The game surely sounds promising. In stead of controlling Niobe or Ghost, you now assume the role of Mr. Anderson, in other words The One to save the human race from the Machines. You play through the three pictures and experience the important events from Neo's point of view. Well almost, because Path of Neo takes some strange turns towards the end. You'll even get to see an alternative ending for the trilogy! Whether this ending is better is up to you to decide, but rest assured it will spark some hefty discussions. As if the original ending didn't cause enough of a stir...

The presentation is nice. The menus look great (code vision rules!), the story is accompanied by loads of nicely edited movie scenes (a nice thing for the fans), there is a ton of bonus material to unlock (artwork, models, clips, renders,...) and the voicework for the game has been done by the actual cast. This implies lines from Carrie-Ann Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Keanu Reaves and the incredibly charismatic Hugo Weaving. Great job, Shiny!

The gameplay is also well thought through and features a very decent fighting system. Everything a Matrix fan (a nerd; I also plead guilty) could want is in the game. Insanely cool slow-motion melee combat, bullet dodging, running up walls, code vision; in short everything Neo can do, you can do too (well, everything but flying around). The controls are largely fluent, though it can take you a while before you really get the hang of it.

Because I'm sure the overwhelming majority has already peeked at the score (Yeah, I also have psychic powers. Eat that, Oracle!), I'll now explain where the game went wrong. Altthough the fighting mechanism is more than ok, firing guns just doesn't feel right. The lock-on function never manages to pick the right target and when an enemy hides behind a piller, your lock is broken and the game randomly picks another target. When you shoot a bad guy, the target lock regularly has the nasty habit of staying glued to a dead body. When that happens in the midst of a firefight with a dozen or so guards, it can have serious consequences for your health meter.

Although the camera in general stays behind Neo, it's not unusual to find him stuck in the decor. The levels are well designed and have that typical Matrix atmosphere (green filter included). The more familiar levels (the lobby, the underground, the Smith-filled city,...) are just like in the movies. The textures are a bit on the blurry side and the blocky models are technically subpar. If you see how the PS2 copes with Resident Evil 4, God of War and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, you can't help but feel disappointed. The framerate is also keen on taking a dive when there is a lot of slow-motion action going on. On the other hand, you get to mess around in fully destructible environments. Walls lose their tiles, dust floats around freely and you can turn pillars into rubble. This is the Havok physics engine at its best. The lobby shoot-out (in which the interactive environments come to its full potential) therefore is one of the best levels in game.

The worst parts about the game are the many bugs that bring down the experience. None of them really ruins the gameplay, but it's still pretty sloppy, especially for a console game. Sometimes the sound and music completely disappear, the screen can turn black for a few seconds or the controls don't respond for a certain period (especially in narrow corridors). The funniest bug I've found was this one: during a fight with Agent Smith in the subway, a phone booth suddenly collapsed, while we were at least 20 meters away. Suicidal phone boots, only in The Matrix...