Tron: Evolution
The older generation amongst gamers will no doubt remember the movie TRON. In an age where computers and games were hardly a part of our daily life it gave a view on the future of PC’s and how we would experience things. Well, one thing is for sure; Disney sure screwed us over. Computers aren’t as fashionable as was thought back in the day, but thanks to the game TRON: Evolution we should get an idea of how the virtual universe of the PC is supposed to be.
Disney chose to not recreate the new movie but instead deliver a “midquel” that tells the story between the first and second movie. This choice requires quite a lot of baggage from the first movie as you’ll meet plenty of characters from the TRON universe that you otherwise would never have heard of. Adding some kind of prologue could have been added by Disney, but we’re guessing they prefer to boost sales of the first movie a bit more.
Propaganda Games’ TRON: Evolution can be best described as an action-focused RPG with some racing elements. Throughout your adventure you meeting plenty of opponents that like nothing more than to destroy you with electronic discs which you can throw or do special attacks with. Throughout the story you learn these moves by earning XP, euhm… sorry… MB (Megabytes), and spend these on upgrades for your “monitor”. The second aspect of the game is more platform action that’s clearly inspired by Price of Persia. Or should we rather say “copied” instead of “inspired”?
Graphically the game looks good at first sight, but as you spend more hours playing you’ll grow tired of the monotonous surroundings. The typical TRON looks make that everything looks too much alike. Also enemies have very little variation and the best part of the game is therefore the racing with the well-known light cycles. The high speed, flashy neon colors and many explosions deliver a real “wow” feeling. Add to that a good soundtrack and excellent voice acting and you immediately know the strengths of this game.
Online you can find some classic multiplayer modes like deathmatch, team deathmatch and a point-capture variation. Unfortunately there’s no matchmaking present and you’ll often end up in a lobby with players of different levels. If everyone is of higher level than you, then the outcome is decided in advance. Those that want to achieve a higher rating for a better chance of winnign will do best to continue playing the singleplayer as both modes share the same XP meter.
TRON: Evolution is a mediocre game that will mostly please fans of the movies. There are some fun moments present and the story certainly isn’t bad, but other players will probably get bored fast with the boring environments and gameplay. The multiplayer prolongs the lifespan a bit but due to the competition of other online games it won’t last for long. A bit sad as this could have been so much more.
6.0