The Matrix Online

List Price: $29.99 Discount Price: $19.95

Features:

• Full recreation of the world seen in the Matrix films - -you'll be able to pull off the same incredible martial arts moves and Bullet Time effects
• Travel through a rich World Cityscape environment with traffic, living neighborhoods, and breathtaking skylines as you face a variety of enemies
• A robust mission system offers players maximum re-playability and depth
• Customizable skill/ability system allows players to download the appropriate skills and abilities for their character each time they jack into the game
• Plot lines continue the story where the movies end, for deep insight into the world of The Matrix

Accessories:
The Matrix Online (Prima Official Game Guide)	PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Matrix Unbalanced [Posted on 2005-12-12]
The setup of this game is promising: as a "redpill" newly awakened in the world that comes to The Matrix after the third movie, you are presented with a great deal of possibility. Options for character creation are varied enough that you seldom run across look-alikes, and the scenario that starts your trip into the game plays out just like the movies, complete with short "virtual training" sequences.

Unfortunately, from there the game begins to slide. A badly-released buggy game by Monolith and Sega, Warner Brothers quickly dumped the title and handed it to Sony Online (EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies). Patches are still a regular affair and seldom fix bugs. The transition ate my advance payment to WB for months of service (Sony says, "it should be there" but nonetheless would not let me continue playing until I'd provided them my credit card information, and simply began billing me at once). The patches often reset my firewall rules because they recompile the launcher.

Perhaps the largest problem is that the game is badly balanced: leveling up is best done taking "missions", most of which blur together after the first hour or two. You quickly stop reading the dialogue in your rush to get it over with. Missions are heavily stacked against you: unless you get someone higher-level to do all the work while you sit in the lobby, you will die. And take a skill penalty when you are revived. And take an XP penalty when you complete the mission. If you take too long, the mission times out. If the mission is buggy, you'll get most of the way through it before you have to abort. Even worse, at a certain path in the game, your character only gets missions in dangerous parts of town, where just getting from point A to point B is a lethal exercise.

This forces you to band together with other players, which can be the best and worst of gameplay. The saving grace to this game is that there are a lot of good people out there who will help you, bring you along, and give you the tools to get there. Even so, one of the biggest balance elements that needs to be addressed is that when you mission with higher-level characters, the mission scales to the highest level. In other words, you can't be a sidekick to the one person at the top and help them a la City of Heroes: chances are you won't get a single shot in, you just die. And the highest member then does all the work while waiting for you to make your way back to the building to rejoin the team.

It's not all negative, though, or I wouldn't be as generous with my rating. The textures and sounds in the game are really well done, the look is gorgeous, and the random "events" that take place are often interesting, and go on for a few days or a week. The music is a rework of the original movie score, with occasional hip flourishes of techno or heavy-guitar runs. The game has a high price of admission, but at least it pays off: 256MB of videocard and 2GB of RAM will actually improve the quality of the game. And because the world is partially instanced on your machine, lag can sometimes have a way of working itself out. Just the same, beware of those system requirements: I had a machine that met the minimum, but after one patch, the game booted me and refused to continue, saying my hardware was "unsupported".

With some some adjustment to lower the difficulty for the first 25 levels or so, Sony could have itself a decent MMORPG. It's also the only game I've played where style and fashion hold an important role--oddly enough, both male and female players place an emphasis on how you look and what you've got on. Sony, give us your kid gloves a bit longer through the journey, and this'll be a good game.

Not worth the 20$ I paid for it [Posted on 2006-02-23]
Having played many other MMO's over the years, I finally found a copy of the Matrix Online at a store recently, and decided to give it a whirl. I am a fan of the Matrix movies, and of the Animatrix, as well as a big fan of the Cyberpunk genera in general. In theory the Matrix Online should have been a great product, as it has so many elements to draw from to make a good game.

However I quickly found myself to be very dissatisfied with my purchase. The introduction to the game was very well done, in which you learned how to control your character and interact with the environment. However the tutorial did not adequately explain how to utilize the UI properly.

Once I actually entered into the world, there was no clear goal, path or set of activities to begin to start getting "into" the game. Travel to the various points was akwardly done, and travel times between even nearby locations is way too high. The UI interface is difficult at best to deal with, and there is no real obviously visible indication when another character tries to communicate with you (tells/whispers/etc.).

All in all I do not rate this game very highly, and would not recommend it to anyone.

