Every now and again a revolution (no pun intended) in entertainment comes along. The original movie blockbuster, Star Wars has gone on to expand into a further 3 movies and many computer games across every platform. Lord of the Rings has recently done the same, being turned into a billion dollar franchise across cinema and a console near you and it was only inevitable that the same would happen to The Matrix.

One of the most talked about movies of the past 3 years, The Matrix took over $450 million in international box office takings and the sequel, Reloaded has already taken over $130 million in just a few days! With these sorts of figures, and the fact that the Wachowski brothers seem pretty hip, well it was only a matter of time before a game based on their creation turned up.

And to be honest it's about time. All us die hard fans have watched matrix addons for P.C games like Half Life and Max Payne come along and bring all the kung fu moves and ideas like bullet time to our monitors, but there has been no official Matrix game until now.

You may have noticed that the game title ‘Enter the Matrix' (from now on ETM) is different to the movie title ‘Reloaded' and that's because the game, while set around a lot of the events that happen in the film, serves rather as the backstory instead. Without giving too much away (and this may be a mini spoiler so be warned), in the movie a nuclear power plant must be blown up to help Morpheus, Trinity and Neo achieve a certain goal and in the game as the characters Niobe or Ghost, you actually have to complete this mission. There are loads of moments like that in the game and upon seeing the movie as well everything fits together very well.

ETM is made up of a number of gameplay modes. From the normal third person portion, cut scenes using the ingame engine (which are called ‘cineractives' though there isn't anything interactive about them at all), full motion DVD footage that was shot exclusively for the game while they shot the movie and also ‘on rail' sections where you shoot at squiddys or at police and agents from out the window of a car. A few of these scenarios differ depending on who you choose to play the game as. For example during the car chase levels, pick Niobe and you will do the driving, pick Ghost and you will do all the shooting. It makes for some variation and gives you a couple of reasons to play the game over again once you've completed it with one character.

Now the bad news. No you do not play as Neo at any point during ETM. Not only that, but you don't play as Trinity or Morpheus either. They appear in a one or two of the cutscenes and you also get a sparring match with Trinity but as far as interaction with the movie cast, that's as far as it goes. ETM is a separate series of events that interact with events in Reloaded but never cross paths for very long at all.

Disappointing for die hard Matrix fans? Yes as you won't get to fly around and do the ‘superman thing' with Neo or fight off a hundred Agent Smiths, but everything else that you've seen you can do. Dodge bullets and perform jumps and kicks off walls, run up walls, do backflips off walls, shoot guns while performing somersaults taking out multiple baddies, yep, it's all there and generally all handled pretty well. The one thing that I enjoyed while playing through ETM was that as you progress it's a bit of a learning experience as you learn new moves and seem to be able to access cooler kicks, guns and counter moves as you play through it.

The graphics in ETM, to be honest, at first were a bit of a letdown. After progressing past the Post Office level you have to go through sewers and other underground levels which were basically pretty boring to look at and very drab. There isn't much detail in them at all and I'm sure that much more interesting scenarios could have been thought up. But ETM is one of those games that gets better the more you play it. The later levels such as the Airport, Mansion, Power plant and rooftop ones are great and loads of fun to go back to at anytime for a bit of ‘wire fu' action.

The characters from Ghost and Niobe to the rent a cop guards, swat guys and agents are all very well animated. Some of the moves that you can pull off are incredible and running up a wall in slow motion, doing a backflip and landing a kick to the back of a security guards head is pretty damn satisfying! There are all sorts of punches, kicks and combos that you can perform as well as disarm moves that all vary depending on your position. For example if you have a baddy on either side of you and do a kick once I saw Ghost jump in the air and do a fantastic looking double ‘splits' kick and connect each of his feet with the heads of the baddies! I only saw this once but there are plenty of others, the only disappointment is that some of the collision detection seems a tad off and kicks that appear to have missed still connect. I wouldn't even mention it but to be honest it isn't rare and seemed to happen pretty frequently.

Overall the graphics do the job. The main characters look great and there are nice touches such as when you kick someone into a bookcase the books will fly everywhere but the levels are not very interactive and generally pretty barren. A standout level is the mansion which looks great but the main thing that lets it down is that at the most, at any one time, only a handful of baddies appear onscreen and it's pretty easy to dispatch them all and all that's left after the action is to move on to the next encounter. You find yourself trying not to stay alive (because your health restores itself) but trying out more creative ways to kill the next bunch of bad guys. Personally I would have preferred one or two key moments in the game that involved a dozen or more guys attacking you at once as it really would have shown off the cool moves so much more.

So while everything looks clean with no jaggies or slowdown in sight, more could and should have been done for the Xbox version. Even the driving/hovercraft levels suffer the same fate unfortunately. Low polygon counts on the cars and pretty unsatisfying explosions don't do a great deal to really reward your actions. The driving levels are definitely more interesting as Niobe as you get to do the driving as opposed to merely being the gunner but they drag on a bit and are the part of the game that most seems to say ‘rushed movie tie in'. Much more could have been done to make them more exciting and worth playing again, don't take that as a sign that the game is a ‘rushed movie tie in' as these scenes are directly from the movie but in the game they are pretty uninspired and easily the weakest part.

The controls will take you a little while to get used to as they differ slightly from other third person shooters but you'll pick it up pretty quickly. The left thumbstick moves you around, the coloured buttons handle all the kicks and punches, the black button fires your weapons and most importantly, the left trigger kicks you into ‘Focus' mode where all the super human moves such as wall running are enabled. Your ‘Focus' isn't unlimited though and if you use it all, you have to wait for it to build back up but there are few situations in the game where you will use it all in one encounter due to the limited number of baddies that confront you at any one time. The right stick moves you into a ‘first person' mode which is pretty useless except for the few sniping levels that you have to complete if you play as Ghost.

The audio in the game is pretty good. The kicks and punches as well as the gunfire are all good and the sounds when landing bone crunching blows to baddies all sound pretty satisfying but the best part by far is that the score from the movie is used through the game and it really helps to immerse you.

Does ETM offer anything above what we've seen in previous movie tie in games? Yes and no. It offers the chance to play and fight inside the Matrix universe, something that many gamers have been waiting for years to experience. On the other hand the game is a pretty standard progression through some very ordinary game play types that have been definitely been done better in the past. While it doesn't feel like a ‘rushed cash in' more could have been done to raise the excitement factor in the game. The final level is basically boring and a massive fight scene in its place would certainly have been much more enjoyable, instead it relies on a teaser trailer to the next movie to try and create a bit of excitement, a bit sad really.