Enter the Matrix is a 2003 action-adventure video game developed by Shiny Entertainment and published by Infogrames under the Atari brand name. The first game based on The Matrix film series, its story is concurrent with that of the film The Matrix Reloaded and features over an hour of original footage, written and directed by the Wachowskis and starring the cast of the films, produced for the game.[3]
Released on May 15, 2003, around the same period as The Matrix Reloaded, Enter the Matrix was simultaneously produced with The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. While it received mixed reviews from critics, the game sold 5 million copies as of May 2004.[4]
Gameplay
Enter the Matrix gives players control of two of the supporting characters from Reloaded and Revolutions, Ghost (Anthony Wong) and Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith), members of the same group of rebels as Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo, the protagonists of the series. Niobe is the Captain of the Logos, the fastest ship in the rebel fleet. Ghost is the ship's first mate, weapons guru, and a deep-thinking, philosophical assassin. The game takes place at roughly the same time as the events in Reloaded.
Players play as either Niobe or Ghost, each of whom have slight variations during their story. Most levels involve controlling players in a third-person perspective, using guns and fighting skills to defeat opponents and complete level objectives. At any time, players can activate bullet time (called "Focus" in the game) which slows down time, giving players the ability to perform actions such as shooting in midair and dodging bullets. Some levels involve one-on-one martial arts fighting against single opponents. In levels involving vehicles, such as driving a car or piloting the Logos, the style of game play depends on the selected player, commonly with Niobe maneuvering the vehicles to avoid obstacles, whilst Ghost takes control of a gun to fight off incoming enemies. A hacking system allows players to enter codes, which can unlock special skills, weapons and secrets, such as a 2-player versus mode.[5]
Plot
The story begins with Niobe, captain of the Logos, and Ghost, her first mate, retrieving a package left in the Matrix by the crew of the recently destroyed rebel ship Osiris. After being pursued by Agents, Ghost and Niobe escape from the Matrix with the package, which turns out to be a message to the human city Zion, warning them that the machines are approaching with an army of at least 250,000 Sentinels. Niobe and Ghost are tasked with calling the rest of the ships back to Zion to coordinate a defense.
With this in mind, the captains of the various ships hold a meeting in the Matrix to decide on how best to defend themselves. During the meeting, Agents attack the building they are in, although Niobe and Ghost are able to help their allies escape. They then encounter the Keymaker, a program capable of accessing any area in the Matrix, who leads them to safety through a door he created. The Keymaker gives the two a key that they are supposed to give to Neo. However, the key is stolen by henchmen of the Merovingian, a program created during the early days of the Matrix who now operates an illegal smuggling ring within the program. Ultimately, the Merovingian destroys the key, but Niobe and Ghost are able to escape, when the Keymaker realizes that it is too early for the key to be given to Neo.
Niobe later volunteers to go find the Nebuchadnezzar, the ship captained by Morpheus, upon which Neo serves, and the only ship yet to return to Zion. Upon finding the ship and its crew, and helping them escape from the Matrix, Niobe and Ghost agree to help in Neo's mission against the machines, agreeing to destroy a power plant. After this mission is completed, the Oracle, a program that often gives the humans advice, requests that the player character come and speak to her. After their conversation, the player is confronted by Smith, a rogue Agent that seeks to destroy both the human and machine worlds.
Connections to the films
Enter the Matrix was designed, like the 2003 animated film The Animatrix, to be an integral part of the Matrix milieu. The game includes one hour of live action 35 mm film footage written and directed specifically for the game by The Wachowskis. The martial arts moves and game engine cutscenes feature actions motion captured directly from the films' actors and stunt doubles to recreate their unique fighting style, and were created under the supervision of the series' fight scene choreographer Yuen Woo-ping.
The player learns that Neo is not the only target of Persephone's predilection for 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. 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, had died of complications related to diabetes early in the production of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. She had filmed her scenes for Reloaded, but was yet to complete her work on Revolutions. The game includes a sequence specifically explaining her change of appearance, as a result of an attack on her by the Merovingian. The Merovingian's attack was facilitated by a sacrificial trade with the compassionate program Rama-Kandra. The Merovingian acquired the deletion codes for the Oracle's external "shell", and in exchange, he gave Rama-Kandra's daughter, Sati, her freedom, despite her lack of purpose in the machine world. The Oracle foretells, however, that Sati will play an important role in both the Matrix and the real world.
Development
Plans for a Matrix video game began in November 1999, following the film's release. The Wachowskis had talks with Shiny Entertainment and Konami to develop the title around this time.[6] At E3 2000, the title was officially announced, with Shiny Entertainment as the developer and their then-owner Interplay Entertainment as the publisher. The game would be based on the then-untitled second movie and would be released for the PlayStation 2 in 2002, the same year the sequel was due to release.[7]
On May 1, 2001, Interplay announced that the game would also be released for the Xbox, with Microsoft paying $5 million to secure a six-month exclusivity deal to release the title on the Xbox before any other console, supply exclusive content for the version, and also securing exclusive online gaming rights to the franchise, however, Interplay would remain as publisher.
Soundtrack
A promotional CD release of the soundtrack accompanied the video game, with compositions by Erik Lundborg in the style of Don Davis, who composed the music for the films.
Track listing
Other musical groups, such as Evanescence, Fluke, Clawfinger, and Celldweller, are featured in the game and are credited in the game's booklet.
- 1) "Kick Jab Stab" (3:04)
- 2) "Get Out Of My Face" (3:18)
- 3) "In My Path... You're Dead" (2:22)
- 4) "Eat This, Jerk" (3:27)
- 5) "You Don't Scare Me Bucko" (2:35)
- 6) "I Do Not Like You" (1:57)
- 7) "Fist Fight" (2:29)
- 8) "Smelly Sewer" (1:27)
- 9) "Be Prepared" (1:41)
- 10) "A Sickening Feeling" (4:22)
Sales
Within a week of release, Atari announced that the game had sold 1 million units for all four platforms in North America and Europe combined.[16] By June, the game sold 2.5 million units and became the company's fastest-selling title in history.[17] Within March 2004, the title sold 5 million units, and was reissued under the console's budget labels around this time.[14] By July 2006, the PlayStation 2 version of Enter the Matrix had sold 1.2 million copies and earned $58 million in the United States. Next Generation ranked it as the 39th highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube between January 2000 and July 2006 in that country. Combined sales of Enter the Matrix console releases reached 1.9 million units in the United States by July 2006.[18] Worldwide, the game sold 5million units.[4]
Reception
Enter the Matrix received "mixed or average" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.
Two critics from Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it "bad" scores; another later admitted that his "average" score for the game was more positive than the game actually deserved. Mark MacDonald was especially scathing, writing "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."
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.[48] One common complaint was that players wanted to play as trilogy protagonist Neo rather than secondary characters Ghost and Niobe, an issue Shiny Entertainment addressed with their later Matrix game Path of Neo.
Steven Poole, in his column in Edge, described the PS2 version of 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.
Awards
At the AIAS' 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Jada Pinkett Smith's performance as Niobe won the award for "Outstanding Achievement in Character Performance - Female", tying with Tara Strong's vocal performance as Rikku in Final Fantasy X-2.[54] It won for Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show at the 2003 VGX Awards.
External links
- (archived)
References
- I. G. N. Staff. Enter the Matrix Head-to-Head IGN, 2003-05-22, retrieved 2024-01-21^
- Enter The Matrix goes gold Eurogamer.net, 2003-04-22, retrieved 2024-01-21^
- Neil McGreevy. Top Developer's Code for Success BBC News, July 4, 2003, retrieved November 25, 2018