Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 was known to be a graphical powerhouse no matter the sort of content it might be used for, but The Matrix Awakens cemented its value in the eyes of the wider gaming community. The playable demo aptly demonstrated just how scalable and impressive the new version of Unreal is, and it even let gamers give it a whirl and see how it runs in practice.However, this is set to change, as Unreal Engine 5's official Twitter account just announced that The Matrix Awakens will be getting delisted in short order. In effect, this means that there's just a small window of time left before the demo is made permanently inaccessible to most users, but not everything is lost just yet.Being the closest thing available to a proper Grand Theft Auto in Unreal Engine, The Matrix Awakens tantalized the wider gaming community with a look at just how visually impressive the next generation of games may end up being. What's most important about Awakens, though, is that it wasn't a pre-baked, pre-rendered showcase at all. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series users could freely download the demo and run around its cityscape for as long as they liked and even use some of Unreal Engine 5's powerful editing tools to tweak things around.
The bad news is that The Matrix Awakens will no longer be available as of July 9. Anyone with even a passing interest in Unreal Engine 5's life-like visuals can still claim and download the demo for free until then. What's particularly important in this case, however, is that there's a silver lining present after all. All account holders that claim The Matrix Awakens via the official Unreal Engine store will still have access to its files even after it's been delisted, making the whole ordeal a bit more palatable.
Ever since Unreal Engine 5 was made available to any and all developers who wanted to use it for their own projects, the ubiquitous engine has become something of a community darling. Users started porting various classic titles over to it, such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and even Oblivion. These are, of course, projects of a limited scope that are designed simply to show off what an impressive showpiece the software suite is. Still, the fact that community developers can just pick it up and produce impressive results in a short period of time is rather telling.
One developer, in particular, set about producing a stunning Unreal Engine 5 FPS restaurant shootout scene which may well grow into a fully fledged game in due time. In the interim, The Matrix Awakens remains the easiest way for regular gamers to see UE5 in action. At least, until July 9 arrives.
The Matrix Awakens is available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.