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Release Date: May 15, 2003
Publisher: Atari Games
Developer: Shiny Entertainment
Genre: Action
ESRB: (T) Teen
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Visitor Score
Overall 8.3 |
Story: | 8.7 |
| Graphics: | 7.9 | |
| Sound: | 8.6 | |
| GamePlay: | 8.0 |
| 79 Ratings |
Game Box
Cheat/Hint Count: 6 Visitor Reviews: 45 Press Releases: 3
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No Title
Written By: drrod
5/12/2003
Story
Excellent, the cinema scenes are great, but some require the context of the movie to make sense.
Graphics
Character Models are are really good, but the environments don't look nearly as good. There's little to no atmospheric effects (fog, rain, etc). All in all the game looks bland. Special effects, like bullet time, are well done. Motion captured moves have choppy transtitions. (for example, the end of a punching animation does not smoothly flow into the animation for kicking, leaving the game looking jerky) . I saw a special on mtv about the game. It was pretty clear that ETM uses a modified version of the Messiah engine. The programmer was demonstarting the same tessellating polygon technique used in Messiah. It's interesting to see how powerful some aspects of the game's graphics engine can be, and yet the game still looks so bland.
Music / Sound
No problems here, uses mostly the ochestral score from the first movie.
GamePlay
Kung Fu battles can easily be won by mashing buttons, except against agents. Go into focus mode and then mash buttons to hit an agent.
Gunplay is awkward, at least on Xbox. Using the black button to fire your gun is not very intuitive. Sniping is very frustrating, you push the right analog stick to enter first person mode, then you must push fire to bring up the reticle if you did not already have your gun drawn.
Running up the walls, backflips, etc. are all easy to execute and can be useful in doding enemy fire. Strafing is a pain in the neck, i don't understand why shiny chose not to let you strafe with the right analog stick.
Overall the 3rd person missions are usually short in length, The combat is unvaried. Many sub-levels are very similar. Once you've seen a couple, you've seen them all (with a few exceptions)
The driving in the game is mediocre at best. There are about 4-6 driving levels. The environments are empty, very few cars, even on the highway levels. The enemy AI is downright stupid. The physics are horrible.
The flying levels are downright unplayable, i didn't play as ghost, so i can't comment on the gunning levels.
Hacking the Matrix:
a fun aside, one of the best parts of the game. I think i've completed everything possible in it, in which case it doesn't add more than an hour or 2 to game length.
Playing through as both characters:
More of a chore than anything else. Alot of repeat levels, through there is some new content. It's like how you used to have to play through Tony Hawk games with multiple characters to unlock things: you've seen most of it the first time through.
RENT it, it's not very long about 8 hrs, and it certainly does not have much replay value. It seems like they got way too caught up with all the technology they had available and didn't take the time to fix the gameplay problems.
Gunplay is awkward, at least on Xbox. Using the black button to fire your gun is not very intuitive. Sniping is very frustrating, you push the right analog stick to enter first person mode, then you must push fire to bring up the reticle if you did not already have your gun drawn.
Running up the walls, backflips, etc. are all easy to execute and can be useful in doding enemy fire. Strafing is a pain in the neck, i don't understand why shiny chose not to let you strafe with the right analog stick.
Overall the 3rd person missions are usually short in length, The combat is unvaried. Many sub-levels are very similar. Once you've seen a couple, you've seen them all (with a few exceptions)
The driving in the game is mediocre at best. There are about 4-6 driving levels. The environments are empty, very few cars, even on the highway levels. The enemy AI is downright stupid. The physics are horrible.
The flying levels are downright unplayable, i didn't play as ghost, so i can't comment on the gunning levels.
Hacking the Matrix:
a fun aside, one of the best parts of the game. I think i've completed everything possible in it, in which case it doesn't add more than an hour or 2 to game length.
Playing through as both characters:
More of a chore than anything else. Alot of repeat levels, through there is some new content. It's like how you used to have to play through Tony Hawk games with multiple characters to unlock things: you've seen most of it the first time through.
RENT it, it's not very long about 8 hrs, and it certainly does not have much replay value. It seems like they got way too caught up with all the technology they had available and didn't take the time to fix the gameplay problems.