The Matrix Online

When you first jack into the Matrix you are brought to a character creation screen; in this screen you have some control over the appearance of your character. You have the choice of one of any ten personality pofiles. Each profile gives you a different mix of starting attributes. You can either create a character that resembles one of your favorite matrix stars, or you can go in a different direction and create a unique character appearance that is new to the Matrix Trilogies. Once you select what gender your character will be; you are then asked to select from a few different body structures; basically you will choose your desired height and weight. Now for the clothing; you can dress your “RedPill” anyway you like, the game offers a small variety of clothing options to choose from; such as; hats, shirts, pants, and shoes. Don’t be fooled by this because you really don’t have much to choose from when it comes to the wardrobe of your character. When you start the game you will notice that a lot of the characters in the game are very similiar in appearance. The only real difference is the fact that some characters have a cowboy hat on and others wear a trenshcoat. Once you are finished creating your character your are now ready to be “jacked in” to the Matrix for the first time. One of the things that I really enjoyed about this game is the fact that when you get jacked into the Matrix it takes your RedPill a few seconds to see clearly. What I would compare these first few seconds too is in the first matrix movie after Neo realizes that he is “the One” and he sees the entire Matrix as a series of codes. This is what you view through your character’s eyes for a few seconds after being jacked in, I thought this was a small, yet an excellent addition to the game.

Once you are in the Matrix the world is quite stunning, from the tall buildings, to the cars driving by you. I played the game at a resolution of 1280 X 1024 and I was pleased with the graphics. I most enjoyed the graphics when I was in close combat with a foe. There are two modes of combat in the Matrix; Free-Fire Combat and Close Combat. Free-Fire combat uses ranged weapons like guns, during this mode of combat both you and your opponent can move around freely while engaged. In Close Combat you and your opponent must be less than six meters apart and are usually engaging in hand to hand combat. I enjoyed the Close Combat more than the Free-Fire mode because I really enjoyed the martial arts used by both characters during the sequence. The camera shows a few diffent views as you are figthing with an enemy. Usually the camera views the fight from the side, to be able to see both participants in the brawl. Most battles consist of both characters starting with a gun of some kind and then switching to close combat, which constists of a combination of kicks, punches, and throws. When you defeat your enemy you are rewarded with an amount of experience points, which depend on the level of your fallen combatant. Once you defeat your enemy you can search the body to see what sort of items he / she was carrying. If you happen to lose a battle you have to wait a few minutes to auto regenerate or you can click the generate button to speed up the process and respawn back at your most recent hardline upload. Though I enjoyed combat in the Matrix, I wasn’t really impressed with the amount of weapons that you had to choose from. Personally, I would have liked to have seen a few melee weapons incorporated into the game. During most of the Matrix Reloaded movie, Morpheus uses a sword while he is jacked in; and let us not forget the fight seen between Neo and Exiles, where Neo uses two katanas while the Exiles use axes and so forth. I would have really liked to see some of these weapons in the matrix Online game for use in Close Combat situations.

Travel in the Matrix is relatively painless. You can take the Subway from place to place, you can use hardlines (which look just like payphones) to travel from place to place, and the slowest means of transportation is running, which I wouldn’t recommend unless you are trying to build up your character’s experience by taking on street gangs in combat or by completing missions.

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Receiving missions is extremely easy in The Matrix Online; for new missions all you have to do is click on the phone icon at the bottom of the screen, which will then make a call to Zion (the last human city). The first few missions in the game are pretty easy to complete because you are given somewhat of a tutorial on how to play the game. But as your character progresses throughout the game the missions become much more difficult. After your RedPill completes a few missions for Zion, your character will be contacted by both the Machines and the Exiles; both races will sense your potential and request your help for their cause. I thought this was also a good idea because not all RPGers want to play the “good side” all of the time and it gives each player the opportunity to decide for whom they would like to fight for. The only problem with this was the fact that no matter whom who chose to fight for you are still given strikingly similar missions. When you are given a mission you have the choice to either Accept or Decline the mission. When you accept a mission you can recruit other RedPills to help complete if it seems like it is going to be difficult to complete with one person. When you recruit other players the leader of the team can decide how to divide the loot that you recover. The leader can either take it all, divide it up evenly, or divide it solely on the amount of damage that is done by each member of the team. I liked this aspect of the Matrix Online because not every Guild wants to divide money up the same way. This at least gives the team and its leader a few different options to choose from. If you decline the mission on the other hand you can search until you find a mission that will be beneficial to you.

Hardlines are also where you upload your progress throughout the game. I usually tried to upload my progress after a few missions just to be on the safe side in case I would run into a boss that was difficult to defeat. I would suggest that when you are playing this game everytime you see a hardline I would make it a habit to upload your progress, this way you will not lose much of your progress when you are defeated. If you do not group up with anyone once you complete a handful of missions they become difficult and you will find yourself dying all of the time. When you are killed in the Matrix Online you can either wait a set amount of time to restruct yourself or you can bypass the wait simply by clicking on the restruct now button. I liked this aspect also because I have played MMORPGs in the past that make you wait a set amount of time to get back into the game and it gets extremely frustrating because there is nothing you can do to speed up the process.

One of the problems we had with the Matrix Online was the fact that you need an insane system full of RAM to run the game fluidly. If your computer is not up to date you will experience some lag issues unless you minimize the graphical settings. Also, the missions get very repetitive; no matter what side you choose to fight for you are always doing similiar missions. Although some of the combat was definitely entertaining, we found some flaws with it. It seems as though every once in a while when your RedPill was in combat, you would be rewarded with the Experience points while you were still fighting with your counterpart; sometimes it took as long as five seconds for your enemy to fall to the ground – even after he / she had been defeated. The camera would also switch at some really inopertune times; for instance I would defeat one enemy and the camera would switch while I was getting attacked from behind. This really started to get annoying at times when my health was low and I was fighting numerous foes at once. I would defeat one enemy and the camera would switch leaving me If the camera view wouldn’t have switched constantly during combat I feel as this would have helped the playability of the game.