http://xbox.ign.com/articles/611/611415p1.html
What the shit?!
Hopefully Shiny actually delivers this time, because this sounds like it will be freaking awesome.
Okay I'll admit it, I'm impressed. Shiny Entertainment's The Matrix: Path of Neo looks absolutely fantastic. I'm talking "has the potential to go head-to-head visually with God of War" fantastic. And believe me, I know what you're thinking: after playing 2003's fun but obviously rushed Enter the Matrix, a brand new game from the exact same developer doesn't exactly leap out at you -- but trust me, if Shiny can do on the PlayStation 2 what it accomplished so effectively in it's Pre-E3 event tech demo, you'll change your mind in an instant.
What the shit?!
Shiny wants the gameplay to mirror the movies more so than any other motion picture-inspired videogame has before. To accomplish this, Perry claims that anything that Neo could do in the movies you'll be able to do in the game as well. Not only will Neo be a master of seven different fighting arts (learned and enhanced through the brainjack training programs only hinted at in the films), but he'll also be able to view the world in code vision, slow down the enemies and objects around him, and eventually even fly. Players will even be able to recreate the end of the first movie by gaining the ability to jump into their opponents and burst them from the inside. It sounds awesome, but it's just too bad we didn't get to see it.
Before showing it, he explained that he was a bit worried about recreating the Neo/Multiple-Smith showdown from the second and third films. His team wanted to ensure that it would be both fun and fast without looking too limited or without having to sacrifice the visuals established elsewhere in the game. Originally the team's main goal was to put 50 animated Agent Smiths onscreen at the same time, but one of their star programmers seemed to think he could best that by leaps and bounds. Needless to say, for my demo Perry ended up showing off a parking lot filled with 750 animated Agent Smiths at once -- all of which were running at a smooth framerate and without any of the cool special effects taking a major hit to do so. What really put his demonstration over the top, though, was that he then added a second layer of Smith's to the existing 750 for 1500 total Smiths in all. The framerate still didn't take a hit, each and every one of them were animated, and all of it was running on a PS2 dev kit. I think it's safe to assume that people are going to get the epic Neo vs. Agent Smith battles that they've been waiting for.
Hopefully Shiny actually delivers this time, because this sounds like it will be freaking awesome.