The Matrix Online review

Matrix Online begins where the third movie, Matrix Revolutions, left off. There is a truce between the Machines and Zion, but it’s a fragile one. Every faction has their own agenda and that includes the Exiles; the self-aware programs that live in the Matrix, and the Merovingian led by the Frenchman. New heroes are needed since the old ones are missing or worse. That’s where you come in; will you continue to support the cause of Zion, opt for the Merovingian lifestyle or will you go the way of Cypher and join the Machines?

Matrix Online, or MxO, has a fairly standard MMORPG build. You create your character, level him up somewhat slowly through either missions or just attacking enemies, collect items (or make items by compiling codes i.e. tradeskills), gear and money and progress through an evolving storyline by either missions or live events.

The three primary disciplines you can select are Operative (fighter-type), Hacker (uses programs to for example harm enemies and heal allies) and Coder (makes items from code he finds or buys, can even create simulacra which is similar to pets in other MMORPGS). These main disciplines then branch into approximately 100 separate ones. They are completely interchangeable, you are not stuck in a certain role but can re-arrange your abilities, and thereby your disciplines, using a hardline. Bear in mind though that there is a limit on how many abilities you can have loaded i.e. the memory capacity.

Hardlines, which appropriately assume the form of telephone booths, serve as access points between the real world and the Matrix. Along with allowing you to re-arrange your abilities they can also let you access the marketplace, upload your codes, travel quickly from one hardline to another like portals and exiting the game quickly.

Entering the rabbit-hole

The character creation looks promising, especially in terms of finding a nice background story for your character. You have the choice of 5 attributes; perception, focus, reason, belief and vitality. What’s interesting is that your initial choice, which bases on those attributes, is linked with the personality of your character (who is at this stage called a ‘blue pill’ since he has no knowledge of the Matrix yet).

The are ten personality choices and are for example Fanatic Self-Improver (Vitality +3, Belief -3), Troubled Intellectual (Reason +3, Focus -3) and New Age Hippy (Reason -3, Focus +3). Every one of those personalities which you can select comes with a short background story. Personalities don’t seem to matter once you’re in the game (the stats of course do) but it’s a nice touch.

The fun continues because next you get to create the look of your character and it’s really an efficient creation tool. You can select both physical traits and clothes and you have everything you need to make a cool-looking player. Shades, tattoos, cornrows, designer clothes; it’s all there. It’s not completely like City of Heroes though, there is a limit to your wardrobe since building that is one of your motivations in the game itself (and I’m afraid you have to get those trench coats yourself). All in all the creation process starts out great; it’s innovative and fun. Too bad these qualities are sadly lacking in the game itself.

Living in a dream world

You start by going through a tutorial which covers the basics. The interface is simple and uncluttered; the HUD displays your health, Inner Strength and Experience needed to level. Inner Strength correlates to mana or energy in other games, it’s used in performing special moves and boosts (buffs). You have your chat windows, objective windows, hotbars and so on and the navigation system is very nice with a compass at the bottom and you can always see the direction of your objective along with the distance. Also it has an inbuilt media player and you can chat through AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) within the game.

The controls for the camera are reasonably implemented; you can zoom back and forth from first to third-person view, move it around and do things like autorun. One of the most prevalent factors in Matrix is however the combat system. Let’s take a look at that.

I know kung fu

MxO is understandably very combat-orientated in the spirit of the Matrix world and the combat system is what makes or breaks the game for most people. The key word here is turn-based (although MxO uses the word ‘exchanges’); a word that evokes images of board games, Dungeons and Dragons and games like Alpha Centauri. Does it work? It quite possibly could if it wasn’t for the clumsy camera controls and handling.

For combat you either rely on fighting at long or close range. If you get into close range you get locked into close-combat thus losing control of the camera and you and your opponent exchange attacks such as fast and strong attacks, grab and block. The main selling point of this system is to use strategy for example attempting strong attacks against enemies with weak armour, grabbing to counter boosts and blocking to regain inner strength. In PvP combat this becomes more crucial trying to predict your opponent’s next move.

