Technical

4.3GB of gaming goodness?

A few technical quirks further mess things up for Enter the Matrix. Shiny forces a massive 4.3GB installation, presumably because of all the video clips. Presumably, anything else would have forced swapping amongst the four discs it takes to hold this bloated production. But so what? While it’s great to have an install-everything option, making it the only saloon in town isn’t a good idea, even in an age where an 80GB hard drive is considered small. And when you further consider that the game will be purchased by a lot of newbie gamers with less than cutting-edge systems, demanding such a huge amount of drive space is a big mistake. It also makes the game a real pain in the ass to install. Keep a book handy.

Elrond arrives on the scene

Say your prayers, Mr. Anderson

Run away!

Frame-rate slowdown is another annoyance. Shiny appears to have ported the game from console to PC with little regard for niceties like stability, so we’re stuck with stutters at inopportune moments. The game stutters by design as well, courtesy of save points that stop the action every time you turn a corridor. Again, thanks for thinking of us, Shiny, but you went too far. Although few and far-between save points in a console port are a common complaint with PC gamers, there has to be a balance between convenience and immersion in the game. Asking “Do you want to save the game?” every minute or so prevents you from getting involved as efficiently as a stream of Jehovah’s Witnesses ringing your doorbell.

FMV lives!

Paying the bills

Gameplay like this isn't cheap

Speaking of annoyances, the game crashes whenever you Alt-Tab to the desktop. You’d think that the gazillions of dollars that went into the budget would have allowed Shiny to include a handy little function like this. And a cursor for menu navigation. That would have been a nice touch, too. As would the game consistently saving your gamma and brightness settings between loads. But I guess you only get so much for the reported $30 million it cost to make Enter the Matrix. Shame they didn’t have a bigger budget.