The Matrix Online Review

The Matrix universe has not fared too well since the original movie captured the imaginations of moviegoers back in 1999. Two increasingly disappointing sequels, a disjointed collection of animation in the Animatrix, and a mediocre video game have all conspired to take the luster off of a movie that ranks near the top of every gamer’s list of favorite films. Enter The Matrix Online (TMO), an online MMORPG that will try to convince gamers that The Matrix universe remains an interesting and fascinating reality even after the talk-heavy snooze-fest that was The Matrix Revolutions. That’s a lot of pressure for the game to shoulder – succeed and The Matrix will recapture its magic and the imaginations of gamers, fail and The Matrix falls further down the rabbit hole of disappointment. TMO lands somewhere in between these two extremes; it has its good points but it is not the “One” who can help The Matrix regain its former glory.

First, the basics: You are a “red pill”, a human newly awakened to the existence of the Matrix and quickly pressed into service as an operative for Zion, the last remaining human bastion. The game is set after the events of The Matrix Revolutions, so humanity co-exists with the machines in an uneasy truce but remains vigilant that the status quo remains in effect for the time being. After your character advances far enough, you’ll have the opportunity to change your allegiance from Zion to the machines or The Exiles, rogue programs dedicated to living to excess within the Matrix, but as of now there’s not much of a difference in gameplay no matter where your loyalties lie.

Although not a fantasy-based MMORPG, The Matrix Online certainly draws heavily upon those games for its inspiration. There are three major career paths you can follow in the game, operative, hacker, and coder, which pretty neatly fall in line with fighter, magic user, and crafter classes respectively. Operatives specialize in combat, and can use a wide variety of martial arts and weapons to ply their trade. Hackers can manipulate the Matrix code to basically cast the digital equivalent of spells. Coders can “compile” items into existence for sale to or use by other players. As you progress in level, you’ll eventually be able to specialize further to take on more specialized fantasy MMORPG style roles equivalent to healers or tanks. Throw these classes into a game heavy on the “deliver this” and “kill that” mission-based gameplay, strip away the leather and cool sunglasses, throw in a few elves and dwarves, and you’d have the makings of a fantasy MMORPG here. However, TMO is a bit more than that and when you take everything into account it does provide its own unique experience.

TMO begins to depart from the typical MMORPG mold by building on the premise established in the movies that humans jacking into the Matrix could download new skills straight into their brains, allowing them to become expert martial artists or skilled pilots in the blink of an eye. While in the movies any skill was available at any time, certain restrictions had to be placed on the game’s equivalent of skill downloading for obvious play balance reasons. Your initial set of available abilities will be limited, but as you progress in level you’ll have access to more and more high-level skills. These skills include things such as new combat moves or the ability to launch a code virus at an enemy (remember that in the Matrix everyone is just computer code). The number of skills that you can have active at a given time is limited, but you can visit phone booths in the game to access a “hard line” and swap your skills in and out of your active slots. This gives you way to fine-tune your character a bit before taking on a mission or to experiment with different skill mixes. Don’t take this to mean that you can become a completely different type of character by switching around a few traits – these become increasingly more expensive the more powerful they are, so you won’t be able to afford everything and will naturally need to make choices towards some sort of specialization.

Most of your time will be spent taking on missions and attempting to complete them for experience and financial gain. Missions provide a significantly more efficient way to gain experience as opposed to the freelance hunting of enemies, so there is a strong incentive to move from mission to mission despite the fact that they tend to get pretty repetitive pretty quickly. Obtaining a mission is quite easy as you can call your contacts on your cell phone at any time and ask for a new mission. For the most part your missions will boil down to the basic delivery or assassination types prevalent in MMORPG gaming. You’ll get a beacon directing you to the mission location, perform your duties, and then exit the location to collect your reward. There is a story element to the missions, but it is conveyed in small and short text boxes and quite frankly is not all that interesting or engaging. It would not be surprising to find that most players simply bypass the text in an effort to crank through as many missions as possible during the time that they spend online. The mission system is hampered by a few issues that further the feeling of repetition or add to the tedium of grinding out mission after mission. The beacon used to direct you to your next objective works on a direct line of sight and does not account for dead-ends, back alleys, walls, and the like. As you make a beeline for the beacon, you’ll often have to backtrack or try and find your way along a circuitous or meandering route. Once you reach your mission location the beacon is not much help as it does not help you locate the exact location of your objective. For example, if you’re supposed to meet with a contact you can find yourself searching every single room of a three or four story building trying to locate the person of interest. Since floor plans are recycled heavily in the game, you’ll get an annoying sense of déjà vu as you’re forced to revisit the same looking rooms over and over again in a game of hide and seek with your contact or target. The lack of variety in mission types only further adds to the feeling of repetition. It is also through missions that you’ll eventually be given the opportunity to align yourself with one of the three factions in the game. However the conflict between the factions feels underdeveloped in the game so far, so as mentioned earlier there’s not much difference in your gameplay experience no matter how you choose to align yourself.

The game really tries to tie itself into a continuation of the storyline of the movies through its special live events. Periodically, gamemaster-controlled characters will appear in the game – including such famous faces as Morpheus and Trinity – to interact with gamers and drive the storyline. The live events run for several days and provide players a chance to move through a series of story-based missions. It’s about as close as any MMORPG has gotten to capture the old D&D staple of the gamemaster and brings a tried and true aspect of pen and paper RPG gaming to the internet. It will be interesting to see how these live events develop as the game matures and they are certainly a very strong reason for giving the game a try.