Having reviewed both TRON: The Movie and TRON: The Book recently, I thought it would be nice to complete the circle by reviewing TRON: The Game… well, TRON 2.0 to be exact. This game isn’t based on the film, rather it’s set some years after the events in the film.
After Kevin Flynn was digitised and entered the electronic system to spar with the MCP (Master Control Program), he returned to the real world after managing to help free the system and find the information he had been looking for in the first place: the files the proved it was he, not CEO Ed Dillinger, who had created several of the video games upon which the ENCOM empire was built. Thus Flynn replaced Dillinger as CEO, and his friends Alan Bradley (creator of the TRON program) and Lora Baines continued working there and got married. As a consequence of this they had a son, Jet, who is the character you play in the game. An accident in the research lab resulted in Lora’s death however, and from that time on the relationship between Jet and his father has become very strained. Added to this, ENCOM is about to be taken over by fCon, and something doesn’t seem right about all this… suddenly Jet, called to the office to see his father, who he finds has mysteriously disappeared, is digitised into the electronic system by Ma3a, a program Alan Bradley has been working on. (For 20 years or so they’ve been working on replicating the technology to do what the MCP did back in the first film, and have only just managed it.) Jet must help Ma3a if he wants to save ENCOM – and his father…
The plot of the game is extremely well developed (it would have made a great film!) and is full of surprises along the way, and this goes a long way towards adding to the game’s atmosphere. Obviously it borrows heavily from the first film for ideas and concepts, but is complete enough in itself to seem fresh and original. The game world is highly detailed in concept and look. Admittedly some of the stark polygonal shapes and lack of texture on the surfaces makes it look slightly primitive at times, but this keeps it in line with the look of the original film. The facial graphics of the characters is superb, and I think must have been done by mapping a digitised photo onto a 3D shapes rather than just using polygons. The 3D looks good for the most part and spectacular at others, but there are a couple of glitches – most noticeably that the disc (your primary weapon) often returns to you through walls or other solid objects. There are also a couple of places where you can get stuck for a while, but I haven’t found any that trap you forever! The sound quality is very high throughout, with realistic sounds for the weapons, good voice acting throughout, and appropriate ambient sound effects. A nice point is that if you’re talking to someone and start to walk away from them their voice grows quieter and less distinct the further you away from them you are. It’s extra little touches like these that really add realism and atmosphere to the game, the attention to detail is quite astonishing sometimes. Your journey will take you into a laptop PC, a PDA, an infected server, and of course the Net… Those familiar with TRON will be happy to know that there a light cycle contests aplenty within the game, and if you want you can just play light cycles from the main menu. The music is largely based on the original soundtrack (which is no bad thing!) and the voice acting is top quality. It’s nice that some of the stars from the film lend their voices to this game, including Bruce Bowleitner and Cindy Morgan.
The core of the game is an FPS (First Person Shooter) but with quite a strong RPG (Role Playing Game) element to it. You explore the levels, with the current and overall objectives always available at the tap of the Tab key, so you never completely lose track of what you’re doing. (The biggest danger with this game is that you’ll completely lose track of time!!) There’s plenty of variety in the levels so it never gets boring, and the RPG element is brilliantly incorporated. Not only can you gain “levels” in the form of Build Points (whenever you reach a new whole version number you can upgrade your core stats – Health, Energy, Weapon Efficiency, Transfer Rate, etc), but you can find and add “subroutines” along the way. These can be changed at any time, and depending on the location you’re at in the game the memory you can use will change. (For instance, there’s a lot less space available to you on the PDA than in the server.) Each subroutine can be Alpha, Beta, or Gold – the better the class, the more effective it is and the less memory it takes up. You can find these subroutines along the way in various forms, usually in data storage units but sometimes in the “Core Dumps” that de-rezzed enemy programs leave behind. There are also a few Code Optimisers in the game that can be used to upgrade a routine you already have. Your active subroutines can be changed at any time by hitting the F1 key. The subroutines can either be for combat (to supplement your primary weapons, i.e. allowing you to throw more than one disc), defensive (armour or virus shield), or utility (allowing you to jump higher, etc). Be careful if you’re fighting virus programs though – your subroutines might get infected, thus becoming far less effective, and once a subroutine has become 100% effective it will spread to a neighbouring routine. This is where your Core Routines come in – Disinfect, Defrag, and Port. Disinfect deals with your corrupted files, Defrag ????, and Port converts and unknown routine into one you can use. (You may of course find that you already have it!) Choosing the best subroutines for each section of the game adds considerably to the strategy element (which is already quite extensive due to the superb design of the levels) and the RPG element, giving the game an extra depth.
