TRON: Evolution Game Review

TRON is a movie franchise that should have great video games, however, the usual tie-in movie games with the release of a big budget film have disappointed gamers in recent years so what can we expect from TRON: Evolution.

TRON: Evolution fills the gap between the original 1982 film and the upcoming sequel. You play as a system monitor who is trying to stop Clu's rise to power. It's a third-person action adventure game with allot of Parkour (just think of Mirror's Edge) and combat. Although it's not as good as any of these games it's sort of a mix between Mirror's Edge, Assassin's Creed, and Prince of Persia, but glow-in-the-dark. If you are a big TRON fan then you might find the story rather interesting considering it explains what happened to Flynn and expands on the TRON universe while answering a few questions, but it's nothing ground-breaking. Also the very sexy woman from House MD "13" does all the voice work, that was the thing i enjoyed most about this game to be honest.

The world looks pretty amazing on first glance, a futuristic neon glow is always going to catch the eye, but after that you realise it's just pretty much the same thing over and over again and it looses it's charm. There is a slight change later in the game but simply changing from blue to orange, or blue to green is not much of an aesthetic change at all.

The stiff animations prevent the awesome moves from looking, well, awesome. It's really a shame that the animations feel stiff and sloppy because there are some spectacular moves here which would have looked absolutely fantastic if only they were animated correctly. Whenever i did pull-off a move which looked great, the poor camera angles would cause me to miss it and it's really frustrating at times.

For anyone who is lucky enough to get one of the new fancy 3D TV's this Christmas, you will be pleased to know that TRON: Evolution supports 3D. Sadly the 3D effects are terrible, all they do is slow down framerate and make characters seem as if they are floating off the actual world. The cut-scenes aren't even in 3D and it just feels like a gimmick used to help sales, the game is dreadful in 3D to put it as plane as possible.

The wall running death defying leaps and magnetic ziplining all look crazy at first, but after a few hours the become very boring and do little to satisfy the player. The game usually just boils down to "find the only glowing thing in the world and run towards it" at times the game just feels like it's playing it'self. There is very little here that left me feeling rewarded or satisfied and i just wanted the experience to be over after a while.

Combat is a mix between melee attacks and light disc throws. You can pull-off some combos and special moves but most of the time you will find yourself just mindlessly button mashing, as it's all you can really do. Playing on hard is the only way the game forces you to develop a strategy, but even then you are just button mashing and running around in circles to refill your special attack metre.

In addition to the constant wall running and combat you can jump into the Light Cycle and Light Tank. These sequences are sprinkled throughout the game. The Light Cycles are quite fun and i did look forward to each one popping up, but there is only one type of level, escape from exploding stuff, it feels like a waste of TRON's most iconic element. It was fun the first time but with each level containing the same concept, it just gets tiresome, in fact the whole game is just tiresome. The Light Tank is slow, clunky, lethargic, and not even worth thinking about.

Multiplayer is where the game finally feels like TRON and might possibly be the only reason to consider buying this game. You can compete in Death Match style Grid Games, as well as Light Cycle based events. This is where you get to play Light Cycle Games the way they where supposed to be played, having a 10 player Light Cycle match is just down right insane at times and definitely the most enjoyable thing about this game. The modes seem to work better as team-based modes rather than free-for-all. There are smaller maps which don't allow the Light Cycle, but nothing beats the bigger maps.

Overall TRON: Evolution is a terrible single player experience, however, a fun multiplayer portion of the game might just be enough to keep TRON fans happy. The single player is poorly made and just feels like a sloppy add on for the multiplayer section. The multiplayer on the other hand is very fun and although there is not allot on offer it will keep you entertained for a few good weeks.

TRON: Evolution is a very poorly made game with a fun multiplayer 5/10