lifeblood so that its vampiric brood can feed on it. In Reloaded, Niobe and her crew go to blow up the nuclear power plant, a feat of security bypassing which would presumably require something like a lobby scene squared. Instead, we see nothing until they are already in the control room. Why? Because that's what you get to do in the game instead. The film's sense of rhythm and victory over threat is compromised just so we can bash buttons on our consoles at home. It's as though James Cameron had cut footage out of Aliens so that it could be rendered in blocky 2D graphics in the 1987 Spectrum/C64 tie-in game released by Electric Dreams — which remains, actually, a superior film-to-game conversion."[3]
Though positive comments came from IGN and Nintendo Power, with NP giving it an 82/100 and stating "Its game play suffers from repetition, but this two-disc technomelange has tons of great stuff for "Matrix" fans." IGN's review, while mixed, gave praise to its presentation and sound. They stated that "You can't get much better than having the Wachowski Brothers filming your cutscenes.", and "Kudos to the sound team for bringing the movie audio to life in the game. Excellent sound design, and a great score."
Peer Schneider of IGN has also given positive comments, saying that "Things could have been much better with a few more months in development. That said, the story elements and the way the Wachowski Brothers tie together the Matrix movies, the Animatrix shorts, and the game is exceptional. Not being able to slip into the black robes of the movie's principal characters is a bummer, but there's no denying that playing through Enter the Matrix will actually increase your appreciation of the Matrix universe as a whole," and also giving praise to the GCN version, specifically "A big 'thank you' to Atari and Shiny for making sure that Nintendo's little cube didn't get shafted. The GameCube version actually ships on two disks to accommodate all the video and audio content. DPLII, progressive scan, DIVX compression — it's all used to full effect to make sure the GameCube version is as good as it can be."
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Fahey, Rob. "Atari full-year revenues fall despite Enter The Matrix success", GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved on January 23, 2007.
- ^ Most Disappointing Game (html). GameSpot.com. Retrieved on January 23, 2007.
- ^ Poole, Steven. "Films and videogames: not good bedfellows". Edge issue 125 (July 2003), pp. 24.
