User Reviews (1 - 11 of 120)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Exit the Matrix

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: July 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is one of the worst games of the year. Even hardcore Matrix fans will be dissapointed in this product. If you want to play an action game with a matrix style of playing, get Max Payne and download the free Matrix MOD for it.

The biggest deception of 2003

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I feel sorry for Shiny entertaiment, and the creators of the matrix, this game is such a disappointment.

Don't buy this game, it is horrible, I think the programers didn't have enough time to create it.

1. Bad graphics.
2. Lack of imagination (maps).
3. Very short game (you can finish it in 5 hours)
4. Fighting with weapons is just imposible!

Not worthy of its name

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It's not that I'm not a Matrix geek. I have the trilogy, I watched the Animatrix, and I have total faith that future games released be the producers will be much more stable. The problem with this is its stability.

For a setting that involves such an extensive amount of software engineering and security, you'd expect the reality to be a lot better than it was. I've owned this game for a year and a half, and have run it on multiple machines--every single one of them has issues with it. Occasionally, I'll get it to work, and within a month it'll come up with some new crap like the sound ceasing to work.

The second problem is the general blandness of the filmstrips in the game. There are overt repeats between scenarios, too. I wasn't impressed.

Finally, let's not forget about how *terrible* the AI is, especially when you're depending on it. Success in one of the stages involves complete chance! This is DEFINITELY something I expected better from. I spent nearly fifty dollars on this game, and it was the worst purchase of my life.

If you're looking for something quality, the same company is releasing an apology (literally) titled "The Path of the One." I've seen screenshots, and it looks much more promising. Also, I've heard good things about The Matrix Online, but I haven't played it. I don't reccomend you buy this.

Great potential, but poorly implemented.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: October 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Ouch. Though I'm sure a lot of development went into this game, dissapointment doesn't adequately describe end result. First, the controls are awkward. While fighting hand to hand, there aren't any real moves that the user can decide to use. All moves happen by themselves and appear to follow variables determined by character position. Bottom line -- it plays itself. If you just punch and kick really fast, you can beat any enemy without knowing what you're doing, and the move may last longer than five seconds, creating a clumsy delay. The weapons are similarly poorly implemented. Auto-aim cannot be disabled, unlike most other similar games. Firing in the general direction of an enemy may instantly kill it with no challenge at all, or the bullets may veer off wildly, accomplishing nothing. Any idiot could aim better than the lousy auto-aim. The bullet-time is okay at best, as most moves are difficult to initiate, and are rarely useful in tough situations. To see a truly good example of bullet-time, play Max Payne -- a user-made Kung Fu modification plays better than the Matrix's combat implementation. Finally, the game is SHORT. Really short -- as in, "That's IT?!!" The last level is so incredibly impossible and unamusing that it's just not worth completing. Better luck next time, Shiny Entertainment.

FULL SCREEN MODE NOT FOUND

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: December 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If anyone can answer my problem I would be so greatful! I just bought Enter the Matrix for PC and i cant get it to work. I installed it, registered a direct X, i have windows media player 10! But all it says is FULL SCREEN MODE NOT FOUND. Whats wrong, how do I play it! Someone help me out, NOW.

how bad is this game?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: June 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

There were all sorts of glitches in the game i had to go to my task manager to quit it. the whole thing is junk. you want a good game? go with any of the tom clancy franchise.

"Unfortunately, no one can be told how bad this game is"

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: November 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

You can play as either Niobe (Morpheus' former lover) or the Kirkegaard-quoting Ghost (her gunner aboard the Logos, who (in one of the game's only humorous moments, identifies onanism as his personal philosophy). While the two characters' storylines intersect, there are segments in which each character has different tasks to do. Unfortunately, this isn't consistent; there are large segments in which you have to perform the same tasks, even though it breaks continuity from the other character's storyline (for example, when playing as Ghost, you have to rescue Niobe from the Merovinginan; when playing as Niobe, you have to rescue Ghost). As storylines go, they're both disappointingly short. Whereas it usually takes me about a week or two to finish first-person games with storylines (Deus Ex, Medal of Honor), I got both storylines done in about a day.

The gameplay is frustratingly linear. I guess I was spoiled by Deus Ex, in which you frequently have multiple avenues by which to achieve a goal, and actions taken (or not taken) have consequences later in the game. With Enter the Matrix, you have to follow a set path (doors often stay locked until you've accomplished certain tasks, and nearly every door locks behind you, forcing you to go only in the direction the game designers intended).

Aiming - especially with sniper weapons - is another problem area. With non-sniper weapons, the game aims for you, at what it thinks you should be shooting at. Certain objects are highly explosive; it makes sense to take out several enemies by shooting these objects. Unfortunately, if there's an enemy near the object, the gun will shoot at the enemy even if you're aimed directly at the explosive object. When you use a sniper scope, aiming is erratic; the crosshairs frequently overshoot the mouse movements.

"Focus mode", the game's odd choice of terminology for what's called "bullet time" by the movie effects people, was practically unusable on my machine. Every time I entered it, my screen would alternately flash between the game and a pixelated version of my computer desktop. Since my desktop is much brighter than the game (which is horribly dark), it had the effect of obscuring the action completely. (The fix, which I discovered only after I had solved the game, is to download and install a patch from the Atari Web site, open the configuration file with a text editor, and change a setting to enable the "alternate focus" mode.)

Speaking of video, the configuration options are horribly designed. If you wish to alter brightness, contrast or gamma, you have to do so before the game begins. If you're in the middle of the game and want to change these settings, you have to exit the game completely and re-start it. Since the game only saves when you've reached particular objectives (there's no quick-save, and it doesn't offer the option to save when you exit the game), this means you have to wait until you reach a spawn point to quit, otherwise you lose some of your progress. Also, these changes frequently don't get saved to the configuration file, requiring one to either edit the configuration file by hand, or change the settings every time one runs the game. Other options can be changed within the game, but still require you to quit gameplay and return to the main menu (again, losing anything you've done since the last spawn point).

