Game Review | February 1, 2011 3:08 pm

By Meta

Tron: Evolution is an action game developed by Propaganda Games and published by Disney Interactive. It was released December 7, 2010.

While mostly third-person action and platforming, Tron also has some racing and light RPG elements. I will go ahead and say right now, though, that this game freaking sucks. It is a huge mess of failed potential.

The core of the game has you playing as a special program called a System Monitor, and you work with Clu, Tron and some others to figure out what is going on with the hostile virus forces and what has become of the user Flynn. If you saw the movie Tron Legacy then a lot of elements will be familiar but this game's story is actually sort of a prequel.

You progress through the game by platforming through mostly linear corridors and occasionally stop to fight a room full of enemies blocking the path. The method of platforming is very similar to the modern Prince of Persia games and Enslaved, with the big difference here being absurdly sloppy controls and a camera from hell.

You have moves like a wall-run that let you defy gravity but the huge problem is that you only have 2 buttons to help you get around, Right Trigger to start clambering or wall-running and an A button to jump or perform another action. The difference between a vertical or horizontal wall-run or a leap up or across a chasm is only the camera's perspective, and this is what makes the game such a chore.

Unlike Enslaved or PoP08 there is no safety net or margin for error here--you either make the jumps or you don't. Checkpoints are far too infrequent meaning when the camera changes your cross jump to a feeble wall-clamber that kills you, you will get booted far enough back in the area that you have to do the same series of moves just to get back to the problem area.

The final mark against the platforming is that many of the special moves like wall-running are almost scripted based on location. This causes your character to sometimes be sucked in to a horizontal wall-run when you just want to do a regular jump up somewhere, or can artificially pull your character in to a boosted long jump that causes you to overshoot the landing and die, when all you were trying to do was a normal jump forward.

Besides the incredibly sloppy platforming, Tron: Evolution has a combo-based fighting system that could be really fun if it was more precise and relied less on gimmicks. There are some neat aerial moves that have your character jumping all over the place while flinging his disc around, and there are some great upgrades that let you change the style of your attacks to better derezz different enemy types. The faults here are that you also have melee moves which can be upgraded but are practically pointless when both you and the enemies can perform ranged disc combos in less time than it takes you to throw a punch.

The health and energy regeneration systems are based on glowing points on the wall you have to run over or energy canisters in the middle of an area you need to vault off of, and both are very generous. A problem with the fast pace of the combat, as well as having to get to certain areas to regenerate, is that the game often purposely slows down and zooms in, a la the movie 300, to show off. Battle fields often have a large amount of enemies and this just makes it harder to get your bearings and maneuver through the pack to get more health or energy.

The last big element of Tron's single-player game is the racing. Everybody loves Lightcycles, and these are the best-handled part of this game simply because they managed to not screw them up horribly. It would have been easy for Propaganda to make these blazingly fast sections simple on-rails affairs, but you actually have a surprisingly large degree of freedom based on where you want to go and how you want to deal with enemies. You can try to make them crash in to your light trail, or you can drive alongside them and fight with your disc. The only fault with this element of the game is how rare it is--you will only use lightcycles 3 times in the entire story.

On top of crappy platforming and mediocre combat, Tron: Evolution's final mortal sin is that the story campaign is only about 5 hours. If you aren't convinced yet, let me also say that the graphics are very basic. Based on the style of the movie, it would have been really easy to make dark & edgy architecture and throw neon strips everywhere, lit up by fancy effects like HDR and bloom-lighting, but instead you just get tepid grey all over the place.

Bottom line: Tron: Evolution is a textbook example of failed potential. There is no excuse for this because the developers had the talent & resources to make a really fun, unique game with this license. I am sure the main fault lies with the publishers rushing development like hell to get it on shelves to coincide with the movie, but that is no excuse. The main reason I am so angry about this is that with tighter platforming controls and better pacing to the combat, this would have been awesome.

I should also mention that the soundtrack to this game is pretty good, including 2 of Daft Punk's songs from the movie, but it doesn't help anything. Tron: Evolution gets a 2 out of 10 because it isn't the worst game ever but it's not worth playing, even as a rental.

Reviewed: Tron: Evolution

Keywords: None