In 2003, Enter The Matrix tantalised our taste buds with a foray into the universe of The Matrix, giving us the opportunity to do all of those crazy stunts people pulled off in the movies. We ran up walls, we flew through the air in slow motion and we emptied entire clips at agents hitting absolutely nothing. It wasn't perfect, after all it was a movie tie in (which, lets face it, don't have the best reputation for being great games), but it did wet our appetites rather effectively for the main course, The Path of Neo.

The game begins with a choice. Morpheus, in his trademark round sunglasses and long leather coat offers two hands - in one hand a blue pill, in the other a red. Take the blue pill and Neo will wake up and assumedly carry on with his mundane processor job selling minidisks to mescaline junkies. Choose the red pill, however, and a series of events begins that we have come to know and love through the medium of film.

First off, you're thrown into room that remarkably resembles the lobby from the first movie, only the walls are bitty and broken down, some of them replaced by the lines of code that have come to denote the series. Essentially this is a test of your abilities; within moments of arriving, enemies begin pouring out of the elevator for you to engage. As you defeat one wave, another stronger wave approaches, and so on and so forth until you are defeated. This allows you to make an informed decision on which difficulty level to choose, innovatively demonstrating your own skill level. Being the impatient and simple gamer that I am, I didn't realise that this was the case and began shouting at the game's developers via my television for creating a game with no indication of the controls or why I was beating people up in the lobby. I was of course, very apologetic when I realised what was happening.

Once you've decided on a difficulty level, you're treated to a montage of film clips, not necessarily in order, so it does help if you've seen the movies before you play this (though it's not strictly necessary). The beauty of The Path of Neo, is that it's quite literally the path of Neo, so you start at the very beginning. Remember the office Neo works at when agents arrive to take him away, with Morpheus on the phone giving him directions? Well prepare to escape that office, hopping from desk to desk evading the steely glare of agents and security officers. This is mostly a tutorial, getting you used to moving Neo around, hiding behind things, following guards, opening doors, that kind of thing. The tutorial of the game is very comprehensive, as Neo has a wide range of movement. He's pretty handy in a fight, as you would expect from The One (or 'El' as I have affectionately come to know him) and the hand to hand sections teach you how to use the various attacks, throws and weapon moves.

Remember a time way back, we saw an uninitiated Neo sit in a chair while Zion-born Tank rifled through training disks? Neo gets plugged in, has a minor spasm and suddenly knows kung fu? Well the first hour of the game is going through those training simulations and they're a lot more fancy than whacking a man shaped stick, I can tell you! Most of the training takes place in feudal Japan and it looks fantastic. The backdrops are superb, once you get out of the basic cave setting and find yourself in bamboo forests, at the bottom of picturesque waterfalls or wandering through snow-covered gardens that look like they've been plucked straight from Kill Bill. The levels themselves are strategically designed to introduce you to the various skills available to Neo, so that when you complete the missions, you're quite capable of throwing dozens of enemies around in a variety of brutal and painful ways. There are entire sections dedicated to the use of non-projectile weapons including axes, poles and the incredibly cool samurai sword, which are comprehensive but still fun to play.

Hand to hand combat is designed around a group fighting structure. Aim the analogue stick at the nearest enemy to shove/stun them, then move onto the next enemy. Once you've 'allocated' two or three enemies, hit the attack button to trigger shattering attacks that take them all down. There are plenty of animations in there as well, so it doesn't feel like you're always performing the same attacks over and over; in fact master of fight scenes Yuen Wo Ping, kung fu guru of the three movies, helped out with the fight moves for Neo's animations, so the fighting itself looks quite genuine and sometimes really nasty! The focus button increases the number of attacks available to you, as well as increasing the power of the attacks you perform, but also makes it easier to initiate the attacks because it makes you faster. Later in the game however, against upgraded agents especially, you will find yourself furiously hammering the buttons trying to find an opening in their defence.

Once you've mastered hand to hand, you move onto projectile weapons - Guns, lots of guns (oh come on, I had to say it!) This section is a little disappointing. You're left on a real high from fighting loads of kung fu pawns with axes and sticks, then learning to use guns sadly washes most of that away because the targeting system is pretty abysmal. Once you draw your weapons, you automatically lock on to the nearest target. You can then cycle through available targets using the right analogue stick. This sounds simple enough but the camera flails about wildly while you're trying to do it, the cycle movement isn't always responsive and when you start taking advantage of Neo's aerial abilities, the whole thing starts to resemble a bad hangover.

