The Matrix has you, Neo
May. 17th, 2003 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walbournSaw The Matrix: Reloaded last night. Awesome. It is everything one could want from a nihilistic-anarchistic industrial goth cyber kung-fu action romance. It is part 1 of a 4 hour movie, but it isn't like you have to wait more than six months for the conclusion. I heard some grousing in the bathroom after the show about how they could have cut out the slow dialogue parts and still had a good movie, which is true but I think it is a great movie because it actually attempts to tell a whole story and perhaps even challenges the watcher to think. There is plenty of chicks in PVC black leather, and cool combat to techno music as well, so you "I bore easily" American viewers can just suck it up--I'm sure Kangaroo Jack 2 is in the works for you anyhow. Clearly the movie isn't for everyone's tastes, but I'm glad the producers made the movie they wanted and didn't fall too much into the trap of mediocrity that is Hollywood...
Also played the Enter the Matrix game a bit on the XBox yesterday. The environments aren't really that impressive; the level design (for the first few levels at least) isn't that inspired; the cutscenes are a hodge-podge of FMV (full motion video), computer graphics, and mixed-medium; and the graphics engine has some ugly bugs. It does, however, really capture the visceral enjoyment of kicking ass in bullet-time Matrix-style with cool effects and motion-capture character movement. Besides, the developers had to ship on a ton of platforms (doing anything for the PS2 is a total pain in the ass much less getting the same codebase to work on any other platform), were no doubt given a very tight ship schedule to make it in time for the movie buzz, and therefore had little time to actually take full advantage of any of these platforms. I think it had the largest pre-order in the history of games, which is unfortunate because it will only encourage publishers to blow more money on wasteful rock-star developers and cross-media licenses to the neglect of all the really interesting and unique ideas people in the industry have. Still, I'm going to pick up a copy (hopefully used, but I might not be that patient).
Also played the Enter the Matrix game a bit on the XBox yesterday. The environments aren't really that impressive; the level design (for the first few levels at least) isn't that inspired; the cutscenes are a hodge-podge of FMV (full motion video), computer graphics, and mixed-medium; and the graphics engine has some ugly bugs. It does, however, really capture the visceral enjoyment of kicking ass in bullet-time Matrix-style with cool effects and motion-capture character movement. Besides, the developers had to ship on a ton of platforms (doing anything for the PS2 is a total pain in the ass much less getting the same codebase to work on any other platform), were no doubt given a very tight ship schedule to make it in time for the movie buzz, and therefore had little time to actually take full advantage of any of these platforms. I think it had the largest pre-order in the history of games, which is unfortunate because it will only encourage publishers to blow more money on wasteful rock-star developers and cross-media licenses to the neglect of all the really interesting and unique ideas people in the industry have. Still, I'm going to pick up a copy (hopefully used, but I might not be that patient).
