With the multi-million dollar movie, Tron: Legacy movie coming out later this week, it was simply a formality that a computer game to accompany film would be brought out alongside it. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, Tron (1982) is based around an uber-intelligent programmer named Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who, through various circumstances manages to get himself sucked inside his own computer system and has to battle against the various nasties which lie inside it.
This idea was pushing huge boundaries back in 1982 and the storyline lent itself perfectly to a computer game. Now that a sequel to the movie is being released, it was time for game creators to bring back Tron into the console / PC market and Disney Interactive / Propaganda Games took up the challenge to bring the game to PC, XBox 360, PS3 and Nintendo Wii. This review is of the XBox 360 version only.
Tron: Evolution is a third person platform and strategy game where you play the character of an unnamed ‘User’ (You) a human from the outside world. The storyline is set between the 1982 movie and 2010 Tron: Legacy where Clu (the system administrator inside the computer) is ruler of the Grid but an Isomorphic Algorithm (ISO) has been given joint leadership. It doesn’t take long before Clu gets jealous and stages a coup which you have to try and cull to complete the game.
You start off playing in third person mode, free-running through levels and learning how to control your character. The graphics are pretty impressive and, just like the movie, the colour scheme is based on the black worlds interspersed with blue neon throughout making it look rather cool! You have to negotiate obstacles and after a few stages of control practice and and video overviews, you have to kill off Clu’s combatants who spawn from damaged chips and circuits using your Lightdisc – again mirroring the movie. The tutorials are fantastic and will help you whenever you get stuck. You also have the chance to upgrade your armoury and skillset in the game which will also translate to the multi-player version if you chose to play online.
After progressing a little further, you get the chance to drive the lightcycle which I’d been looking forward to since I started playing. To be honest it was pretty terrible. You basically just have to steer left and right to avoid the sections of road which are crumbling beneath you and giving you no real challenge whatsoever. Further into the game, you can control the lightcycle on the levels themselves but this initial outing with it wasn’t very memorable but as you get deeper into the game, playing with the lightcycle is a lot more fun!
Have a watch of the video below for a game-play demo of the game.
I’d like to give you a full run-down of the multi-player options but I spent an hour trying to connect to a game and failed miserably and unfortunately didn’t have any further time to commit to trying to get ten other people to join. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just me being thick as others were coming over via headsets saying how annoying this was. I tried joining other people’s games but never did we get the minimum of 10 people to play and after that hour of sitting there waiting for a connection, I decided I had better things to do!
Ultimately this game looks pretty and the third-person free-running sections are impressive and fun to play. The initial lightcycle and tank sections – not so much. I really liked the way the game mirrors the movie using parts of the official score by Daft Punk to tie it all together and even getting Olivia Wilde and Bruce Boxleitner to voice their characters in the game. – there are even a few spoilers in there for the movie if you look hard enough. The free-running sections are fun top play and throwing the lightdisc to fight your way through the levels are fun but ultimately, if you’re a fan of the movie(s) then this is most definitely a game you’ll want to get your hands on as it’s the perfect companion!
Tron: Evolution is available to buy now on all formats. Click here to purchase.
[Rating:3/5]
Please note, this is a sponsored post.
