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AtomThe Matrix: The Path of Neo
Very few people really enjoyed Enter the Matrix, a game produced by Shiny Entertainment during the huge Matrix media bombardment back in the summer of 2003. Furthermore, it ignored the fact that most gamers wanted to play as Neo, not some secondary throwaway characters in some shoddy, third rate action game. Well, Shiny’s back onboard for another Matrix game, and while it’s an improvement, it’s still far from the quality game most fans should be expecting.
The Matrix: Path of Neo is a game so pretentious that it thinks it needs six whole tutorial stages. This may not sound like much, but they all take about ten minutes each. That’s at least an hour of time wasted just learning to be "The One" and there’s no reason for this. Relatively speaking, there are a fair amount of crazy kung-fu style moves, in addition to the small arsenal of guns and melee weapons. However, the drawn-out opening sequences just feel really long, especially considering that the core gameplay is pretty simple. Each of the four face buttons are used to attack, grab, dodge and jump. L1 activates the Focus mode, which slows down time and strengthens your moves. While you can jump headfirst into combat by simply mashing on the triangle button, most of the fancier moves require you to grapple your foes. After getting a hold of them, button icons will appear in the lower-left corner, suggesting different combos to perform all of the cool martial arts you got to see in the movies.
To someone watching the action, Path of Neo might look excellent. The animation is fluid, and the more powerful moves slow down time, which gives each of your attacks a real sense of impact. To someone actually playing the game, it’s an entirely different story. Neo’s animations are fairly slow and it’s impossible to change directions while in the middle of a combo. The hit detection feels shoddy, especially considering opponents can block any of your attacks, or can even counterattack. Even through the characters look smooth, they don’t feel smooth, and it feels like there’s a bit of disconnect between the action on the screen and what buttons you’re actually pressing. Compared to the fluidity of recent beat-em-ups like The Warriors and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Path of Neo seems like a step backward.
There’s also a fair amount of gunplay, but even that feels haphazard. You can’t directly target your enemies and need to rely on the auto-aim, which is controlled by the right analog stick. On the default control scheme, you need to hold down R2 to draw your weapon, use the left analog stick to control Neo, use the right analog stick to control the targeting, press R1 to fire, and hold down L1 if you want to activate Focus for those cool bullet-time effects. That means you need to use five fingers simultaneously for something done far more efficiently in older games like Max Payne. While it’s clumsy, once you get it down you can pull some cool stuff, like flipping off walls and littering the air with bullets, or kicking enemies into the air before pummeling them with lead.
While the game exudes style, it’s only impressive when the action is running along smoothly - which isn’t very often. The developers brag about how the game supports normal mapping and all kinds of impressive lighting effects, but Path of Neo still looks ugly most of the time, regardless of how many impressive buzzwords are tossed around. Furthermore, these all hamper the framerate tremendously, as there’s rarely a time that the game runs full speed. When it’s not dropping frames, it’s using a motion blur, making it difficult to see what what’s going on. The character models look fine during gameplay, but the seams begin showing cutscenes, with awkwardly molded faces and nonexistent expressions. While most of the levels are fairly short, many of them consist of the same rooms and hallways recycled over and over.
There are approximately forty stages in the game, which does give Path of Neo a sense of length and variety. The "plot" is only told in cutscenes with footage from the movies (and some of the Animatrix) spliced haphazardly. The game simply assumes that you’re familiar with the movies and just want to relive the best parts. About half the game focuses on the original Matrix movie, including those six training stages. In concept, these are kind of cool - in addition to the famous Morpheus vs Neo karate scene, many of the levels take place in variations of samurai and kung fu movies, complete with goofy costumes and a black and white screen filter. They overstay their welcome, but it’s a neat idea. One of the first stages is the escape from the office building, where you can actually make your way outside of the building as opposed to merely giving up like Neo did in the movie. Morpheus’ rescue is a first person shooter segment, with Neo wielding a huge chain gun as the helicopter flies through the city. It captures most of the best moments of the original movie and expands upon them, which fans will most definitely enjoy.
The later stages expand around The Matrix Reloaded by offering several rescue missions (both in saving your comrades and civilian), but skip the cooler scenes like the highway chase scene - since, technically, Neo wasn’t involved in that segment. The Burly Brawl is unfortunately disappointing - out of all of the movies, that was the scene that might me think "Wow, this would be awesome in a video game!" Except, it isn’t. While the developers did an excellent job littering the screen with hundreds of Smiths, you only fight a handful of the time, as the rest just scamper around in the background. The fighting plays off exactly like it does in the regular game. Furthermore, the "solution" to this level is nebulous and nonsensical, and is only solvable since the game directly tells you what to do.
The game skips almost entirely over The Matrix Revolutions, leaving only the final Smith battle in the rain. Once that’s over - well, the game devolves into absurdity and offers off a ridiculously goofy final boss that you’ve probably seen in the commercials. Your enjoyment of this will depend on how seriously you take the Matrix movies. Stalwart fans might be offended - I thought the ending segments were pretty amusing, and they make sense coming from the same studio that brought us Earthworm Jim and MDK so many years ago. Overall, the choice of levels feels a bit bloated, but it does capture most of the best moments.
Import Friendly? Literacy Level: 0
Path of Neo was released in November in America, so everything is in English. The game was later released in Japan and Korea.
+ Pros: Expanded levels, cool animations, and plenty of variety in the action
- Cons: Clunky fighting system, choppy framerate, and mediocre graphics
Overall: The Matrix: Path of Neo is certainly a better game than Enter the Matrix, but the gameplay is stilted and clumsy, and the technical flaws keep it from being truly great. Still, it has some great concepts, and the fans that are still around will enjoy the extended scenarios.
Written by Kurt Kalata
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