The game overall is brilliant, but as Jack Lemon was once famously told, “Nobody’s Perfect”. There are a couple of things that attempt to spoil the game (though it’s still so good I’ve given it 5 stars). The installation is a pain in the neck – partly because it asks you for the serial number but gives you no indication of where to find it! (To save you the annoyance I had, it should be printed on the inside of the CD case or on the Quick Reference Card.) Apparently some batches have invalid serial numbers anyway and Bueva Vista’s technical support is famously bad. There are 2 update patches available for the game, one for XP users and one general update. The XP patch took me to a broken link and the general one, after being run, told me that I had no Disney Interactive software installed on my computer so did nothing!! (I’ve not had any real problems running it on XP though despite the lack of a patch.)
There are 4 difficulty levels that can be changed at any time during the game – Easy, Medium, Hard, and Insane - perhaps because I’m not really very used to playing FPS games I found certain parts a real challenge even on Easy mode! Some of the “pinch points” that are very tough but that you have to complete to continue the game got very frustrating, but none proved impossible.
Movement is controlled using the classic WSAD key format, though with F being the action key I sometimes found myself edging over the side of a cliff instead of picking something up!! Load times can be frustratingly long, and the system specs are pretty high. If you’re running the game on with 256Mb or less of memory, expect this game to play merry hell with your virtual memory!
The game introduces you to new concepts gradually and in a manageable way, while the accompanying manual and quick reference guide are useful and contain enough information – but not too much. It’s designed so you can read up on the various aspects of the game as you come to them rather than have to wade through it before playing the game – which is how I think things should be.
The most similar game to this that I’ve reviewed is Jedi Academy, and even though I loved that game, overall I enjoyed this slightly more. I think this was due partly to the greater strategy and RPG element in the game, and partly due to the fact that (so far!) the TRON franchise hasn’t been done to death like the Star Wars one has. If you liked that game, I’d be extremely surprised if you didn’t like this one.
Since this is quite an old game it’s possible to pick up very cheaply (we got ours from Amazon.co.uk for just £3!), but the gameplay is superb and it’s still one of the most visually arresting games ever made. At full price I might have hesitated to give it a full 5 stars, but for £3 there’s no question about it.
Age rating: 12+
Final Ratings --*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--
Graphics: - 92% - spectacular visuals and even when it doesn’t look all the impressive it’s authentic. Seeing the disc zooming back at you is fantastic!
Playability: - 94% - you can get into it really quickly but mastering it will take a long time.
Longevity: - 90% - the single-player game will take you quite some time to complete even in easy mode, the multiplayer light cycle mode adds considerably to its long-term appeal (though I haven’t tried it out yet)
Replay Value: - 84% - again it’s in the light cycles that the game has most replayability
Value For Money: - 98% - for the £3 I paid it’s brilliant VFM!
Overall Rating: - 95% - nearly perfect. It does of course help if you liked the film!
System Specs
Minimum
MS Windows 98/Me/2000/XP (with most recent service packs) Pentium 2 or AM Athlon 500MHzz 256Mb RAM 2.4Gb free HDD space space for swap files and saved games 32Mb 3D card (GeForce 2 or equivalent and above) – needs to be Hardware T&L compatible and support 32-bit colour depth DirectX9 or higher (v9 supplied with game) 100 BaseT LAN connection for Light Cycle Racing
Recommended
Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 1GHz 512Mb RAM NVIDIA GeForce FX cideo card
I was running it on:
Pentium 4 2.3GHz 256Mb RAM GeForce 4 MX (64Mb)
Running in Medium quality in 800x600 resolution, frame rate normally good but some slowdown occasionally, slow load times probably due to lack of RAM.
CaptainD’s (Partial) Seal of Windows Vista Compliance
I tested on Windows Vista with no problems other than the mouse cursor disappearing on the system menu screen! This was quite a problem - it didn't render the game unplayable but made things a lot more tricky when rearranging subroutines and particularly when trying to keep your system clean after a virus attack. I can't quite be sure if the problem was specifically with Vista... if I can shed more light on this at a future date, I will update this. For now I'm only awarding TRON 2.0 a partical seal of Vista Compliance.
Processor (calculations per second) - 4.8 for Processing Power, 4.1 for Memory Operations, 3.3 for Graphics, 2.6 for Gaming Graphics (on an nVidia GeForce 7500LE), and 5.7 for the Primary Hard Disk.
Story-drive action adventure featuring over 30 levels of gameplay Multiplayer Light Cycle racing over online for up to 16 players 12 weapons, includin...More at Amazon Marketplace
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