Long, detailed review: Fascinating There is a lot to say about Tron 2.0, so this review will have two major sections, the first of which are my impressions of the game. The second section will address individual points in the Gamespot review, which I feel contains and unnecessary negative bias: The original Tron was a visionary movie put out by Steven Lisberger (et al) and Disney in 1982. It revolved around a hacker/gamer who gets digitized and sucked inside a computer, which is represented as a whole new world: programs are actually like people, data streams are like flowing currents used for transportation, and the computer itself is "the world". The movie was very adept at creating a believable, computer world that was accessible to the mainstream audience, but was ultimately hindered by its niche subject matter (as well as its automatic disqualification for a Special Effects Oscar, since the academy considered using a computer for effects to be "cheating" at the time). Fast forward to Tron 2.0. The game take place two decades later. As the main character Jet Bradley (son of Alan Bradley who created the Tron program in the original movie), you get digitized into the computer world, and have to save the world (naturally) from a nefarious plot. Without divulging any details, I will say that I found the story-line to be less compelling than the movie's. The characters and motivations involved were quite a bit less realistic, more suited to after-school cartoons than real life. That being said, the plot was still interesting and significantly more complex than the movie's, so it there was more to learn, and more to follow. The game also fills in plot-gaps from the last 20 years..the time between the movie and the game...via in-game e-mail archives, any fans of the original movie will find themselves looking forward to digging up more of these as they find them...especially since each individual mail is so short. The game consists of three major parts: the single-player campaign, multiplayer disc arena, and a standalone light-cycles game, which can be played solo or multiplayer on a LAN only (it does not prohibit playing online, but it's a complete waste of time due to completely unacceptable lag). I'll start by addressing the single player campaign (the bulk of the review), followed by some notes on production values, and will finish up with some light cycle information and then multi-play...all before digging into the Gamespot review. --- SINGLE PLAYER (SP) CAMPAIGN --- I don't want to ruin any story, so I'll address the game-play, which is neither exceptional, nor weak. The controls feel identical to any other entry in the No One Lives Forever series, or any other First Person Shooter (FPS) for that matter. This means your tasks consist of hunting down either keys or buttons to access the next area, but this does not make it a bad game. Half Life relied on this formula too, but punctuated it with great action, some stealth, and surprises, which made it one of the top games ever. Tron 2.0 does not have any scary surprises, and combat is fun, but not standout. However, Tron 2.0 goes very far with its environments. Each level represents part of a computer system, ranging from servers, to desktop pcs, to a PDA, and more. The locations are painstakingly detailed, and while some things are shared (all "exit ports" look mostly the same), they are creatively unique. Every element of the environment you see has some meaning in the computer world, although granted this is often up for interpretation. An example would be the power conduits for the CPU inside the original encom mainframe. Massive beams of energy flow towards a central point. Since your task at the time is to increase the voltage to the CPU to facilitate over-clocking, you can easily imagine that each of the 2 additional beams you activate ups it by .1 volts. There are many examples of this throughout the game. Familiar computer events, such as viral infection, disk formatting, running out of cpu cycles or battery life...these are all depicted as environmental problems that directly affect your existence or goals in a digital world, and the effect is both integral to the game-play and often mesmerizing to behold. It is in this way that the game matches the movie and in many ways is its better. The computer-controlled characters are all well-voiced, and many of them do a very good job helping set the Tron atmosphere. You have a few allies, but make no mistake that this is a solo mission you are on--allies are generally limited to cameo appearance, and only join you in conflict on one or two occasions. I found the voices of the generic programs to be somewhat annoying--like a dorky neighbor from a sitcom. Worse, they sound like the same voices used in No One Lives Forever 1 and 2. I thought the voices sounded a bit lame in those games, hearing them again is no better, and ruins my immersion a little bit. Keep in mind, they are not poorly acted, just somewhat un-cinematic (thus un-Tron-like). Level design is generally very good. There was only one level where I had successfully destroyed every active threat, and wandered around in for an hour, unclear about how to pass it. The way out turned out to be exactly what I thought it was, but there was unfortunately a very specific spot where I had to enter a large beam. I finally found the proper path down to it and all was well. COMBAT Combat is mixed. Many weapons can be ignored, and their order of introduction depends on how anal you are about searching containers or fallen foes. The main weapon is your personal data disc, a frisbee-like weapon that can be used to attack, or to block incoming discs. As far as I can determine, you can only block other discs, if an enemy uses other ranged weapons at you, blocking will not work. However even in cases such as these, the disc's high damage (which can be increased with power-ups) generally cements it as the preferred weapon. Other weapons mimic the generic effects of shotguns, grenades, sniper rifles, stun guns, and machine guns. Apart from an upgraded disc weapon, only the sniper rifle seems to retain any usefulness throughout the game, although