Matrix Online Review (no fat)

Game Description

The ‘jack-in’ Universe of Matrix Online holds tightly to the conventions of the franchise itself. The story unravels from where the film Matrix Revolutions let off. Following Neo’s self-sacrifice for the sake of saving mankind, there has been peace between Machines and mankind.

Even with the fragile peace within the Matrix, there are groups vying for power. Namely, Merovingian and the Exiles are plotting and planning to gain the upper hand in the Mega City. Your aim is to help your group achieve its goal.

Matrix Online Gameplay

The purpose of the game is defined early on so the game progresses in an orderly fashion without the need to run around finding something to do. You first enter the Mega City after you have been called up by your Zeon contact. You are assigned a mission, through which you prove yourself worthy of consideration for further work.

After you succeed with the mission, agents of Machines and the Merovingian will contact you to carry out direct, as well as random, missions for them. The core of the game is based on combat, and that’s what you’ll be expected to do most of your time in Matrix.

The downside is that the missions handed out by the NPCs can get quite repetitive. Also, all of them carry the same underlining purpose of killing someone, picking up items, or getting from one point to another. The missions are not overly taxing and players can get quite far even while playing solo. This means that the effect of an MMORPG team-up fight is lost to a certain extent.

Matrix Online Character Creation

Similar to other MMOPRG games, you start off by having to customize your character. You can choose from Fanatic Self Improver, Suspicious Cynic or New Age Hippy. Each choice has a different base ability score which effects your Perception, Focus, Reason, Belief, and Vitality.

Through the character creation tool, you can see how different stats give one advantage over the other. Though the system is explained, it has some limitations with options such as focus and perception; gamers would know from the description that these stats would help them in combat, but how they help is anybody’s guess. Nevertheless, you will have the chance to refine your character skills by uploading codes with special fighting techniques and other options which can give your player the ‘X’ factor.

As you progress through the game, you’ll need to become a specialist in one field or another. The choices of becoming a hacker, coder, or an operative look unique to the game. However, once you have scratched the surface you’ll notice a strong undercurrent of regular MMORPG’s Mage, Summoner and Warrior classes staring you in the face.

Players have the option of shifting from one class to another with the same character by changing the Matrix code. You can also upload an entire skill and unlock new features for your character and diversifying into a new area.

Matrix Online, The Factions

The missions that will be assigned by the Zion, machines or the Exiles will ultimately be quite monotonous. However as you progress further in the game, you will see some different missions and features unique to them. Plus, you will meet in-game actors, which provide some much needed seriousness to the role playing aspect of the game.

Matrix Online Bullet Time

Think of the Matrix and you’ll think of the ‘bullet time’ feature of the movie. Thankfully for the game, this aspect hasn’t been ignored in Matrix Online. In fact, the game holds true to many features of the Matrix franchise. However, the thing that made the Movie’s ‘bullet time’ action so thrilling was the clever camera panning which isn’t a big part of Matrix Online.

As a matter of fact, the camera movement rather spoils the effect during fights when you are trying to move from one fallen enemy to beat up another. But, as the camera moves during combat, you are likely to lose track of your direction, and end up having your back side kicked by the enemy.

Matrix Online Interlock System

The combat in system is turn based which can be a tad annoying, but the variety of moves available help keep monotony off your mind while fighting.

The combat in most MMOs inspires fantasy as you wonder how you could punch the opponent so hard without making contact! Matrix Online has no such problems. The fight sequences use an interlocking system which means you’ll be getting lots of physical contact moves which can be really entertaining.

However you won’t always be pleased with the interlock system in Matrix Online. While you can turn tail and run in other games, here you have to use up a move to disentangle first. The untangling, coupled with the camera movement, can be very frustrating, especially if you are low on health and looking to get away.

Matrix Online Technicalities

As far as the system requirements are concerned, you will need a state of the art system to support the high profile features of the game. It requires 1.4 Ghz and 7 GB of free disk space as a minimum.

You can have only one player on a server. As the worlds are run on separate servers, characters from one world have no contact with players from another world.

Matrix Online Graphics

The graphics are detailed and good to look at, but they are plagued by lots of lag at high resolution. The game world mostly consists of a city with city streets, alleys, high rising buildings and indoor offices and rooms that are sparsely decorated and quite repetitive in their settings as well.

However, the delicate details can be seen during your trips to the buildings as you can see outside a window and see people moving about on the streets, giving things a realistic touch.

Matrix Online Sound

The sound effects during fights are impressive as it corresponds well with the action. However, there is lag here and there that spoils some of the fun when things get out of line.

The game follows the sound track of the movie as well as other good scores. The voice acting by known movie characters provides a perk up as well.

Summing Up

Matrix Online is not quite a bug-free game as yet. The missions, as well as the opponents, can be monotonous and the game doesn’t really provide a visual treat with its urban look, as a well imagined fantasy land might do.

Though the game doesn’t add much innovation to the genre of multiplayer online games, it holds true to the conventions of the Matrix franchise. Matrix fans are likely to enjoy the game and, as subsequent patches and expansion packs add to the storyline of the game, other players might start to find the title exciting as well.

Matrix Online Cost

At the time of this review, Matrix Online retails for $29.99. It is definitely worth a go and is poised to be fun.