I do like the fact that health eventually regenerates, once you've gone for a specific amount of time without taking further damage. However, this is also inconsistent; in certain levels, you have a character (or, in one case, a helicopter) which you must defeat in order to progress, and your health doesn't regenerate until you've done so. Since ammunition is extremely limited, and Focus power runs out very quickly, it's almost impossible to win some of these confrontations (especially the helicopter) without enabling one or more of the cheats.

And then there are the driving segments. Control is nearly impossible; as with sniper weapons, the cars (and the Logos) respond poorly to the mouse and keyboard, apparently responding to speed of mouse movement (or duration of keypress) logarithmically. You'd think that perhaps Niobe, the best pilot in the fleet, wouldn't have so much trouble piloting a car, let alone her own ship, but for some reason they decided to make all the vehicles respond to a mere approximation of what the player asks them to do.

With the exception of the Merovingian's mansion, in which you're fighting vampires (and what might be werewolves who are also killed by wooden stakes through the heart), your opponents are limited to security guards, policemen and SWAT teams (with one or two unkillable agents thrown in just in case you get tired of killing cops). When you perform certain lengthy moves (such as choking an opponent from behind), all your other opponents stop shooting at you until the move is done. The opponents' intelligence is shockingly limited as well; if you duck behind a wall, they'll rarely come after you, preferring instead to vibrate in place until you present yourself as a target again.

And finally, the game is rife with bugs. Often, these present themselves in the cutscenes, which may play without sound or with the video going several times normal speed while the audio remains normal (or, in one particular case, without sound and in fast-forward mode). Occasionally, objects required for the completion of a level can't be picked up, and in one particularly annoying level in which you have to pilot the Logos through tight tunnels, I found myself frequently stuck (requiring a restart of the level) or somehow outside the map and unable to get back inside it (also requiring a restart). There are frequent visual errors as well. And this is with the patch applied!

So, on a scale of one to ten, I give this game a blue pill.

Another over-hyped, rushed release

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am a giant fan of the Matrix series. I've already seen Reloaded three times, but Enter the Matrix is just another example of software developers rushing the release of a game to coincide with the movie release. It's not that the game is horrible, its just that it isn't finished yet. This game honestly feels like it is still in a late alpha/early beta stage of development. In the fighting portions of the game, there are immense clipping errors, clunky controls, non-existant enemy AI, never ending enemy respawn (in front of my eyes, enemies I had just killed would instantly reappear in the same place when I turned around) and no creativity in the kung-fu control. Rapidly mashing the punch or kick buttons will automatically pick a random combo depending on whether or not you're in "focus" mode. The driving engine is simply abominable. The driving AI continually drives into buildings and off bridges. Of the few other cars on the road, all look like they have hydraulics going beserk. Both police cars and normal traffic bounce around like their tires are made of "flubber." The integrated FMV is wonderful and the sound is decent. I'm disappointed that the game boasted 3d EAX HD sound capability, but it only supports the Audigy2 generation of EAX, so anyone with Audigy soundcards are out of luck for realistic 3d sound. I hope you have a high-end system if you want to play this game. EtM ran marginally well on my dual P3 1Ghz, 1GB RDRAM, Audigy, Radeon 8500 system, and I was running at 800x600 with only 50% detail. Characters still lagged and voices barely synched with the faces. I'm severely disappointed with this game and I am returning it today. .... If the developers had another 6 months to complete the game, maybe it would be ready...but for now, everyone should avoid this money trap like the plague that it is.

Completely Awful. Even for a Matrix Fan.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game could have been a mediocre Max Payne ripoff and I would have loved it. But no. This is just one game in a continuing trend where the top priority is ease of portability between PC and console platforms. But you can't just recompile and hope for the best... playcontrol, font aliasing, video rendering all are different on the PC.

But why bother when you've got such a hot commodity as The Matrix? All you need is a name and you can start selling hot steaming piles of CD-ROMs and it'll sellsellsell. The play control works just like the console... which is bad. You run at top speed through everything, just hit random buttons and hope that some good combo comes out of it. I'd like to say I got to try the whole "focus" thing, but whenever I'd hit the focus key the video would keep switching to my desktop every other frame!

And I'm not an amateur PC user. I've got a stock Athlon/GeForce3/WinXP system that's been running great through all my other titles. But the graphics had completely terrible bugs, the models were completely lacking in polys, the levels were altogether pretty drab, and don't even get me started on the little green "typeface" that pops out of people when you shoot them.

Yes, I installed the latest patch. And yes, latest video drivers and DirectX. Doesn't help. Still looks/plays awful.

So basically I just bought a ...CD full of AVI's with film plot. At least they were nice enough just to plunk Divx files right on my drive, so things aren't a total loss. The video: neat. The game: absolutely horrible.

Crashes and bugs.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I had all kinds of errors with this game... you should buy it on the XBOX or some other system, not for the PC. I had problems installing it, installation takes very long with what, 4 CDs, and at the very end I had to repeat the whole installation process. Then I updated to the only patch available, and the game started, but the introduction cut scenes had major clipping problems, and, then, as soon as you get to the point where you are actually to start playing the game, it crashes to a blue screen, locking up the PC. I'm running Windows XP, and yes, I've been through all the troubleshooting steps, Atari is trying to pass the ball, all my drivers are updated, and every other DirectX game on my system runs flawlessly, but this one is seriously buggy. If you have to get if for the PC, wait a few months and hopefully Atari will come out with some more patches.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions