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Back when gaming wasn't mainstream and home consoles could never compete with high-tech arcade hardware, movie licenses were sure signs of bad games. From E.T. to Back to the Future, just about any game based on a movie was doomed to be less than stellar. Fast forward two decades and the trend is finally beginning to turn itself around. Leading this charge to make better games with movie licenses is Atari's Enter the Matrix.

Several steps have been taken to create a gaming experience that's on par with the movie itself. However, these steps have only taken the game so far. The Wachowski brothers were brought in to make sure the game followed a parallel storyline to the Matrix Reloaded film. They also directed the game to insure it gave players a true to life Matrix experience. The results are somewhat mixed, due to a variety of good and bad features within Enter the Matrix.

Fans of the movies will immediately feel at home when they power on Enter the Matrix. From the Matrix-like Shiny logo, to the thundering Dolby Digital 5.1 title screen music, Shiny truly gives you the feeling that you're about to enter the Matrix. Unfortunately, this is basically where the feeling of being inside the Matrix ceases.

The Xbox version is the best looking of the four available ports of the game. With that said, the character animation is abysmal. Whether you're running, shooting, or just climbing up a ladder, nothing looks lifelike. Either your character's arms are flailing about, or they're simply putting to much effort into things. This becomes especially noticeable when your opponent is on the ground, because your character won't even be making contact with the grounded enemy, but they'll be flying away as you punch and kick at the air. About the only animation that looks good, is when you use your focus (bullet-time) abilities to jump off of walls and perform Neo-like special attacks.

Animation aside, the fact that you can only play as Niobe and Ghost doesn't do much for a movie-like experience. Neo, Trinity and Morpheus are the main characters in all three films. Yet, in Enter the Matrix you play as two characters that collectively share approximately fifteen minutes of on-screen time in the first two films. While both Niobe and Ghost can use the action button to perform extreme counter attacks during hand to hand combat, you don't feel anything for the characters because you don't really get to know them.

Playing through Enter the Matrix as Niobe or Ghost provides two different experiences, but neither is very rewarding. Niobe is the hand to hand combat expert and has several various combo attacks that you can pull off with varying combinations of the punch, kick, action, jump, and focus buttons. Meanwhile, Ghost is your weapons expert who handles quite a few more weapons than Niobe, but still maintains the basics of hand to hand combat.

How you go about fighting people doesn't add up to much, simply because half the time you're wondering around levels trying to figure out where you're supposed to go. Depending on what difficulty level you're playing at, eventually you'll get an arrow that points in the direction you're supposed to go, but even then it can be annoying trying to figure out exactly where the arrow wants you to go. In driving levels you're linked up directly to your operator, making things almost exactly like the movie. The developers should've put this feature in every level.

The only aspect of Enter the Matrix that's actually rewarding is yet another hindrance as well. As soon as you're getting into the game, it breaks off to an in-game cut-scene, or a live scene filmed specifically for the game. Movie fans will take great pleasure in this as these scenes really let you in on the back story of Reloaded. These cut-scenes help move the game from your standard third-person exploring levels, to the driving and hovercraft flying levels, but at the high price of interrupting the gameplay just as you're getting into it, Shiny should have come up with a better method of transitioning.

Enter the Matrix hits an all-time low when they break the mythos that binds the game to the movie. If nothing else is taken from the movies, it's the knowledge that when you see an Agent, you run. Unless you're Neo, this is common knowledge among the people who have been freed from the Matrix. So when Shiny has you fighting Agents multiple times throughout the game, it takes you completely out of the movie experience. If you attempt to fight an agent as Niobe or Ghost with your hand to hand combat alone, you will be taken out. But if you hold the focus button while you attack them, it's fairly easy to get them out of your way. Do yourself a favor and don't shoot at the Agents because the game does an ugly job of recreating the transparent effects of the movies when Agents dodge bullets.

If you're a fan of the movie trilogy, there is only one way to enjoy this game. Turn your Xbox on and watch the events of the game up to the title screen. Then hand the controller over to someone else and let them battle through an annoying, frustrating, rule breaking game. Just make sure they record all of the cut-scenes so you can come back later to see the entire back story. If you're a gamer at heart, you might have some fun hacking into your system through the built-in cheat option, but opening the disc tray and making the controller vibrate only goes so far. Everyone else might want to give the game a rent to have some fun doing cartwheels off walls, and performing the other focus tricks, but the enjoyment won't last long.