Tron Evolution

Tron Evolution Review by Honorabili

One Sentence Review:
“An okay prequel to Tron Legacy but inferior to Tron 2.0”

Overall Score:
6 out of 10

Overview:

Tron Evolution takes place in between the first Tron movie and the upcoming Tron Legacy. You take the role of a program written by Flynn to help manage and investigate the activities that have been going on in The Grid (the name of the Tron world). Basically, the regular programs are now known as Basics and a new kind of program life form that started being generated by The Grid called ISOs, which are I guess a trend towards self-generating AIs and a natural phenomenon in computing. Simply put, there is racial tension growing between the Basics and the ISOs with terrorist acts, activism, and the now recurrence of a virus that converts programs to mindless killers (although I found them to be particularly weak).

I don’t want to ruin the story that much for you because it’s the entire setup for the upcoming movie which has the plot I predicted for it. 😀

You’re caught in a civil war and you fight to try to restore things to the status quo. Some NPCs like Quorra help you on the way to try to stop the civil war from getting worse.

The game is a 3rd person action shooter with a lot of jumping involved like Assassin’s Creed and Mirror’s Edge, as well as some very very minor puzzle elements that are pretty much no challenge at all.

Tron Evolution is available for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable (PSP), Xbox 360, Wii and Nintendo DS. The PC version is basically a port of the other versions. Although this game is solid, I can tell that they just imported the videos from the Xbox version because it shows the buttons you have to press for that version when you pick to watch the tutorials on the different disc weapons you get. Kind of sloppy of them to not notice that!

Fun Factor, Gameplay, & Replayability:

The linear nature of the game makes me not want to replay this game, probably ever again. It’s so linear that the guides I found for the game as just recorded video walkthroughs of the person simply playing the game, sometimes even for the first time and beating every puzzle and area without too much of a hard time. Replayability gets a 2 out of 10.

The game though is pretty engaging and filled with action. The problem with it though is that there are too many run and jump areas. I would have rather it be filled with more fighting instead and a bigger variety of enemies as well as weapons and upgrades. Gameplay gets a score of 7 out of 10 and Fun Factor gets a score of 7 out of 10.

Difficulty & Difficulty Versatility & Controls:

Overall, the game is rather simple but most of the game play involves jumping around the map, trying to reach a new area. This felt more like a 3D Super Mario game than a third person combat shooter. Yes, there’s plenty of action but most of the time you have to worry more about whether you will be able to make it to the end of a wall you’re running on to jump on to the next area. At least, it feels more like Assassin’s Creed than Mirror’s Edge.

The problem is that the camera will sometimes switch automatically and whatever direction would make sense for you to push the controller in no longer makes sense because of the orientation of the camera just turned an up into a right or something to that effect. I would say the character needs more automation like in Assassin’s Creed as in the character knowing you want to climb up so that the gameplay is smoother. I give the Controls a 7 out of 10 because of how overly sensitive they are and how stupid the camera can be during a few times in the game.

I found most of the game easy but a few parts were literally annoying mainly because of the control. I give the Difficulty a score of 6 out of 10. Overall it was a simple game and repetitive as well, as well at totally linear. I am not going to go back and play it so I can’t say how versatile the difficulty is.

Value:

You can buy every version of Tron Evolution here at ebgames but for $40-60 it’s totally not worth buying in my book. Rent the game instead. Value gets a score of 2 out of 10. I recommend the game only to Tron fanboys with money to burn.

Sound:

The sound effects are great and it’s nice to hear Jeff Bridges as well as Bruce Boxleitner being involved with this game. The cycle sounds awesome, as well as the disc combat. I was disappointed that the traditional deres sound from the original Tron was no longer there as I always associate that sound immediately with the franchise as well as the sound the floor made in the original movie being missing as well. I give Sound a score of 7 out of 10 because I’m picky like that!

Music:

This is one of the main reasons to get this game. Since this game was a quickly made port of the console versions, they didn’t bother to encrypt the music at all. The entire soundtrack to the game is easily available in WAV format for you to play if you simply browse the game folders. Using a simple audio conversion program you can convert it to MP3.

I would say to simply get the same even just for the music especially if you’re a Tron fan like I am. The Music gets a score of 9 out of 10.

Stability/Reliability:

The game crashed only once for me and that’s after hours of leaving it alt-tabbed, so I can’t really blame it. The game alt-tabs like a champ and will react quickly to coming back to the game. I give Stability/Reliability a score of 9 out of 10.

Graphics & Performance:

Since the Tron universe is so beautiful and this game runs on the UT3 engine the game runs amazingly well on my 3 year old gaming PC and it looks pretty breath-taking. I give Graphics a score of 9 out of 10 and Performance a 10 out of 10.

My History With This Game & Conclusion:

Although it’s nice to get a teaser glimpse at what the upcoming Tron Legacy film is going to be about, I was very much disappointed by this game in contrast to the now lost-in-time Tron 2.0 game. Although one dies a lot in this game, the save system was pretty well implemented in loading checkpoints rather than making you save often and waste time doing that. However, since it’s so efficiently made, I simply flew through this game beating it in one sitting.

Like I said before, get the game for the music, if you’re PC gamer. If you’re a console gamer I recommend just to rent the game. It’s a short game and I’d say play it if you’re a Tron fan only and you’re bored of playing anything else.

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