I tried Enter the Matrix, the computer game which (according to the bonus materials on the Matrix Reloaded DVD) is the fourth part of the trilogy, without which viewers don't have the entire story. At Best Buy, it was $19.99 for the four-CD version, or $29.99 for the one-DVD version. Since the only real difference boils down to whether or not you want to swap discs when you install the game, I'm kind of glad I was feeling stingy.

You can play as either Niobe (Morpheus' former lover) or the Kirkegaard-quoting Ghost (her gunner aboard the Logos, who (in one of the game's only humorous moments, identifies onanism as his personal philosophy). While the two characters' storylines intersect, there are segments in which each character has different tasks to do. Unfortunately, this isn't consistent; there are large segments in which you have to perform the same tasks, even though it breaks continuity from the other character's storyline (for example, when playing as Ghost, you have to rescue Niobe from the Merovinginan; when playing as Niobe, you have to rescue Ghost). As storylines go, they're both disappointingly short. Whereas it usually takes me about a week or two to finish first-person games with storylines (Deus Ex, Medal of Honor), I got both storylines done in about a day.

The gameplay is frustratingly linear. I guess I was spoiled by Deus Ex, in which you frequently have multiple avenues by which to achieve a goal, and actions taken (or not taken) have consequences later in the game. With Enter the Matrix, you have to follow a set path (doors often stay locked until you've accomplished certain tasks, and nearly every door locks behind you, forcing you to go only in the direction the game designers intended).

Aiming — especially with sniper weapons — is another problem area. With non-sniper weapons, the game aims for you, at what it thinks you should be shooting at. Certain objects are highly explosive; it makes sense to take out several enemies by shooting these objects. Unfortunately, if there's an enemy near the object, the gun will shoot at the enemy even if you're aimed directly at the explosive object. When you use a sniper scope, aiming is erratic; the crosshairs frequently overshoot the mouse movements.

"Focus mode", the game's odd choice of terminology for what's called "bullet time" by the movie effects people, was practically unusable on my machine. Every time I entered it, my screen would alternately flash between the game and a pixelated version of my computer desktop. Since my desktop is much brighter than the game (which is horribly dark), it had the effect of obscuring the action completely. (The fix, which I discovered only after I had solved the game, is to download and install a patch from the Atari Web site, open the configuration file with a text editor, and change a setting to enable the "alternate focus" mode.)

Speaking of video, the configuration options are horribly designed. If you wish to alter brightness, contrast or gamma, you have to do so before the game begins. If you're in the middle of the game and want to change these settings, you have to exit the game completely and re-start it. Since the game only saves when you've reached particular objectives (there's no quick-save, and it doesn't offer the option to save when you exit the game), this means you have to wait until you reach a spawn point to quit, otherwise you lose some of your progress. Also, these changes frequently don't get saved to the configuration file, requiring one to either edit the configuration file by hand, or change the settings every time one runs the game. Other options can be changed within the game, but still require you to quit gameplay and return to the main menu (again, losing anything you've done since the last spawn point).

I do like the fact that health eventually regenerates, once you've gone for a specific amount of time without taking further damage. However, this is also inconsistent; in certain levels, you have a character (or, in one case, a helicopter) which you must defeat in order to progress, and your health doesn't regenerate until you've done so. Since ammunition is extremely limited, and Focus power runs out very quickly, it's almost impossible to win some of these confrontations (especially the helicopter) without enabling one or more of the cheats.

And then there are the driving segments. Control is nearly impossible; as with sniper weapons, the cars (and the Logos) respond poorly to the mouse and keyboard, apparently responding to speed of mouse movement (or duration of keypress) logarithmically. You'd think that perhaps Niobe, the best pilot in the fleet, wouldn't have so much trouble piloting a car, let alone her own ship, but for some reason they decided to make all the vehicles respond to a mere approximation of what the player asks them to do.

With the exception of the Merovingian's mansion, in which you're fighting vampires (and what might be werewolves who are also killed by wooden stakes through the heart), your opponents are limited to security guards, policemen and SWAT teams (with one or two unkillable agents thrown in just in case you get tired of killing cops). When you perform certain lengthy moves (such as choking an opponent from behind), all your other opponents stop shooting at you until the move is done. The opponents' intelligence is shockingly limited as well; if you duck behind a wall, they'll rarely come after you, preferring instead to vibrate in place until you present yourself as a target again.

And finally, the game is rife with bugs. Often, these present themselves in the cutscenes, which may play without sound or with the video going several times normal speed while the audio remains normal (or, in one particular case, without sound and in fast-forward mode). Occasionally, objects required for the completion of a level can't be picked up, and in one particularly annoying level in which you have to pilot the Logos through tight tunnels, I found myself frequently stuck (requiring a restart of the level) or somehow outside the map and unable to get back inside it (also requiring a restart). There are frequent visual errors as well. And this is with the patch applied!

So, on a scale of one to ten, I give this game a blue pill.

Oh, just one more irrelevant observation, as if this post isn't long enough already: judging from one of the live-action cutscenes, a plank of wood is a more passionate kisser than Jada Pinkett-Smith.