Product Description

Set in the Matrix universe, THE MATRIX: PATH OF NEO will enable players to actually play as Neo, the central character, and relive his most important and memorable scenarios from the complete film trilogy, including the original film, THE MATRIX. Throughout the game, the path the player takes to resolve each scenario and the resulting consequences will be scripted and directed by the Wachowski Brothers. The likenesses of all of the films™≠ key actors -- including Keanu Reeves (Neo, Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus), Carrie-Ann Moss (Trinity), and Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith) ™ã are included in THE MATRIX: PATH OF NEO, which will also incorporate footage from all three feature films, as well as THE ANIMATRIX. The game includes several sequences of film-quality, live-action, full-motion footage (FMV), as well as Hollywood-quality effect sequences. Throughout the games, players will use martial arts, medieval weapons and guns (lots of guns) to take on a variety of enemies, such as heavily armed, Agents of the Matrix, including Agent Smith, and Exiles in the employ of the Merovingian.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11132 in Video Games
• Brand: Atari
• Model: 26498
• Released on: 2005-11-08
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .35 pounds

Features

• Experience true in-game Matrix physics.
• A full orchestral score playing in surround sound, developed to follow the action of the game.
• Enhanced Bullet Time special effects from the films and allow gamers to dodge bullets, jump off walls and defy gravity and logic to recreate its most memorable scenes.
• Read codes, fly, run, and jump off walls.
• Dodge bullets and master martial arts.

Amazon.com Product Description

The Matrix: Path of Neo will follow the story of the blockbuster motion picture trilogy The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions and for the first time allow gamers to play as Neo and become "the One."

From the moment the game begins, how the situations play out, how they handle them, how they deal with the events, where they go, how people react to them -- it's all up to the gamer. They may win where Neo failed or find another way to solve the problem -- the path is now theirs to follow.

As Neo, the choices the player makes to resolve each scenario and the resulting consequences may have a different result than the original films. Alternative scenarios filled with new characters, content and storylines have all been written and planned by the Wachowski Brothers to expand the Matrix universe and overall gaming experience.

Once again blurring the lines between Hollywood and interactive entertainment, The Matrix: Path of Neo features the likenesses of all of the films' key actors -- including Keanu Reeves (Neo), Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus), Carrie-Ann Moss (Trinity), Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith) and Jada Pinkett-Smith (Niobe).

From the Manufacturer
The Matrix: Path Of Neo will follow the story of the blockbuster motion picture trilogy The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions and for the first time allow gamers to play as Neo and become "the One".

Gamers will play as Neo, but from the moment the game begins, how the situations play out, how they handle them, how they deal with the events, where they go, how people react to them -- it's all up to the gamer. They may win where Neo failed or find another way to solve the problem -- the path is now theirs to follow.

Choices the player makes may lead to consequences different than the original films

As Neo, the choices the player makes to resolve each scenario and the resulting consequences may have a different result than the original films. Alternative scenarios filled with new characters, content and storylines have all been written and planned by the Wachowski Brothers to expand the Matrix universe and overall gaming experience.

Gamers will assume the role of Neo from when, as Thomas Anderson, he gets the cell phone in the package from Morpheus, to the flying street battle in the rain against Agent Smith.

Read codes, fly, run, and jump off walls. Dodge bullets and master martial arts. Experience true in-game Matrix physics.

Features:

• Once again blurring the lines between Hollywood and interactive entertainment, The Matrix: Path Of Neo will feature the likenesses of all of the films' key actors -- including Keanu Reeves (Neo), Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus), Carrie-Ann Moss (Trinity), Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith) and Jada Pinkett-Smith (Niobe).
• To truly immerse the gamer in the Matrix universe, the game will feature a "Director's Cut" of the original movie footage from all three films and The Animatrix as cinematic sequences to progress the story told from Neo's perspective. An exclusive to The Matrix: Path Of Neo, the footage was edited by Zach Staenberg, the Academy Award winning editor of The Matrix working side by side with the Wachowski Brothers.
• Re-creating the incredible ambience of being in the Matrix, The Matrix: Path Of Neo will feature a full orchestral score playing in surround sound, developed to follow the action of the game. In addition, the games' soundtrack will feature original songs by the bands that were featured in the Matrix films.
• The player will use martial arts, medieval weapons and guns (lots of guns) to take on a variety of enemies, such as heavily armed SWAT officers; Agents of the Matrix, including Agent Smith; and Exiles in the employ of the Merovingian. To help prepare for these battles, there are several training levels which Neo must complete.
• The game will have enhanced "Bullet Time" special effects from the films and allow gamers to dodge bullets, jump off walls and defy gravity and logic to recreate its most memorable scenes.
• To re-create Neo's incredible range of moves The Matrix: Path Of Neo will also feature a more sophisticated martial arts engine to give gamers the true feeling of being "the One".

Customer Reviews

I haven't finished the game but...
The other reviewer dogged this game horribly.

I would be the first to admit that this game has many shortcomings, exspecially from a standard pc gamer point of view. The graphics are not Half-Life 2, thats for sure. One thing I noticed after i started playing though is that the game automaticlly set the graphics level to 2. You can check this in the options only before you start playing. I upped the setting to 10 and suddenly saw some nice shadow effects as well as specular maps. For those of you who don't know, specular maps make things look shiny. I recommend everyone adjust this setting before you start playing the game, unless you have a crappy system.

I have no problem with the pc controls. I can't imagine them being better with the current combat system.

