Tron: Evolution
By Propaganda Games
Review by DoctorMambo

In 1982, cinema audiences around the world were introduced to Tron, a ground-breaking sci-fi film set inside a computer. Although the film was an initial failure, the arcade videogame based on it proved to be a tremendous hit and actually out-grossed the film (fact courtesy of imdb.com).

Now, almost 30 years later – an eternity for Hollywood, we have a sequel to the original film called Tron: Legacy and this game that bridges the gap between the films and introduces us to many of the new characters, including the lead female Quorra. This game is brought to you by the recently defunct studio Propaganda Games, whose only previous game was the 2008 reboot of Turok. Hardly the most impressive of CVs, I’m sure you’ll agree, dear Reader!

That’s enough of the background blah blah and now on with the game! I have to be careful when talking about the story, so as to not reveal any spoilers. The game has you take control of a character called Anon, a security program whose task is to clean up a virus inside the game world that is intent on destroying (artificial) life as we know it.

The game is divided into 3 distinct sections, on foot combat, light cycle sections and light tanks. Each kill you rack up or collectable you find gives you experience points that can be spent on weapon upgrades or bonuses for use in the multiplayer game.



You spend the majority of the game on foot and these are the parts that I found the most frustrating. The combat itself is quite enjoyable, there are various different enemies to defeat and they have different weaknesses to exploit. The game guides you by telling you each nasty’s weakness when it is introduced, so you don’t have to figure out how to dispatch them. This gets very repetitive and you find that you clear a room of the baddies and then a door will magically open, allowing you to progress. Moving around the game world sees you running along walls parkour fashion in a very unforgiving way. A mistimed jump will see you plunge to your death over and over again. The camera will badly position itself to make a difficult jump or fighting section all the more harder.

The light cycle sections bear no resemblance to the wonderful set pieces from the films, as they are a simple point to point race where you have to dodge some randomly placed obstacles on the track and jump over parts of the track that have disintegrated as a result of incoming fire from overhead vehicles.

The light tank sections, I think there are two of these, are fun, but incredibly easy. They are a great way to rack up some kills and experience points. The tank itself is difficult to control, fine if you’re going in a straight line, but ridiculously fiddly if you need to change direction, an about turn being particularly infuriating.

The multiplayer levels are very unimaginative and see you engaged in 4 game types; Disintegration (a straight forward death match), Team Disintegration, Power Monger (similar to GOW King of The Hill, but with multiple hills) and Bit Runner (another team game that is similar to Capture The Flag, except you don’t have to take the flag anywhere). I didn’t bother playing the last game type until I came to write this review, as there wasn’t an achievement for it, although it is arguably the least tedious of a bad bunch.

In the multiplayer games, you earn experience and can buy upgrades for your character that can be carried over into the single player game, which is really the only reason to play them apart from gaining the 6 achievements that can only be gained online.

The graphics are impressive and there are some reflective surfaces that are top-notch! The colour palette is mostly blue in order to accurately re-create the Tron universe. The game features the same theme tune written by Daft Punk for the Tron Legacy film, but I hardly noticed it while playing the game.



The achievements are fairly straightforward, but will require 3 playthroughs (Insane difficulty is unlocked after completion on hard) for all but the elite gamer and any of the collectables can be found by replaying the chapters where you missed them first time around.

Overall, I would score this game 6/10. It’s not the worst game that I’ve played and the 1000 gamer-score is attainable for most gamers. I cannot recommend this game when there are many better games out there, but in spite of it’s many flaws, it would be worth picking up if you can find it for a bargain price.