Following The Path of Neo

As part of my recent struggles to piece together the herky-jerky narrative of the Matrix trilogy and actually enjoy it as one film/idea/story, I completed the Wachowski Bros. and Atari's Path of Neo game which ties all three of the films together, simultaneously trying to fill gaps in the storyline and giving players a chance to finally play Neo. Atari's earlier attempt, Enter the Matrix, was an enjoyable game and did a lot to increase my enjoyment of the second film, Reloaded, but while playing secondary characters like Niobe and Ghost I think you ultimately lost some of that Matrix buzz that you got off of watching Keanu do his wacky wire-fu moves in the films.

The Path of Neo goes a long way to correcting that. Although it gets off to a slow start it quickly starts to pick up as you get more accustomed to the controls and the story eventually goes beyond the first Matrix film and bridging the 72 hours between The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded. In order to make the game more interesting, and the film story more playable, they (the game designers and the Wachowski's) added environments and characters to enrich, or pad out, the existing storyline. Sometimes this works beautifully but sometimes you feel as though the game has strayed too far from what you know the overarching plot to be.

Regardless of this, if you're playing this game for more than a few levels you already know that it exists in a kind of parallell Matrix universe and you either have to get over it, or put the controller down, go watch the movies and sulk. A perfect example of this being the end of the game which is prefaced by a neat little video introduction by the Wachowski's themselves - or at least their residual digital self images. They explain that the martyr thing in a video game kind of sucks and they helped create a big boffo finale that fits with the game and is, ultimately, more fun to play than just letting Smith absorb you, dying and having the Matrix rebooted. There's even a new CGI ending they put together to follow-up the final battle.

I had loads of fun while playing it but I'm just about all Matrixed out. My oldest daughter Emma has shown some interest in playing now that I'm through so it may not collect dust on the shelf for long.

Later!

mike