Using the focus button slows things down and makes your shots more accurate, even bringing environmental targets like fire extinguishers into play, which you can shoot with explosive effect. The only problem is, if you defeat all of the enemies, the target locks onto the fire extinguisher and won't let go. This is highly frustrating, as you have to put your weapons away and get them out again to get rid of it. All this said, however, the guns do the trick and when you find yourself being shot at by local cops, your weapons are quite effective at taking them down. I found myself confronted with a guard when I burst through a door and it didn't take much effort to kick him in the air and fire several rounds through his chest before he hit the ground. Later, however, when the waves of enemies consist of highly trained special service nutters, armed to the teeth with some seriously heavy firepower and backed up by agents, it all becomes a bit trickier. The beauty of it all is that you're meant to combine the use of guns with the kung fu, so most of the time you'll be disarming one fella, kicking another in the teeth and shooting a third in the legs. All in all, very effective and very satisfying.

The missions tie in quite cleverly with the events of the movie, including some 'in between' moments that the movies just didn't have time to cover, which are looked at in more depth in the game. An interesting choice near the beginning of the game sees Neo escaping from his office building. In the movie, Neo of course bottles it and gives himself in, but the game gives you the opportunity to see what would have happened if Neo actually grew some genitalia and carried on up to the roof. The training missions are another example of this, but they culminate and tie in nicely with the fight against Morpheus from the film. The section where you're attempting to rescue Morpheus from the clutches of those dastardly agents is an amusing one, introducing you to the bullet dodge ability, pitching you against agents and giving you a go with that mini-gun in the helicopter as Trinity tries out her new piloting skills. Later there are options of which level to do and when. Following the final fight with Smith from the first movie (when Neo gets shot, comes back and realises he's as hard as Saddam's food tester) there are several minds that need to be freed and so Neo embarks on several journeys to rescue a librarian, a kung fu master, a clubber and several others from the unwanted attention of The Matrix's regulators, before moving on with the movie plot-line.

Abilities like bullet dodge are learned through experience or progression in the game. Neo's progression along this path of learning is represented by a four level tubular, um, thing, which indicates the types and levels of abilities learned. Ability points gained during levels can be spent on certain abilities, making you choose, to an extent, the type of overall abilities Neo will have in the later levels. As you level up, your focus meter is increased and new moves become available.

Graphically the game seems to be built on the same foundations as Enter The Matrix, but looks far superior. The main characters such as Morpheus, Trinity, Smith and of course Neo have translated to the digital world quite well and the movements and textures all look pretty good. There are a few moments in close up when these characters turn from well constructed works of digital artistry to something out of one of Freddy Kreuger's nightmares (then again, so does Celine Dion and she managed a career) but these occasions are quite rare, so it's not enough to ruin your perception. The environments look very cool and you can tell that Shiny have worked closely with the Wachowskis, because the 'movie moments' look like they've been plucked right from the big screen. Shiny has somehow managed to reunite most of the cast for the voiceover work as well, which gives the whole thing much more credibility. Lawrence Fishburne puts in a lot of legwork, as he talks you through most of the actions you need to execute and learn as you progress through the early levels. The gaps that are left have been filled in by voices that sound enough like the original characters to not make you wince.

The Path of Neo is a game that most Matrix fans have been waiting to play. The prospect of playing the physics defying 'numero uno' in a video game will have no doubt ignited the imaginations of many who have aspirations of flying over cities, punching through walls and fighting hundreds of Smiths. The Path of Neo does most of that, yet still seems a little restricted; you never really break away from the 'only human' barriers that were holding Neo back before his enlightenment and the sensation of being Neo never really presents itself. Play through on Easy and you will feel like a god, because everybody's so easy to beat up, but you're missing out on hordes of enemies to plough your way through. Saying that, the hand to hand fighting does feel pretty solid and the animations of Neo's gravity defying fighting style look the business. The guns feel unwieldy and don't always do what you tell them, but that doesn't matter because you're Neo and you can stop bullets, run up walls and beat up several armed men at once with only one leg. The highlight of the game for me, which I expect will be the case for many, is the Smith fight (from Reloaded), which is simply awesome, and, yes, you can throw a stick about like nobody's business and, yes, it is all kinds of fun.

There's plenty of content in The Matrix: The Path of Neo to keep Matrix fans happy for quite a while. It's a nice compliment to the movies, cutting together images from all three films and The Animatrix to make up the montages between levels, so it's a very complete story. The in-game sections themselves tie in well with the set pieces from the films and all of the most memorable moments are included (there's even a very special alternate ending devised by the Wachowskis, which isn't worth buying the game for but does make you go 'hmmm, interesting'). The levels add further dimension to the film, depicting Neo's journey in detail that the movies never could have gone into and also help you to understand the films and the overall plot of The Matrix much, much better. Neo fights like a God in chains and you will enjoy throwing people around and belting them with sticks for a long time, though only major fans will realistically play the whole way through more than once. All in all, this isn't the all encompassing Matrix game of God that we were hoping it would be, but it's not disappointing and it doesn't have you driving a car through the sewers being told to follow that plane, that plane, follow that plane (anyone who played that level in Enter The Matrix will join me in wishing it to the hell of a thousand viruses). It looks good, it sounds good, it's fun to play, it's challenging enough but not frustrating and if you're a fan of The Matrix you'll love it.

Reviewed by Jim Powell for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).