Most of Tron City’s programmed citizens are hardwired automatons, but some have developed free will in the years since 1982’s landmark film. As a faceless, voiceless, and wholly anonymous security functionary, your job is to keep the peace — until a viral plague threatens to corrupt the whole joint.
Tron: Evolution stylishly blends the icy minimalist beauty of neon-blue lines and immaculately scrubbed architecture with the yucky digital noise of that mysterious yellow disease. Naturally, the idea of tearing through such a high-contrast environment with parkour gymnastics is instantly appealing. At first, the simple ledge-grabbing and wall-running makes you feel like a digital stuntman in a high-tech maze. However, while the best acrobatic games subtly guide you back onto invisible rails when you’re a couple degrees off or a few inches shy, Tron blithely lets you fall to innumerable deaths. You’ll be bopping along, chaining moves with smooth grace and minimal control intervention, only to find yourself suddenly grinding your gears against yet another unnecessarily finicky wall-run jump.
Melee combat allows similarly wild swings between rote simplicity and soul-sucking retry-a-thon. Experience unlocks cool weapon modifications that increase damage, turn your disc into a Frisbee bomb, and more, and opponents possess varying vulnerabilities. But because different enemy species blend together more often than not, doing discernible damage frequently degenerates into trial-and-error.
To be fair, you’ll occasionally bust out sick pixel-spraying combinations and destructive counter-attacks. There’s also a mildly adrenalized charm to all the balletic somersaulting and rail-vaulting. But surviving in a crowd usually demands running laps between wall-mounted health strips and energy-restoring furniture until everything’s dead or you just can’t take it anymore. Toss in some torturous boss battles, like one egregious mess that pits your fragile frame against two blast-happy tanks, and you’ll wish the whole game revolved around the awkward but enjoyable light-cycle road-trip sequences.
You could take a break and whale on human opponents with varying upgrade load-outs in online multiplayer arenas, but even that pleasure is short-lived. Light cycles drive like rolling pins, temporary power-up icons are so sparse they might as well be absent, and your special attack reticule likes to flicker out of existence at inopportune moments. How cruelly ironic that a game filled with gleaming, glossy surfaces would be in such dire need of polish.
+ Distinctive look; some fun and effective upgrades; forgiving checkpoints.
- Difficulty constantly veers between child’s play and crushed skull.
- Dull non-entity for a hero; awkward cutscenes; lots of rough spots.
? Why is the Jeff Bridges soundalike channeling Lebowski, man?
