The Matrix movies raised the question, "How do we know we're not in the Matrix right now?" The Matrix Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game for the PC, answers that question: If we were in the Matrix, we'd know it by the clumsy interface, frequent glitches and tedious gameplay.
The good things about The Matrix Online are so few, it's easiest to get them out of the way first. The game captures the look of the movies very well, from the gritty urban surroundings to the hyper-modern outfits. The music is nicely atmospheric, and fans of the trilogy will find references everywhere, from prominent AI characters to stylish fighting moves.
The rest of the game is unpleasant. To begin with, the interface is a mess, filled with minor inconveniences and the occasional mission-stalling bug. For example, most missions start with entering a building and stepping into an elevator. The interface requires you to double-click to open the elevator, double-click to pull up the floor buttons, click to choose a floor, then double-click again to open the elevator door from the inside. That's right, The Matrix Online manages to make elevators in the game work more poorly than they do in real life. This is just one example; the game is filled with a constant flow of poor interface choices.
The game has a fairly steep learning curve for an MMORPG, which only makes things worse. Both fighting and increasing your character's abilities require you to use a more complex interface than you might be used to in other games in the genre. As you gain levels, you need to buy abilities using "$Information" – the game's preciously named currency – then upload them at a phone booth, then load them into your character's memory, keeping track of space available and required prerequisites. Then you need to upgrade some of the abilities using more $Information, but not others.
A complex interface is not necessarily a bad thing, if it's necessary to introduce new ideas to the game. However, that's the real heartbreak of The Matrix Online: There's precious little in the game that hasn't already been done in other MMORPGs. The instruction book even points this out. An operative, it explains, is the equivalent of a warrior, thief or archer. A hacker is like a wizard, and a coder is like a summoner or crafter. Instead of trying to introduce genuinely new ideas, The Matrix Online just takes old ideas like fireballs and pets and gives them new names like "Logic Barrage" and "simulacra."
Worse yet, the fantasy borrowings are often pointless and out of place. For instance, to get powers like the ability to leap to incredible heights, you need to buy them from street vendors who look like they're selling stash boxes and hemp necklaces on the side. This has an obvious analogy in the item and magic vendors of other MMORPGs, but in the context of the Matrix, it's just silly.
The one really interesting idea in the game is that you can reconfigure your character's abilities within the game. You can be a hacker one day and an operative the next. You can load up a wide range of skills for soloing, then become a specialist when you join a group. This might be fun to experiment with in a better game.
With a poor interface and a lack of innovative ideas, the only thing The Matrix Online has to offer is the license. For people who loved all three movies and can't see why the sequels weren't as popular as the original, that may be all they need. For everyone else, though, it's a mixed bag at best. Even if you can get excited about Niobe and the Merovingian, the game's setting is tediously repetitive. The endless parade of grungy city streets and leather-clad hooligans gets very boring very quickly. The missions don't offer enough variety, and once the pleasure of playing paper doll with your character's outfits gives out, there's little left but an experience grind.
If you long to live in the Matrix and are willing to pay a monthly fee to write fanfic, you might find The Matrix Online compelling. If you're looking for a solid and interesting MMORPG experience, there are much better virtual realities to jack into.
