Enter the Matrix

The most unusual thing about this game is not the bullet time. It is that the Wachowskis wrote and shot extra material for it, around an hour of live-action footage with the film's actors, so the game could sit beside The Matrix Reloaded rather than simply copy it. Few tie-ins of the period got that kind of access, and it still marks the game out.

You choose between two of the film's secondary characters, Niobe and Ghost, and follow their missions as they overlap with the movie's events. The story is told partly through those new scenes and partly through events that the film glances at. It is a clever idea for a licence: the player fills in the gaps between scenes instead of replaying them. In practice the plot assumes you have seen the film, and it makes little effort to explain itself if you have not.

The play is a third-person mix of gunfights, martial arts and some driving and shooting set pieces. A focus mode slows time and lets you run along walls and dive through the air, which is the feature everyone wanted from the film. It works best in tight corridors and the occasional showpiece room. Elsewhere the hand-to-hand combat is loose, the camera fights you, and enemies tend to stand around waiting to be hit.

The technical side is the real problem. Frame rate drops, glitches and uneven level design were common complaints when it appeared, and a rushed release schedule tied to the film shows in the finish. The ambition ran well ahead of what the team had time to polish, which was a common pattern for the generation's big licences.

Played now, it is a curiosity more than a classic. The combat will not hold most players, but the filmed sequences and the odd, earnest effort to extend a story across two media are worth seeing. It remains a record of a moment when a studio was trusted to build part of a film's world.