Tron: Evolution

Tron: Evolution

Developers: Propaganda Games; Gamestar for the PC version

Publisher: Disney Interactive Studios

Platform: Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, Playstation Portable, Xbox360

Release Date: December 7, 2010

Genre: Action Adventure

The story of this game is between the 2 Tron movies. The game starts with a video footage of Kevin Flynn who is discussing about the existence of ISOs (Isomorphic Algorithms), a group of programs with a measure of free will that have emerged spontaneously on The Grid, and are disliked by the Basic programs. Jalen, one of the leaders of the ISOs, recently died and Flynn suspects the murder was organized by Clu, a second version of the original program from the first film. Flynn creates a new Monitor to try to control the system.

During a ceremony behind held to induct the ISO leader Radia as System Administrator beside Clu there is an attack from a new virus, Abraxas. Tron then tries to get Flynn to leave the system during which time Clu curses the ISO’s believing the virus is their fault. You as system monitor then battle Abraxas, but during the battle you notice Tron and Flynn get ambushed by Clu and his programs. Clu has now declared war on the ISO’s and it’s up to you as system monitor to stop him. SPOILER ALERT! You eventually learn that the Abraxas virus was made by Clu and that is was Jalen.

The graphics in Tron: Evolution where very decent, they did blow my mind or anything but still looked very nice. The gameplay does of course resemble most plat-former games, run across walls, climb, jump, fight, and watch a cinematic. Player’s movements are heavily parkour-influenced, while combat was inspired by capoeira. The controls for platforming left much to be desired, I would miss jump points and accidentally run of the side to my death so many times I would stop playing for a while. The same could be said for light cycle controls as well. If you were not exactly precise with your thumb stick movements you would be all over the road and crash, ALOT. The combat system is a bit simple. You have a button for ranged attacks, one for melee, and another for power attacks. There is a list of combos you can do with combining ranged and melee attacks, but its a very short list and you can’t use your power attacks in your combos. Your power attacks are actually different types of discs you can throw (heavy disc,explosion,stasis,infection). Power attacks eventually become the only way to kill most enemies and since each attack uses energy you constantly find yourelf running around to gather energy. It got to the point where I would spend about 80 percent of the time running for energy and health in a fight and only 20 percent attacking(90 percent running in a boss fight).

Despite the challenge the difficulty of this game provided me with I did not find this game very fun. It tended to deter my interest rather than draw it. I do not feel like this game accomplished anything monumental in any way either. I would have to give this game a rating of 2 light cycle crashes out of 5.