A Small Peek At Enter The Matrix

Infogrames and Atari hold a small LA soiree to debut the Matrix game to the gaming press. This could potentially be very big.

Very large game projects, in the eyes of publishers, deserve very big launch events?and so it was last night, when Infogrames and Shiny Entertainment held a party to give the games media, entertainment world, and a whole wagonload of celebrities their first look at Enter The Matrix, a high-budget action game due to hit stores just in time for The Matrix Reloaded's theatrical debut in May.

Although Enter The Matrix takes place in the same world as the upcoming movies, it's something of a side story to the films?you don't directly control Keanu and crew, but you'll be working towards the same goals, so to speak. The two heroes here are Niobe and Ghost, two members of the same rebel group that Morpheus, Trinity and Neo are involved with, and you'll get to control both as they drive across the cityscape and beat the crap out of Sentinels and other minions. Infogrames and Shiny had all four versions of Enter The Matrix?PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube?playable at the show. Four different sections of the game were available for play: two fighting sequences and two driving bits.

The fighting scenes both took place in an area called "The Chateau," a large mansion home to, as it turns out, a legion of vampires. Although Infogrames didn't talk about the story behind this scene, Niobe and Ghost have infiltrated this house from two separate areas?the Great Hall and the Attic?and have to fight their way towards some unspecified target inside, whipping the crap out of mounds of undead scum in the process.

The style of the fighting sequences is less straight fighting and more Devil May Cry-style kicking ass and looking cool while you're doing it. The four face buttons are used to punch, kick, jump, and block, and two more shoulder buttons let you use weapons and "focus" (Matrix-style), which unlocks bullet-time and more cool moves and attacks. While engaging enemies, you can press the control pad in any direction to concentrate your fury on one enemy or another?helpful when you're dealing with hordes of opponents at once.

Mysterious black vehicles getting you down? Then focus a little and have Ghost fire a couple rounds off the side of your car. You'll thank him in the morning.
The driving bits work much the same way as they would in Driver or Grand Theft Auto?you're here, your destination's there, and there's an all-knowing arrow at the top of the screen to show the way. Police cars try to damage you demolition-derby style, but they're easily dealt with by having Ghost pop out of a window in third-person view and blast away with a machine gun. Another level has you driving a hoverpod around a vaguely Descent-like environment, fending off Sentinels that try to latch on to your craft.

The best part about the Enter The Matrix demo scenes?and, mind you, this isn't something that shows very well in the screenshots?was the fighting control and animation. All the fights you get into play out exactly as they would in the Matrix movie?you can punch out enemies in the air to send 'em flying across the room, or leap off the wall and jump-kick them to oblivion. Although the need for a little more graphical flash was definitely still felt, everything animated really well (save for a few weird bits that could use some smoothing out), and movie fans will be completely convinced that what they are playing is not some lame quickie license. (Out of the four versions, the PC looked the best, the PS2 looked the plainest, and the GameCube and Xbox ports both looked about the same?the GC port with sharper colors, and the Xbox one with better textures. This will likely change in the next few months, though, as Shiny polishes up all four versions.)

What's more important to Matrix fans, though?perhaps more important than the gameplay itself?isn't how much time Shiny's spent on the graphics, but instead how intertwined the game is with the Wachowski brothers' Matrix saga. The directors filmed a full hour of new footage for this game?shooting whenever they had time left over while on location for Reloaded?and they'll be interspersed as cutscenes as you wend your way through the story. A lot of what you see will depend on how you play the game, too?entire scenes (including a fight with Trinity) can be missed if you fail to complete this or that task during the fighting or driving scenes.

As Shiny's David Perry very modestly put it at the event, "We've been working on this two years non-stop with the Wachowski brothers, and we're going to change the face of the game industry." While we've still got a while before the final playable's out (the demo kiosks didn't show any of the original cutscenes, either), Perry's work doesn't appear to be in vain. If The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers showed that movie licenses don't necessarily have to be crap, then Enter The Matrix could prove once and for all that they can be incredible if they try.

Stay tuned to GamePro.com for more screenshots later day, and try paying us a visit later this week for a full interview with the folks behind the game.

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