The Ultimate Plug-N-Play!

By Loren Coleman

With The Matrix: Reloaded in full force in theaters throughout the country, gamers are salivate at the thought of the console licenses sure to follow. We see green glowing streamers of alphanumeric code scrolling down from the heavens. We grab our shades and warm up our fingers with some hacker isometric exercises, and we even try on our favorite Agent voice. Repeat after me…

"Mister An-der-son …"

Well, this time, poor Neo gets a break, as Atari and Shiny Entertainment roll out Enter the Matrix™ for Xbox. Instead, we are being treated to two new faces (both still straight out of the movie) and an adventure based on—but not wholly cut from—the new Warner Brothers flick. Does it rock? Does it roll? Does it scream with razor sharp coolness and come packaged in a slick black trench? Let me tell you, coppertop, I'm still trying to blink life back into my eyes after gluing them to a monitor for a two-hour encounter.

Are you sure you wanna go in there?

Hopefully, no one is still asking the question… What is the Matrix? But, even if they are, the opening movie that leads into the Xbox game will answer it for them. Now, I don't want to spoil the movie, but it's enough to say that there is a new and direct threat to Zion, and to deal with it, someone's gotta go back in there and kick some serious computer ASCII.

Enter Niobe and Ghost.

These two characters are so well modeled from their movie counterparts, played by Jada Pinkett Smith and Anthony Wong, that you will quickly lose yourself in the character, whichever one you choose. Jack into the Matrix, grab some gear, and you are ready for your first taste of hard code. No problem, since at first, you only have a few security guards in the way, but before you know it, you'll have to deal with armed cops and a SWAT team and… oh yeah… an Agent dogging your tracks. If you don't shiver the first time one of those guys drops in, well, you ain't quite programmed right.

Now THAT'S road rage!

So, what happens when an Agent does come for a visit, or when you byte off more SWAT members than you can chew? Just ask it straight out, dude… Do we get some real Bullet Time? Yes! In Enter the Matrix, it's called Focus, an in-Matrix power that gives you a serious edge over the rank-and-file deadlies and comes close to putting you on even footing with an Agent. This is the real deal. We're talking slow-motion, wall-running, jumping-over-alleyways and bullet-dodging abilities.

Next to Health, Focus is the most important factor to holding your edge inside the Matrix. It is everything from making that critical jump to surviving a half-dozen cops with pistols and shotguns and an eye on collecting your head. You can't do the Neo trick of standing there, leaning back and forth to dodge a dozen bullets, but you can slow down "reality" to see where the bullets are coming from (complete with wave-distortion contrails) and do some nice acrobatics to make yourself much harder to hit. Seriously. Just wait for that first time when you see an assault rifle flashing up front and a couple of cops trying to flank you from around a corner, and you lean into your Focus to see a dozen bullets crawling toward you, and you start to do some cartwheels to avoid each shot, then you run up the wall and come off it with a slow-mo crescent kick to snap a neck … all set to the strains of some seriously cool tunes, of course.

Gravity is for wimps.

Slow-motion Kung Fu choreography (by Master Yuen Wo Ping) and a host of Bullet-Time effects—what more could you want? Okay, how about a movie-quality script by the Wachowski Brothers themselves, over one hour of cut scenes from The Matrix, and the ability to interact with the coolest cast of characters? Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, the Oracle; they're all ready to help you on to bigger and bolder scenarios, where you'll need every ounce of Focus you can muster (and some serious firepower might be in order as well).

This game is packed full of dark avant-guard goodness and has enough extras to make another movie. And, just wait until you finally jack out, rubbing life back into your eyes, and shaking the hacker cramp out of your hands (if a friend can even pry the controller out of your death grip). I promise, you'll have your own Keanu moment.

Whoa!