zulu9812
The Newbie Nightmare
I am left breathless and amazed.
This may well be the best game ever, on any platform. It's certainly better than Half Life. The best way to describe Enter The Matrix is as an Adrenaline Rush. There is no let-up in the action, no break where you can pleasantly wander around the set pieces. The only respite is watching the film sequences (shot by the Wachowski brothers with the actual actors from the the The Matrix: Reloaded), apart from that it's all action, non-stop. It's genuinely a case of living in this world called the Matrix.
To give you a wee taste, I'll describe one of the levels.
You've just come off a conveyer belt into a maze of tunnels. SWAT police are after you. Dodge bullets in slow motion, wall run, backflip off walls, cartwheel whilst shooting, dive forward as your bullets rip into the enemy. Incapacitate your enemies with flying kicks, stun them with elbows to the face, grab them around the neck and force them to the ground. At one stage, faced with a corridor with 5 or 6 police, I wall ran up the wall, across the ceiling and along the opposite wall. You get to a junction. Cut to a seemless cut scene as an Agent steps into view. Then run for your life. Come to a gas tank processor, 3 exits, all with SWAT coming down them. They shoot at you, but you're too fast for them, their bullets hit the gas tanks, exploding behind you as your focus-run the walls and batter your opponents senseless. In another room, circle strafe your opponent and pepper him with bullets from the mp5 you picked up by catwheeling past a downed enemy. Finally you get to your exit: tunnel 7R. There's an unarmed maintenance worker blocking your way. Suddenly he starts clutching his face and cracking noise fills the air. Quickly, down the worker before he turns into an Agent! You take him down, then bullets rip past your ear as SWAT catches up to you. In slo-mo, jump onto the ladder and climb out the manhole cover, ceiling it behind you. Level ends.
Phew! After that level, I had to lie down! Half an hour later, I'm still hyper-ventilating!
I especially love the way your hand-to-hand combat and acrobatics changes with the terrain, so it can all still be controlled by a small number of keys. Case in point: you launch a flying kick at an enemy standing next to a pillar. As you kick off the pillar with your left leg, your right leg connects with your opponent, knocking him out.
This is very nearly a perfect game. There are only a couple of things which let it down. Weapon selection could be easier, currently you have to use Next Weapon/Previous Weapon, or bring up a weapon screen, rather than accessing them directly. The other gripe is that one of the levels is a car chase, which PCs aren't very good at because to drive well you need to have accelerate/break control in unison which is difficult with a keyboard. A hangover from it being cross-platform game, really. Still, it just takes practice, and the hand-to-hand fighting combos are amazing.
Buy it. Buy it now. Hell, this game alone justified buying a new computer...
This may well be the best game ever, on any platform. It's certainly better than Half Life. The best way to describe Enter The Matrix is as an Adrenaline Rush. There is no let-up in the action, no break where you can pleasantly wander around the set pieces. The only respite is watching the film sequences (shot by the Wachowski brothers with the actual actors from the the The Matrix: Reloaded), apart from that it's all action, non-stop. It's genuinely a case of living in this world called the Matrix.
To give you a wee taste, I'll describe one of the levels.
You've just come off a conveyer belt into a maze of tunnels. SWAT police are after you. Dodge bullets in slow motion, wall run, backflip off walls, cartwheel whilst shooting, dive forward as your bullets rip into the enemy. Incapacitate your enemies with flying kicks, stun them with elbows to the face, grab them around the neck and force them to the ground. At one stage, faced with a corridor with 5 or 6 police, I wall ran up the wall, across the ceiling and along the opposite wall. You get to a junction. Cut to a seemless cut scene as an Agent steps into view. Then run for your life. Come to a gas tank processor, 3 exits, all with SWAT coming down them. They shoot at you, but you're too fast for them, their bullets hit the gas tanks, exploding behind you as your focus-run the walls and batter your opponents senseless. In another room, circle strafe your opponent and pepper him with bullets from the mp5 you picked up by catwheeling past a downed enemy. Finally you get to your exit: tunnel 7R. There's an unarmed maintenance worker blocking your way. Suddenly he starts clutching his face and cracking noise fills the air. Quickly, down the worker before he turns into an Agent! You take him down, then bullets rip past your ear as SWAT catches up to you. In slo-mo, jump onto the ladder and climb out the manhole cover, ceiling it behind you. Level ends.
Phew! After that level, I had to lie down! Half an hour later, I'm still hyper-ventilating!
I especially love the way your hand-to-hand combat and acrobatics changes with the terrain, so it can all still be controlled by a small number of keys. Case in point: you launch a flying kick at an enemy standing next to a pillar. As you kick off the pillar with your left leg, your right leg connects with your opponent, knocking him out.
This is very nearly a perfect game. There are only a couple of things which let it down. Weapon selection could be easier, currently you have to use Next Weapon/Previous Weapon, or bring up a weapon screen, rather than accessing them directly. The other gripe is that one of the levels is a car chase, which PCs aren't very good at because to drive well you need to have accelerate/break control in unison which is difficult with a keyboard. A hangover from it being cross-platform game, really. Still, it just takes practice, and the hand-to-hand fighting combos are amazing.
Buy it. Buy it now. Hell, this game alone justified buying a new computer...
Its fast as greased lighting though, and thouroughly enjoyable. Just a shame it can be very unstable..
