The Matrix Online (PC)
Developed by: Monolith Entertainment
Published by: WB Interactive and Sega

Pretend just for a minute that you weren’t disappointed with the last two Matrix movies and that you hadn’t yet gotten sick of the franchise. Now imagine if someone could create a video game that reproduces the world of The Matrix without getting bogged down in all the pretentious pseudo-philosophy and the flashy bullet time effects and other visuals. What if it actually made you feel like you were inside The Matrix? Wouldn’t you be at least a little bit curious about it?

After all, if there’s one movie that should translate perfectly into a video game, you’d think it would be The Matrix. Unfortunately, the only Matrix game attempted thus far, 2001’s Enter The Matrix, was pretty sloppy and uninspired (although it managed to sell millions based on the name alone). But it’s pretty hard to fool consumers twice, and if WB Interactive had any hope of making their next Matrix game a success they would have to do something pretty unique. So they decided to literally “jack in” and bring The Matrix to its native environment with an MMORPG called simply, The Matrix Online.

I definitely had some doubts about The Matrix Online. Considering the tremendous resources required to develop a game like this, and the number of successful online games already competing for subscribers, I wondered how they could possibly overcome The Matrix backlash and still manage to get people hooked. After playing through the sneak preview beta, however, I have to admit that for the most part Warner Brothers and developer Monolith Entertainment have pulled it off. The Matrix Online is an exciting and well-rounded MMORPG that deserves its own place among the other big name titles like Everquest, WoW and City of Heroes. It may not surpass them from a gameplay standpoint, but it has a lot of unique ideas to offer, and most of all, it captures the feel of The Matrix universe perfectly.

From the minute you boot up the game, you are presented with a simple terminal login prompt, green text on a black background. It’s simple, yet effective in creating that illusion of real-life immersion. The character creation process in The Matrix Online is an interesting one. You enter the game as a “red pill” recruit, recently awakened to awareness of the world outside The Matrix. You choose your character’s appearance and attributes as if you are entering search terms for a particular person inside The Matrix, with the computer zooming in on your character as he is roaming the streets. A reasonable amount of customization exists as far as appearance goes, with more to follow in game by finding or purchasing various articles of clothing.

One thing you do not choose during this process is your class or profession, which may throw off some veteran role-players. This is one of the areas where The Matrix Online distinguishes itself from the other online RPGs, as your profession is determined by the abilities you have equipped in memory at a given time. This is cool because you will never lock yourself into any class or set of skills that you don’t like, and you can change your abilities anytime you jack in or upload data to a hardline (ie. phone booth). This means anyone can take on any role depending on what is required for a mission, you need only have the actual ability software available in your inventory. Of course, some abilities have prerequisites, and some require more memory slots than others. Reaching a new experience level in The Matrix Online grants you extra memory slots and points to spend on attribute improvement and upgrades to abilities. In this way, you are rewarded for reaching new levels but you are not so focused on getting to another level just so you can get a new power or magic spell. I hate the level grinding in these games, but it seems like The Matrix Online does a good job of keeping this problem at bay. It is worth nothing that in the sneak preview only one character was allowed per server; I’m not sure if this is a permanent restriction but it kind of makes sense given that you can rearrange your skills at any time.

The other major game element where The Matrix Online attempts to innovate is the combat system. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite get the hang of it myself and found it a little frustrating. The basic idea is that once you enter hand to hand combat, the “interlock” system takes over allowing combatants to cue up actions which will then be compared against their opponent’s chosen attack. A determination is made, based on various stats, as to which action gets executed for that round. Imagine a paper/rock/scissors type of set up with a bunch of basic attacks to choose from, in addition to ability-specific attacks. I guess the idea is to add a bit more strategy to the combat, but unless you understand the reasons why certain attacks beat others you will find yourself just clicking things randomly like I did. They tried to incorporate some of the cinematic flair of the movie’s action sequences too, but it ends up being frustrating because you lose control of your player’s movement once you enter combat, and the default camera angles are often disorienting. Even the techno-metal soundtrack can’t inject a feeling of energy and excitement to the battles.

While the combat system is a bit questionable, there are a lot of other neat ways in which they integrated standard MMORPG elements with the Matrix theme. When you first log on, everything in the world is shaped out of code, eventually fading into normal view. (This gets a bit annoying though, especially when you start using the subway to travel to new areas a lot.) Instead of money, the currency in the game is (what else?) information. Resource gathering is done by people with the Locate and Tap Data Node skills, who can essentially siphon information credits directly into their bank account (assuming they can also crack security codes). There is an equivalent to crafting in the game known as writing code. A player who becomes skilled at this can eventually “decompile” all objects in the game, from clothing to weapons, and reconstitute them out of their code components.

The missions that I played through were generally pretty fun, particularly because they were never the mindless “kill 10 bad guys” quest types you see in other games. (Truth be told, these do exist as mercenary side quests for employers known as “collectors” in The Matrix Online.) The timeline takes place after the events of The Matrix Revolutions, with the machines and humans in a tentative truce. You start off working for Zion, but before long you can choose to align yourself with either the Machines or the Merovingian depending on what jobs you accept. Doing more missions for one faction will make you more of a target for the other two (similar to Grand Theft Auto 2). Early on, you help recruit a couple new Red Pills and escort them to extraction points. You will also meet up with characters from the movies every now and then, which is cool. Warner Bros have recently mentioned that they will have live actors controlling various movie characters in game to help enact major story events as they happen from time to time. This could prove to be an interesting selling point in the game.

If you hang out near a mission area for too long, an agent will lock on to your signal and intercept you (and, just like in the movies, no one except Neo can take on an agent and survive). This adds some urgency to your missions. When you die in game, similar to World of Warcraft, you will lose some stability to your inventory items but will have no repercussions in terms of experience debt. You will simply need to jack into The Matrix again, which makes perfect sense in the context of the story.

One thing I liked is the ability to enter just about any building in the game. In other MMORPGs this has been a major barrier to the feeling of freedom they are striving for. It was also nice to see cars actuallly driving around the streets too — and instead of being hit by them you can do a dramatic roll over the hood if you make contact. Sweet!

As far as stability goes, there still seem to be some big glitches in the game, but it’s hard to say what the state of the product will be in when it hits stores and as they continue to roll out new patches in the coming weeks. Personally I found one mission where I was stuck and unable to complete it after finishing all the objectives, and I’ve also been stuck in combat mode after a fight ended. The network lag was brutal to the point of making it almost unbearable to simply run around the world, but with only 2 beta servers, that could be why. Sound effects and music also seemed extremely inconsistent. It’s hard to tell but I am pretty sure the problems aren’t at a Star Wars Galaxies level of embarassment, but you would hope any major stoppers would be addressed by this point.

A lot of people are going to see this game on store shelves and wonder why on earth anyone would pay money for The Matrix Online when they could be playing World of Warcraft instead. And it’s true, this game definitely has an uphill battle ahead of it and it cannot compete with the overall experience of WoW. But in the end, it’s a different game, and personally I am kind of sick of fantasy-themed RPGs. I’m sure there are plenty of other people out there who feel the same way. I can’t say that The Matrix Online is the best MMORPG on the market, but it is a refreshing alternative that surprised me with its depth and attention to detail.

For games like this, however, the development is a constantly evolving process and it is the maintenance and additional content that will make it or break it in the long run. I just hope that enough people will give The Matrix Online a chance and allow it some time to evolve because, believe it or not, it’s actually a lot better than you would think. — Sean

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