"Neo24375 jacked out, "Mission's gone bad."
Tr1n1ty turned to him, "What went wrong?"
"Pretty much everything."

No matter what you make of the Matrix films, the Wachowski brother's commitment to trying something with their trench-coated melange of leftist-pop ideas is admirable. When someone goes as big as the Matrix did, the tendency is to simply comply to the consumerist process and sell as many toys to geeks as possible, Lucas-style. While they've hardly taken a Bill Waterson No-Calvin-And-Hobbes-T-shirts line, their involvement in all their spin-offs implies they genuinely care. It would have been easy to just give their Enter The Matrix title to a developer and leave them to it. Instead, they integrated it into the plot of the film in a devotedly cross-media exercise. Similarly, while they could have just licensed the Matrix name to any MMO maker, they're using it to actually continue their universe. Where the films stopped, the game continues and it's here where they'll tell the developing story of the Matrix.

It's a big idea. It's admirable.

Sadly, The Matrix Online, much like Enter The Matrix, is a piece of genuinely visionary computer entertainment which succeeds on all the levels except the one where it actually matters. That is, being a good game."

The Matrix Online for Eurogamer. Expect wailing fans for this one, but fuck it. If I knew before writing the review that I had to call the US to cancel my account, I may have even took another mark off.

Also: 10 Gig install. In the language of the internet streets, WTF!!!!?!?!!