But what is it like as a game?

The concept for Enter The Matrix is pretty simple - a third person action adventure title, with cool hand to hand fighting and guns, lots of guns. With more than a helping of bullet-time thrown into the mix, naturally. You cruise around the levels, completing objectives (that are given to you by the operator, back outside the Matrix) and trying to complete your goals. Along the way, all manner of cops and security guards and so on will be out to get you - along with the occassional (and unkillable) Agent. Survive, reach the checkpoint, check out some more cinema. That's about the lot of it.

Hand to hand combat in the game is far more involved than simply punching or kicking your opponent; you have an arsenal of kickass moves available to you, lifted straight out of the films. The targetting system automatically locks on to your nearest opponent, allowing you to concentrate on your moves - not where the opponent happens to have moved to. The system also allows you to fight multiple opponents at the same time, making for some truly spectacular action! Unfortunately, you cannot easily switch targets and breaking out of "fighting" mode into "running the hell away" mode is hardly intuitive - in fact, it's down right difficult. That can lead to some frustrating deaths...

Shooting guns is, as you can imagine, pretty kick-ass in the Matrix universe. Lots of weapons at your disposal (including the legendary dual-handguns mode) and the bullets look pretty cool when in bullet-time mode (more on this in a bit). Aiming them is a bit crap in first person mode, however, leaving you wide open to any incoming heat while you try and track a target yourself. Unfortunately, this is also where the biggest bugbear of the game rears it's ugly head - the fire button. On the Xbox, the button mapped to "shoot your gun" (and you can't change it) is the black button. On the Duke controller (the large, original controller), it's quite a stretch and tricky for all but oddly shaped hands to reach. On the "S" controller (the newer, smaller controller), it's positioned under the thumb. This is bad. You need to use it a lot. It might as well be the "eject" button on the Xbox itself, it's so awkward to use.

Bullet time is well implemented. You have a finite amount of it (as indicated by a bar on the right hand side of the screen) but while you are not using it, it gradually restores back to full. What this means in practice is that, with a modicum of self control, you'll always have some available - without being able to just use it continuously, which would spoil the effect. Nicely done, it feels right and the control (left trigger) is exactly right, as it allows you to easily call on it without interupting your use of other buttons. Two thumbs up.

Not all of the missions are third person action adventure. From time to time, you'll find yourself in a car and, depending on who you are playing, you'll have something to do that isn't "wandering around". As Ghost, this means "leaning out of the window, mowing down enemies". As Niobe, you'll need to drive the car to it's destination - which, while it sorta looks a little like GTA, is actually largely on rails; you have to take a certain path to get there. Unfortunately, these sections are implemented without any real aplomb, making for awkward and annoying sequences. Fortunately, they are neither tough nor long - grit your teeth and get through them, you'll make it without too much trouble.

The third person "Adventure" levels, while fun, are very poorly laid out. Stupid big shelving units create a series of "S" bends (for no apparent reason - it might look like a shelf full of crap, but nowhere on earth would someone set one up like this), you find yourself traipsing around the same area of the level frequently and the rooms are generally pretty boring to look at. Basically, it smacks of "made for all consoles" development, where limitations of other consoles adversely affect what the more powerful Xbox is allowed to display. It can only be imagined how much nicer this would have looked if developed for the Xbox exclusively. As it is, the Xbox version is the nicest looking of the bunch - it's crisper, cleaner and moves better.

The video clips, while not up to the standard of the movies, is still very impressive. You feel like you are, to a part, actually participating in the movie world. Your actions have consequences to what happens to Neo, Morpheus etc so you'd better not stuff it up! There is over an hour of movie footage here (real actors from the movie) and lots of little details are filled into the "Matrix" of the movie's world. The footage and the game proper was directed by the Wachowski brothers, so you can bet it feels authentic. The fact that the game developers had unprecedented access to the movie makers is prevalent throughout - it has a lot of "hollywood" feel to it, for better or for worse.

As an added bonus, an integrated "hacking" mode is available from the main menu of the game. Via a command line interface (setup to look and behave exactly like DOS), you can "hack" the game - adding features, implementing cheats, playing FMV sequences and more! It's hardly essential, but considering the subject matter, it's a very thoughtful inclusion - geeks out there are gonna love this one ;)