There are also many special abilities, cool moves such as overhand smash and cheap shot which use up Inner Strength. At later stages in the game you get even more cool attacks, such as being able to learn Kung Fu and Aikido moves as an example.

Guns…lots of guns

You can see the calculation of your attacks just before the combat animation, something that’s usually hidden in other games. Oddly when your opponent dies, you get the experience instantly but you have to wait for the animation to finish. This in turn makes looting corpses a frustrating experience since you have to wait for an animation, wait for the camera to return to user-controlled mode, adjust the camera and then double click on the corpse. Losing control of the camera (except for in and out zooming) is the main drawback to the combat system in my opinion and manifests itself in various ways, such as trying to get a lock on your next enemy when fighting multiple opponents.

Another problem with the combat system is that you’re only able to focus fully on one enemy at a time using melee tactics; it would have been nice and more true to the matrix world being able to switch targets quickly to for example daze one guy and come back to the first one. All in all the combat has some very nice animation but ultimately comes across as sluggish because of the computer-controlled camera (and the glitches that come with that with enemies getting stuck in walls for example rendering you unable to hit them) and you can never shake off the feeling of being constricted.

The lobby

Much of the gameplay is carrying out missions and following the storyline. While I understand that developer is not able to have every quest an epic adventure, involving unforeseen originality, flying pink elephants and whatnot (yes, there are indeed players out there that except every single quest to be the beacon of originality despite the fact that games of this genre now have many hundreds of them), in MxO it seems like it is not really trying.

It’s not that the missions deal with the standard quest methods of assassination, delivery, escort and so on, it’s that they are built in almost the same way throughout, there are no attempts like WoW did to have little details here and there to alleviate the normality of quests. The scenery looks the same throughout these quests; you always enter a building, take an elevator up to a certain floor and go through enemies that are neatly placed in the rooms. The enemies all look the same which doesn’t help things either.

It seems like I’ve been entering the same building and fought the same guards again and again only they’ve moved around the paintings and furniture. Although a lot of the gameplay consists of missions you can also enter Hideouts with a team which is basically the MxO version of a dungeon complete with treasures and lots of monsters. Then there are the Archives which is the high-end “raid” content.

But what about the story? Matrix fans might get some enjoyment from the text associated with the missions and sometimes you can meet famous people like Niobe and Ghost along with hearing their voices since most of the actors from the Matrix trilogy reprise their roles here, but in most cases that won’t be enough. The overall repetitiveness of these missions wears you down and you find yourself quickly getting bored. There are some motivational factors later in the game since you will get abilities like hyperjump, new fighting styles and so on, but it’s a shame that the beginning levels of MxO are so frustrating and quite frankly dull.

Jacking out

Dying in Mxo is yet another frustrating element. When you die you have the chance of waiting for a resurrection from another player, barring that you are transported to a so-called loading area which serves as the real world aboard your ship a la the Matrix movies.

As the name implies you have to go through loading screens, two of them actually. This completely yanks you out of the game immersion and only serves to annoy the player. A better idea would have been to simply let you appear at the nearest hardline (like most other MMORPGS using graveyards) with the associated death penalty to statistics.

The Architect

Mxo has high system requirements but you really don’t see why. The character models are not very detailed and unspectacular, certainly a far cry from the EQ2 models where you can see the reason for the high system requirements. The combat situations are often laggy when fighting in groups, even on good systems and the animation is sometimes choppy. MxO in terms of graphics simply looks unpolished and out-of-date, which doesn’t mean that they are terrible, just that the competition in MMORPGS has gotten so much better the last year or so.

Being a fan of The Matrix franchise I was really rooting for this game. It shows promise in some areas, noticeably the live events and the continuing evolution of the Matrix saga. The progression of your character in terms of abilities is fun also. However it’s marred by a lethargic combat system, slow level grinding and general lack of polish. My hope is that they will improve it in future patches and expansions but I’m not holding my breath.