Tron: Evolution Review
By:
Alex Skjong
|
January 14, 2011, 5:29 pm

GameXplain reviews single player and multiplayer separately
A blue screen of death would be a welcome end to Tron: Evolution’s network.

A couple of hours into Tron: Evolution, my brother texted me and asked how it was. My response? “It tries.” Those two words sum up the entire experience. The game tries to provide an interesting prequel storyline to its big-screen brother Tron: Legacy. It tries to give you reasons to complete its campaign and log hours into its multiplayer component. And, most obvious of all, it tries to mimic mechanics found in other big-name titles. But unfortunately for Tron, all that effort doesn’t translate into a solid execution.

The game begins with Kevin Flynn, creator and overseer of the Grid, explaining that a leader of the ISOs, programs that spontaneously came into existence, named Jalen has been killed. Suspecting a conspiracy, Flynn creates a Monitor program to investigate and quell whatever trouble is brewing. You are that Monitor. Throw in a major yet strangely infrequent villain named Abraxas, series rogue Clu, and a handful of other characters and you have yourself a storyline.

If it doesn’t sound like a particularly engaging experience, it isn’t. While the voice actors do a respectable job with a passable script, the storyline is a predictable attempt at deepening the universe. When all is said and done, the game does little to give the player a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Your character has little affect on the world around him. Sure, you might interfere with neon shenanigans and Identity Disc some bad guys in the face, but there are only two events that are crucial to the overall arc. The main problem isn’t the storyline though. It’s the progression and gameplay that wear you down.
 
 
Right out of the gate, Tron: Evolution thinks it knows what it wants to be: a third-person brawler with acrobatic, Prince of Persia-like movement. In the first few areas, it delivers. There’s a list of combos you can perform that merge Disc and melee attacks plus wall-running, object-vaulting, and climbing. Then the game introduces you to its healing mechanic. By far its most unique aspect, Evolution ditches the notion of health and energy pickups and instead slaps glowing strips of neon on nearly every wall and litters the world with arbitrary glowing benches, pedestals, and other random scenery. Wall-running on the neon strips regains health while vaulting off the gleaming scenery restores the energy used to perform specialized Disc attacks. At first it seems like a fun way to blend combat and movement together, but you quickly discover that it’s completely artificial. In fact, there’s barely any blending at all. Instead of fighting and movement segueing into one another, you’ll fight until you need health or energy, stop, run on a wall, and then resume fighting.  
 
That same stop-and-go repetition is what kills the game’s sense of traversal as well. The various moves available to you as the Monitor have the potential to flow together, but the overly touchy controls paired with a camera that often swings wildly forces you to completely stop any forward motion you may have in order to prepare for the next jump. It destroys any sense of momentum and makes jumping through the Grid a staggered and disjointed exercise in frustration. Even if you do manage to grasp the necessary slowed-down movement, you’re still going to die. A lot. Expect to see the reload screen many many times during the campaign, especially during the decidedly un-fun boss battles. The only thing that prevents it from becoming excruciatingly frustrating is the frequent checkpoints and quick load times—something I’m sure the developer realized had to be included with gameplay this touchy.
 

You’ll spend most of your time repeating the same attacks against waves of enemies, awkwardly jumping to another room, and fighting again. The game tries to make the encounters worth it by introducing enhancements that can be purchased with the experience gained, but I barely noticed a difference even after multiple upgrades, making it all feel very hollow and unsatisfying.
 
Then there are the light cycle and light tank sequences. Unsurprisingly, these sections are about as uninspiring as the on-foot gameplay. The main point of lightcycles is the destructive trail of light they leave behind. It would make sense then that the lightcycle rides would milk every ounce of potential from that gimmick. Unfortunately, the sequences are watered-down, poorly controlled Extreme-G clones that fail to capture any sense of speed or thrill of the cat-and-mouse death races seen in the movies. And the light tank is equally as bad. Controlling the hulking machine is way more difficult than it should be thanks to its sluggish responses, and the downright boring objectives siphon any sense of power you should feel. Turning in a circle for five minutes and shooting the same four re-spawning ships isn’t my idea of fun.
 
Even though you repeat the same basic on-foot, lightcycle, light tank pattern over and over, I’d forgive these frustrations a bit if Evolution’s visuals captured Tron’s high-contrast world in the same was as Legacy. Instead, neon that fails to truly pop and bland geometrical environments that span the entire game only serve as a constant reminder of the mediocrity that Evolution embodies. Yes, the Grid exists inside a computer world and the sharp-edged architecture does serve the tech aesthetic, but a bland color palette and zero fresh environmental features ensure that by the time you’re done, you’ll feel like you’ve barely left the first area. And since the same set pieces are recycled over and over again, you'll be mostly right.
 
With few exceptions, licensed video games tend to suck. The true sting here is that out of all of them, Tron should have been the one to rise above. It’s a license birthed from video game lore and is ripe with cool ideas that, with more care and no forced release date, could be molded into a quality experience. Instead, we have a title that tries too hard to be too much and stumbles every step of the way. Tron enthusiasts might get a small kick out of hopping through the Grid but, in the end, Tron: Evolution is a repetitive mess of a game that’s about as far from Clu’s goal of a perfect system as possible.

Focus on the lightcycles. Everything else is secondary.

I always find it interesting when a game successfully merges its single and multiplayer components. Evolution aims for that blend by making any experience gained in the campaign carry over into multiplayer and vice versa. Upgrades and gear purchased in the single player can also be slotted into various load outs for online matches and, even cooler, at any save point in the single player game you have the option of jumping into a quick online match before pushing forward. It only sends to you directly to an online lobby and features the usual matchmaking, but I appreciated the attempt to create a persistent on and offline world. It’s not a bad system and definitely makes beating down hundreds of boring drones a little more exciting knowing that your effort can be carried over into the online arena. Unfortunately, like single player, I didn’t really feel that the upgrades were making my character any better, faster, or stronger.

But if you’re hell bent on taking other Monitors down, the multiplayer modes do admittedly offer a limited amount of silly fun. There are four game types: Disintegration and Team Disintegration are your standard deathmatch modes, Power Monger is king of the hill, and Bit Runner is capture the flag. Six maps are included in the game, with more available as DLC, that range from small multi-tiered arenas to larger areas built with light cycles and light tanks in mind. Across every mode, I found that smaller maps meant less fun. The deathmatches turn into chaotic brawls that reward erratic jumping and button mashing more than skill. The same issue of combat and movement being artificially stitched together is even more apparent when real players are trying to break the system. Even though Power Monger is a forgettable and frustrating take on king of the hill, playing Bit Runner on large, light cycle-specific maps was easily the most fun I had with the game. Having the ability to hop on a lightcyle at any time cuts down on the sloppy on-foot combat and leads to fun chases with lots of 90-degree light traps as players try to hold onto the Bit for points. It was the only time during the entire game I actually felt same thrill I got from watching the big-screen light cycle sequences.


The whole package is a lot like the single player—long stretches of annoyance punctuated by moments of fun. It’s the closest you’re going to get to experiencing true light cycle action and for serious Tron fans, that might be enough to warrant an afternoon spent derezzing.
 
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Background Check: Alex
Background Check - The closest thing I've had to a Tron experience is watching some girls from my high school tape glow sticks to black shirts and dance in the dark. Other than that and having seen Tron: Legacy, the world of the Grid has escaped me. Computers and neon though? Totally dig ‘em.

Related Experiences:

Third-person action - Like 'em
Parkour in games - Like 'em
Tron: Legacy - Meh