Enter the matrix

Well Slam, you can play Max Payne if you want the lobby shootout. Heh. Anyways, ETM looks horrible as of now...but don't know how much better they can make it in less than a month. Hopefully the gameplay will be polished enough to make people overlook the graphical flaws. And I don't have much faith in Shiny....
 
GRAPHICAL FLAWS??? Obviously, you don't know about the motion capture. If, by some chance, you eventually think the game has good graphics, then perhaps it does. But, if you'll remember back a few months...there were many games that people wanted to play, foremost Metroid Prime, Final Fantasy X, and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. For those three games, they each had a different system. One of my friends commented on the horrible graphics for Metroid Prime. People soon saw they were outstanding. FFX, one of the best Final Fantasy games in many people's minds, achieved a graphical quality that I never thought was possible on the PS2. Morrowwind, with it's huge, epic roleplaying realms, suffered from clunky character models and strange looking houses. Yet many admit it may be one of the best games ever. If you think that graphics is directly correlated to gameplay, then you are mistaken.
 
Well by no means gameplay isn't directly related, but to me it certaintly helps. For instance I don't care how good Final Fantasy 3 is (or pick your favorite NES game), but it is just wayyyy too ugly for me to enjoy playing. I can barely stand to play a PS game nowdays after I've been spoiled by PS2 and Xbox graphics. Call me a shallow gamer but to me graphics provide an indirect enrichment of overall gameplay. Oh and motion capture has nothing to do with how good the graphics are. Well animation, but not graphics, I tend to separate the two.

I will admit that the game seems very fluid (I've seen the videos), but the stills look horrible. Some textures are just plain ugly and makes me wish for a whole lot more. I do desperately hope that ETM will turn out to be a great game, but right now I don't have too much faith in it (I don't want to disappoint myself by hyping it up, and movie to game transitions hasn't worked too well in the past).
 
And what if it turns out to be the next Goldeneye 007? That was one of the best movie to game transitions ever. Or The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers? I don't know about you, but LotR couldn't have been a better game, in my opinion. There is the possibility of it being another ET: The Extra Terristrial (actually, there isn't the possibility, but bear with me) for the Atari 2600. That game was cranked out in five weeks flat, and so many copies were produced that the company who made the game took the unsold copies (of which there were many) to a land fill. I have full faith in the Wachowski bros. choice for Shiny as their developer, and I have a huge amount of confidence in Shiny to create the best game experience possible. Here's the deal though. It isn't a movie to game transition. It is a seperate story that runs parallel to the movie. I think that's pretty innovative.
 
As innovative it might be(or maybe not), seems like a quite a number of people who have played ETM are crying "average!". Alot of people on forums(gamefaqs mainly) seems to say that the game is merely average with some good elements. Nothing excellent that everyone is hoping for =( It's truly sad since the Matrix was a huge, huge opportunity to create an amazing game, but it seems like it fell flat. And these are previews of the final code, not betas. I'll rent it and give it a go since it's the matrix and I need to at least play it. Hopefully the next Matrix game will be what everyone was hoping for.

I'm not saying that this game is bad (I can't since I didn't play it), but merely stating the general idea of those who have played it. It seems very likely that this game will be somewhere between average and good.
 
My roomate got it a day early so I got to play around with it for a few hours, and I stand corrected on my initial comments on the game. It's very average (especially the graphics), the controls are kind of awkward, and so is the camera. Perhaps the only saving grace of ETM is the Matrix license and the hand to hand combat. A must rental at best, not a purchase.
 
Sorry, guys...the Gamecube version of this game is awesome. Although some of the sounds and graphics are awkward, the controls and really cool MoCap features are excellent. I guess I'm one of the only people here with a Gamecube. I personally do not have enough time to play two discs in five days. Enter the Matrix was a buy for me.
 
After seeing the movie, and sitting down with the game a little more, I understand what they mean by unparalleled collaboration. The game is very literally, an extension of the movie. True, the graphics may not be the best, the driving levels floaty, but the game feels just like the movie. The graphics are about what you can expect from most PS2 games, although it is on the Gamecube, and there are more jaggies than I like, but it is an enjoyable game. These are really only minor complaints. Graphic-hounds may not be reveling in the pleasurable of the Matrix game, but it is about what I expected. And let me tell you, during a cutscene when Ghost has jacked out, and Niobe is waiting for the call, it is amazing the collaboration. This is an excellent game.
 
I guess. One thing though. The PC version is supposed to have horrible frame rate probs. And, the game is short, even though it's two discs.
 
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