Matrix Online

Highs: Stylish moves, good graphics for an MMO, input from the creators, meeting characters from the movies. Lows: Overly repetitive missions, Combat eventually gets to be a bore even with cool factor, no online manual, high learning curve, low un friendly/RP crazy player base, cookie cutter buildings…… Doesn’t feel like the Matrix. Game play: Combat Characters Skills Items Social Quests

Combat:

MXO features a turn based combat system reminiscent of final fantasy games. It’s called an interlock system where you and your (single) opponent fight hand to hand. This does not mean that other mobs can’t shoot you while you fight. The combats main appeal is that it looks cool, after about 20 fights you sadly realize that all combat consists of is a complex rock paper scissors game. Pick a (cool) attack and hope your opponent doesn’t counter it. Ranged combat is free of the interlock system and just consists of clicking the shoot button and trying to stay free of interlock. While some interlock moves utilize your gun you cannot simply fire in close combat.

Characters:

After a highly styling entrance into the matrix you start out “Awakened” and can head to 3 different trees from there, “Operative” Tank/Gunner, “Coder” Pet master/crafter, and “Programmer” Mage/Priest. Depending on what path you choose you become more and more specialized at one aspect of your profession. I chose the Operative and am on my way to becoming a Duelist (highest possible pistol specialist eg. Trinity) but there is no real distinction I feel from anyone else that chose the operative route. At each level you can gain new skills for your chosen profession by buying them from a skill vendor.

Skills:

The skills in the game don’t seem that well thought out (or just not explained well). From what I gathered theses are the (unlabeled) categories: Buffs, Temporary Buffs, Stances (labeled), and Combat moves. The ones outside of combat are fun or speed enhancing like running buffs or hyper jumping (fun but laggy). And then a few oddball skills that have no apparent use.

Items:

Most items are either lame guns (4 types, SMG, Shotgun, Rifle, and Pistol) or clothing. The rest is either health/mana pills or one shot weapons eg. Silver bullets or Wooden stakes (I guess Buffy lost her belongings in the Matrix). And then the occasional code bits used by coders to make items. Items durability is called “stability” and once they lose their stability you must find a player (coder) and pay him to repair it, either they want to force player interaction in a small world or they are just too stupid to put in NPCs to repair your gear. I have no clue on the crafting system other than what I learned from a friend in-game. Apparently you need code bits to make items you gather the plans for.

Social:

With a small player base the Megacity is way to large to find people everywhere you go so soloing is what most will be doing. The factions: Zion, Merovingian, and machines are all allowed to PvP at level 16 without restriction. Thanks to the movies 90 percent of the population is Zion. The players are very friendly right until you get a faction, once Zion saw my Merovingian tags over my name the few people nice enough to help me before shunned me and sent me messages telling me of my impending doom at their hands. And as I said before that you need a player to repair your items, good luck finding one and even then my best wishes that you can get them to talk to you.

Quests:

In MXO these are called missions, they consist of running from building to building picking up and item off a dead NPC and taking it somewhere. That’s it. Needless to say the missions get very repetitive with no real story progression. MXO staff has promised more “bread-crumb” missions in the future but as for now the only way to level seems to be the grind. There are about 5 different interiors to the buildings and they get very old very fast. Authority and Violence are grey areas in this game seeing as there is no real law in the Matrix and when you kill someone they don’t die they are just booted out of the Matrix. And morals were very iffy even though there is no authority. To prove my loyalty to the Merovingian I had to “kill” the first person I helped escape from the Matrix. All in all I recommend this game to someone who wants to role-play into the Matrix heavily but for light gamers another MMO is your best bet.

Appropriateness

Violence Non Deadly Violence (-2.5) Blood No Blood (-0 pts) Gore No Gore (-0 pts) Language Minor Swear Words are used once or twice (-2 pts) Sexual Dialogue/Innuendo No sexual dialogue. (-0 pts) The Sexual Content/Nudity Characters clothing is sexy or accentuates their sexuality (Ex. tight clothing or low cleavage) (-1.5 pts) Sexual Content No Sexual Content (-0 pts) The Occult/Supernatural Occult/Supernatural in Game Setting (check only one) There is no occult or supernatural environment in the game. (-0 pts) Occult Supernatural used by Player (check only one) There is no occult or supernatural in the game. (-0 pts) Note: Occult magic would be games that base their magic system off of an actual religion such as Wicca or Satanism and should not be confused with magic systems in games that are made up for make believe purposes to provide a safe fun fantasy environment. The Cultural/Moral/Ethical No authority issues involved with this game. (-0 pts) Prejudice No prejudicial bias in the game. (-0 pts) No gross humor in the game. (-0 pts) Game requires that decisions be made that go against traditional values. (-2.5 pts)

Final Ratings

10/20 Game Play 8/10 Graphics 6/10 Sound 5/5 Stability 3/5 Controls/Interface

Final Score 63.5%