Still here and always getting better [Posted on 2006-09-29]
Some of the unique basics:

You can change your load at anytime (all you need is a hardline/phonebooth found throughout the Megacity). From kung Fu to Network Hacker to Rifle Expert to Utility Coder to Master Knive Thrower and more. You can be it all, just not all at once. Your memory is limited and the art of creating a good loadout is one of the deeper parts of the game.

You can change your stats at anytime (you have to do a mission to get another stat hack object). So even if you think you screwed up putting points into the wrong attribute, you can always fix, modify, tweak and otherwise forever pursue the perfect stat build.

Interlock is the most awesome combat system for emmulating the Wire Fu combat of the movies. It's simply riveting and hasn't lost it's shine yet.

My rating:

I give it a 5 stars for fun because I love it and still have fun jacking in after 18 months.... I give it 4 stars overall because it's still buggy, buggier than it should be, but still four stars because it is so less buggy than when WB first shoved it out the door to release in early 2005.

This game has progressed emensely since launch and through the transition to SOE. New content is being added regularly and bugs continue to be addressed at a steady pace (though much work to do still).

The early days of server crashing mammoth events are pretty much gone which is good and bad. The awesome spectacles are missed but many who likewise complained about the massive lag and inevitable server crashes as well as the long periods of stagnant time between storyline events have much less to complain about these days. Storyline events with main characters (played by the devs) are smaller and far more frequent with several to many occuring each week. Critical missions are spread out instead of all being released at once. The storyline presence is stronger and more visible in this format with events and critical missions working off each other.

The major combat revision (CR2) has greatly improved the combat system while keeping the awesome hand to hand graphics that so effectively captures the feel of the Matrix movies' combat style.

For the diehard Matrix fan this is an awesome game. The environment is spectactularly rich and requires competant hardware to make it shine. There is so much to explore and it's always surprising to me that the peeps who complain about nothing to do have explored so little. If you want to grind to the top level for PvP, it's a grind for sure. No matter what it's a grind. But the story and environment are so rich that forums and player based internet resources are a huge part of this game.

This game requires a good player. One who will figure out how things work and use it to their advantage. The stats, abilities and combat system are rather complex and require much study to be succesful. Players who are curious, figure things out and explore end up being more experienced, skilled and overall have a better understanding of how to be successful against the challenges of the game. There are many experienced players who are helpful both ingame and on the forums and are a big part of what makes the community great.

The game has three servers. One hostile and two non-hostile. If you like PvP the hostile server won't disappoint you. Once you reach level 16 (50 is max) you are hostile and anyone any level of an opposing organization (there are three orgs: Zion, Machine and Merovingian) can attack you any time, anywhere (except for a few circumstances like when you are in your loading area).

Eminently soloable yet it pays to be with a good faction when it comes to keeping up with the storyline and live events. The community is one of the best amongst all MMORPG's and is a huge reason this game has survived long enough to see the fruits of some very dedicated developers'labor.

Combat interaction is the best there is. Martial Arts Wire Fu and Guns make for awesome duels and PvP requires good teamwork and complimentary builds for good success.

The ingame radio feature is still one of the coolest things amongst MMO's. Ingame players DJ MxO dedicated broadcasts which enhance the community environment and provide a great resource for information during live events.

If you like exploring and being challenged as a soloer. If you like combat either PvE or PvP. If you like a hard sci fi edge instead of fantasy immersion. If you like the Matrix story. If you like a great community. If you like awesome graphics.

If all that, then this game is for you so what are you waiting for!

If you buy this game, I urge you to get acquainted with The Matrix Online forums, seek out a good faction and check out some websites like mxoarchive.net and mxoresource.com.

Discovering as much as you can about the storyline and the environment will enrich your involvement in the conitinuing story of The Matrix.

The Matrix Online [Posted on 2007-06-09]
I played in the Matrix online public Beta when it was first in the release stages. I really liked the game and how it was set up. I still enjoy playing the game, it definatly takes work to level. I would recommend this game to anyone who followed the Matrix Trilogy.

The matrix has you .... and your credit card [Posted on 2008-05-28]
This game is fun, entertaining, and... customizable as heck. You can basically make your character look however on this green earth you want them to look. If you want a leather wearing cowboy by all means make one. Not to mention you get to enjoy the hyper jumping from the movie and other fun abilities. You can use bullet time on missions which makes for a good time. The game does however get boring after a few months even though it did have its own underground radio station for a while which addes to the fun of raves and what not.

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