This abortion of a game by Atari is actually a lot of fun!
One of the aforementioned senses, sight, gets a real heavy blow in PoN. It quickly becomes very obvious that Atari didn't spend a whole lot of time making this game look nice, but rather wanted to make it look like if you squinted your eyes just right, as if looking at one of those optical illusion pictures, that the game would have great graphics. But seriously, I've seen much better graphics on Dreamcast. And one of the worst parts is that the graphics are so poorly managed that the load times are really bothersome (but long load times has become an Atari trademark, as of late). Loading screens really pop up at bad times, often damaging the cinematic feel of the game, and they always seem to take too long (why couldn't they throw in Pong, like they did with the load screens on that crappy driving game from a couple years back?).
I suppose there are a couple good graphical points of the game: the ones they stole from the movie trilogy. You see bits from the three movies at a few points during the game, to help that one guy out there who's playing but never saw the movies understand just what's going on. But who could really understand the Matrix just from watching a few minute long clips. Also, the clips were so incredibly badly edited, it's hard to tell what the hell they're trying to explain with them!
Abortion #2: AUDIO EXPLOSION! or implosion, as the case may be here. Quick! Hit the Mute button! Atari Neo is talking! Seriously, it's actually a little funny to be watching the video clips with the high paid actors talking, then go to a cg Atari-made clip and hear very low priced Atari-brand voice actors dubbing the characters' lines. I mean, most of them don't sound like the original actors, and not one of them has an ounce of voice acting talent in their entire bodies! They're just so incredibly bad, it really makes you want to mute the game when they start talking.
Whew, ok, break time, I've covered all the bad things up front, something I rarely do. But they were so prevalent here I just had to. Now, on to the good:
The controls, although somewhat complicated, can quickly become second nature, and you'll definitely appreciate the massive ergonic scale of the battle engine. The ability to quickly switch between super sweet melee combos (which were actually designed very well with real world martial arts, I'm quite impressed) and weapons, from melee weapons (like assorted swords and bo-staffs! sweet!) to projectiles (a nice selection of guns, a few knives, and you can throw any of your melee weapons at any time). The battling is just so much fun once you get into it, and the fact that you can switch to bullet time at any point, and even use your crazy One powers (like the bullet stopping mental wall and telekinesis) absolutely rules.
As a big time advocate for longer game length, I was pleased at the length of time it took me to get through PoN. Although there is no in game timer, I'd guess the time was around 15+ hours. Your time may very, especially if you choose one of the game's 3 difficulty settings. The difficulty settings are very well triggered, as you start a battle with many of the abilities acquired late in the game, right in the beginning, you fight until you die (but you don't find out until after that it's a test), and however long you make it suggests what difficulty you should play on. I recommend medium difficulty, though, since unless you can totally master the controls, the game can get very difficult towards the end (those swarms of Smith's are savage!). You may get slightly bored, eventually, at having to fight nearly the same opponents over and over again (you'll end up with a body count up in the hundreds), but the very cool puzzles, and intuitive gameplay should help carry you through.
(small spoiler in this paragraph)I certainly appreciate how well the game follow the Matrix trilogy. It was very loyal to the story, as well as threw in some new stuff and even filled in a couple gaps in the story telling. It's definitely a nice Matrix experience. And after you've been playing for about 15 hours, the Watchowski brothers pop in and give you a very cool/funny surprise that really turns a boring ending into a monstrously kickass one!
Every big Matrix fan should have this game. It might not be worth $50, but just give it a couple months and the price should drop real nice. Also, used copies should be ok priced, and renting isn't too bad an option. So, with my new reviewing style, here's how I end this:
The Good: Kickass controls, good gamelength/variety of gameplay, very loyal to the original story
The Bad: Loading times are a hassle and could've been avoided
The Ugly: Really bad graphics and even worse dialog