The hand to hand combat in this game does seem simplified. There are button combos in this game to learn that will allow you to pull of some cool moves. I am becoming more intregued by the combat system as I play and learn how to pull of cool moves.

It is easy to tell that the guns in the game where not meant to be as flashy as the hand to hand combat. My major complaint with the guns is that while you have a good target reticule, you shoot from third person. This is ok but its not ok that when you shoot at eye level the Neo character model completely blocks your view of what is in front of you. So you wont know if you are hitting anything or not. You can always move to the side though.

You really have to spend more than 30 minutes with the game if you want more out of it. It is too bad that it didn't take advantage of all the pc has to offer, but at least we have a pc version.

Best Matrix game yet!
Like the title says, this is infact the BEST Matrix game yet! While this holds little value to many, I'd like to elaberate on MY experience with the game, which seems to be a bit contrary to Mr Paul Arellano.

Graphics: Indeed Paul is right, the graphics do look a bit "ported." Meaning, majorly fuzzy, ESPECIALLY at a distance. Most certainly does this game fall way behind the likes of HF2, FEAR, Doom3 and so on, in the graphical department. Oddly enough, most faces look... Well, pretty realistic. Infact, if you look directly into Neo's eyes, but observe the background at the same time, he almost looks out of place. Very little detail exists in the world outside of Neo's face.

The first level: WARNING! IT SUCKS! :P I nearly had a heart attack doing the first level, the movement was choppy, the level was linear, and the excitement? None present. What was present was a feeling of ... loss... for my money that is. However, once the game recovers from this near-death-one-foot-in-the-grave-gameplay, it rocks!

Gameplay: This game is about as close to Neo as you can get. Enter the Matrix was a joke, however, this game (in my opinion) makes up for it. Most of the game involves you strategically taking on 4-8 NPCs at a time, and it's rather constant. That means heart pumping, button pushing, dry eyed ACTION! It is at this point, that the lack in graphics seem a distant memory, as upclose in combat, things are about as clear as they need to be to maintain a certain level of entertainment.

Martial Arts: Excellent! As you might expect from the Matrix, the moves are unbelievable! The time they shaved on the graphics obviously went into this department, as you are given a slew of arial, ground and focus attacks, custom to the amount of enemies you are taking on. One such move when queued with 3 enemies has you foot sweep 2, while they're in mid air you grab their feet and while swinging them in circular motion, pound the 3rd guy and finally slam the first two to the floor ontop of the 3rd!

Overall: It's undenyable that the game could be better, much like everything else. However, all in all, I'd say it's the Matrix game we've been waiting for. If you're an old Street Fighter fan, you will feel a definate resemblance while trying desperately to combine the right combo of moves to flatten your foes.

You have been warned!!!
Before you read my review, click on some of the games that I have reviewed over the past four years here at Amazon. I'm one of those long time reviewers on PC games...so listen to the voice of authority. I gave this 1 star and here's why.

I was SO excited to buy this game and when it came out yesterday, I pumped $50.00 into the cash register and I came home all happy and giddy. And then the nightmare started...

First of, this came as a DVD-Rom, no problem for me. I have a P4 3.2, with a 512mb DDR graphics card and 2 gb of memory so yes I was ready to play this game at max texture. The game will load...and this no kidding...6 gigabytes of installation files! If you have a tiny hard drive, better think twice before you install this game. Luckily I have two 200 gb drives but still, having 6gb gone to a horrible game is just too painful to bear at the moment. And then the nightmare happened...

The graphics are HORRIBLE!!! It was obvious that the graphics were completely ported from PS2 or Xbox. The conversion was just poorly done. Graphics were washed out, it was like looking at a game that was marinated in clorox bleach for two days, dried out and then plastered on your monitor. It is that BAD. I maxed the texture to the highest resolution and even raised the maximum texture quality..but it was hopeless. The graphics remained washed out and just utterly disgusting. Make no mistake...this game is a poor conversion from a console game. It was pretty obvious that Shiny Entertainment got lazy with the PC version.

Ok having undergone the first suffering, I tried to convince myself that maybe the gameplay will save it. Oh my God was I SO wrong. You start out like in the movie...right where Neo was in the office being chased by Agents. Character movement was horrible. You could tell that the character was moving on some sort of rail, like somebody put gridlines on the floor and Neo could only move in a linear fashion. Controls were completely unresponsive. I tried using a controller but it was still bad. You can't even configure your joystick. If you check the readme file it says there all the button configs have already been programmed so there is no way for you customize it.

The gameplay was a long dragging struggle of mashing the buttons anywhere and everywhere. Forget about key combos because they wouldn't really matter. Just keep mashing that button and you will eventually win every level. The game even attempts to act like Delta Force Black Hawk Down PC game where you operate a chaingun and straffing an office building while you try and save Morpheus. All in all this game requires no brainpower at all, no strategy, you just basically follow the rails. You just follow one straight path into every poorly designed level. No flexibility, TOTALLY LINEAR in scope. This game is a sign that the Matrix is finally DEAD. You know I could ask my dog to finish this game for me...he might get a high score just by gnawing and chewing my mouse, he'll eventually beat this game.

This game is dumb and yes I am dumb for having bought this game. This is prolly the worst ever game I have ever invested my money in it.

Let this be a warning to you buyer. You have been warned. Be very very careful about plunking $50.00 on this. I suggest you wait for other reviews to come in before you hit the game stores. But I will tell you this...Path of Neo is a path to disaster.