The Matrix Online

When it comes down to combat, the Operative classes definitely have the most fun. It's around their capabilities that the game's "Interlock" combat system has been designed. Specifically, the combat system seems like it was designed for explosive-looking and strategic hand-to-hand combat, though much of this has carried over into ranged combat. When you engage an enemy in MxO, an interface materializes over your character, and the camera takes on a more focused view, and from this instance, numbers begin to be crunched. Depending on your level of proficiency in hand-to-hand combat, your "rolls" are skewed, and the combatant with the highest roll in any given "round" lands a hit. You have a handful of basic attacks that inflict varying amounts of damage to your opponent (the damage being relative to how frequently these attack allow you to strike per round), as well as hit them with a status affliction. Once one a status affliction sticks, you can execute special attacks dependent on it. If you want to hit someone with a Machinegun Kick, for example, you have to get them "Staggered" first, by using a basic or special move that confers that status.

In practice, it all goes down fairly fast, and, if you're paying attention, combat can look and sound quite cool. The Matrix's visual flair isn't lost here at all. The problem is that most of the time, you'll likely find yourself focused on the information coming from the combat interface instead of the cool stuff your character is doing. Also, visual hiccups happen frequently enough to legitimately detract from the experience -- stuff like enemies prematurely falling to the ground, leaving your avatar shadowboxing for thirty seconds at a time. Veteran MMO players are likely accustomed to these kinds of kinks, which are characteristic of recently released games, but for a virgin to the genre, it might seem more than a bit unsettling.

In any case, you'll likely be jealous of the cool stuff that the more combat-oriented characters can do, if you're focusing on the Hacker or Coder paths. Much like in other MMOs, if you're not an active combatant, you'll be out of the spotlight, which, for a game that rides so heavily on the visual dynamism of its combat, is a tad disappointing. For what it's worth, characters who settle into these roles will know what exactly they're getting into well in advance, given how the game's progression works. It's just a shame that a similarly engrossing system wasn't worked in for them.


Though it appears that most of the effort has gone into designing the game's combat system, MxO is actually being touted as a story heavy game. The live event will need to factor heavily into this, because frankly, the game's mission system isn't cutting it at this point. In terms of giving players regular and decently-rewarding content on demand, it succeeds: you can call up any of your character's contacts on your cell phone at a whim, and get a task assigned to you. These normally involve traveling through the city for a few minutes, entering a building, fighting some enemies, and then exiting the building.

The experience rewards you get for completing these missions far exceed what you would get from "grinding" on the field, so there's a clear incentive for doing them. But the narrative elements are little disappointing. The characters that you encounter in the missions will communicate to you via blocks of text in a tiny window, and it's too easy to accidentally close one a second after it pops up. Occasionally, however, you'll meet one of the series' important characters -- such as Niobe, or Persephone, depending on your faction -- and in these cases, you'll be treated to recorded dialogue. But for the most part, it's easy to lose sight of the narrative particulars of your task, and simply focus on the experience and monetary rewards.