David Perry, the president of Shiny Entertainment, learned an important lesson after making the first game based on the popular Matrix movies, Enter the Matrix. "When you play a Batman game, you want to play as Batman. When you play a Matrix game, you want to play as Neo." He's referring, of course, to the fact that you could only play as Niobe, a relatively minor character in the first game, instead of Neo, the movie's lead.
Now, in this new game, you follow (as the title says) the Path of Neo. Instead of a side story to the film trilogy, this is a playable version of the Wachowski Brothers' movies. In fact, the Wachowskis have had a tremendous amount of input into the making of this game. The two of them have been in constant contact with the development team, sending them notes on how the game should be presented that read more like a novelization than mere guidelines. With this much help from the creators, the game is sure to have the same feel as the movies.
You won't just be seeing the events of the movies, though. Path is really a director's cut of the film trilogy, with new locations for Neo to explore and new situations to get out of. There are even new cutscenes, although they will be done in CG as opposed to the actual filmed cinemas from Enter the Matrix. Perhaps the most exciting thing here is that the Wachowskis have come up with an entirely new ending to the trilogy that is more suiting towards a video game than the relatively downer ending of the third movie.
I Know Kung-Fu
The game features a few different difficulty settings that aren't selected via the standard "easy, normal, hard" menu on an options screen. Instead, Neo finds himself in a training room where he must battle against many different enemies. Based on how well you perform here, the game automatically adjusts itself to match your skill level. It's an original concept that shows just how integrated into the movies this will be.
There's plenty of new technology in the game to make it look its best. The early PS2 version that we got a peek at featured normal and specular mapping to create remarkably detailed textures and real-time post effects to insure dramatic lighting and a cool-looking cinematic focus trick (the background goes a bit out of focus while the camera focuses in on Neo in the foreground)............(click for more>>>).