I did find the machine-gun like blaster and the energy-sucking weapon handy in a few spots. Foes are not incredibly smart, sometimes they will shoot at you, not realizing that a floating box is blocking their shot, but you can then bank your disc under the box to hit them. They are smart enough to run and call for reinforcements via wall panels, and occasional duck head-level attacks. They can also do a few tricky throws, which can fake you out into blocking early (which means you will get hit, since blocking must be timed right). If you are on a roll, successfully blocking several incoming discs, while dishing out head-shots, combat can be very satisfying. JUMPING PUZZLES There are many instances in this game that involve jumping, either as a required part of your progress, or for optional things such as additional power-ups or build points (which are similar to experience points). Odds are that you will probably lose a few lives to these jumping puzzles, but none of them are overly difficult, nor ambiguous. One glance is all it takes to know if you can make the jump or not in the vast majority of cases, the only reason you will be dying is because mid air control in jumps is a bit tricky, and the jump itself is very quick. The jumping requirements do not get increasingly harder as the game progresses, so by midway through the game, you will find yourself well practiced and up for any jumping problems thrown at you. DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY Fortunately, for this and all other problems, quick-saving and quick-loading is very fast and effective. Taking only seconds to reload your game on most systems. This is a feature you will want to use often, since the computer world is deadly. Death never comes out of the blue (well, it does...especially in sections where everything is blue), it's very rare you'll be killed by a surprise. Most deaths are caused by genuine trial and error being applied to an observed problem. You will always know danger is either present or coming, due to warnings given (verbal shouts, obvious deadliness of a situation before you, etc..) there is one exception to this: Finders. They are near-silent, small, hovering drones with a far field of vision that can shoot you with instantaneous laser blasts that cannot be blocked. Damage is fairly high, and you may not even realize you're being attacked until you've been hit twice. The presence of these things alone are worth saving every minute (at least) for. They are fortunately easy to kill. INVENTORY MANAGEMENT / EXPERIENCE / UPGRADES Instead of a a conventional inventory, you have a separate interface that allows you to manage your acquisitions, which are referred to as subroutines. You can possess as many subroutines as you like. Each one requires so many free blocks of memory. Since you only have a limited number of memory blocks (and this amount changes according to what computer you are currently in), you have to make some decisions on what subroutines are currently equipped. Fortunately, you can reduce a subroutine's memory footprint (how many blocks it requires)--as well increase its effectiveness--by optimizing the routine via various opportunities presented in the game. This system is very interesting and fun to look at and use. It has some other much less frequently used functions as well, such as disinfecting corrupted subroutines, identifying unknown ones, and defragging corrupted memory blocks. The only issue with this system is that your offensive items share memory space with defensive and utilitarian items, so you will often find yourself pulling this screen up to toggle your load-out on the fly. There's no problem with this, but it does sometimes feel simply like an extra step. Since there's no penalty for making poor load-out decisions (they can be remedied at any time), making good selections seems less of a reward. Each time you entered a new computer, it resets your active subroutines and prompts you to reconfigure them. I often found myself just hitting escape and configuring them when the need arose. Experience points come via "build points". A very interesting system that encourages you to explore every nook and cranny until your HUD indicates all build-points for this level have been found. These allow you to improve your health or energy stats, as well as your speed or proficiency in certain basic tasks, search as searching containers. All in all, this system is an improvement over most other FPS games out there, which for the most part don't have real inventory systems. It's very well-designed within the motif, and while the names don't necessarily make sense, you will quickly learn to simply recognize everything by its icon. My only complaint on this system is that it would have been nice if there were a batch mode (a queue) for sequential processing of infected programs or fragmented memory. --- PRODUCTION VALUES --- The production values are, for the most part, excellent. The weaknesses are few in number, which include some inappropriate voice-work, as well as some abrupt transitions between levels that harm the immersion factor. The music is also a bit on the weak side. My take on the original Wendy Carlos score of the movie was mixed. I found the music during some of the action scenes to be the epitome of dissonant, loud, overly synthy irritation...balanced out by an incredibly brilliant theme music. The game strikes the middle path. There is no music that will jar you as much as some of that in the movie, but there is also no mark of brilliance. Either the remixes of the original Wendy Carlos themes--while the highlight of the game's music--have been watered down and are not as good as they once were. However, in a game it's probably better to live with the middle ground than it is to have both extremes, as repetitive track loops of bad music would hurt a game more than good music would help it. Naturally, having all the music be fantastic is the best, but Tron 2.0 simply doesn't deliver there, it settles for "adequate" music. There are also no moments of dramatic musical silence, in my opinion an oft-neglected virtue. As can be seen with any set of screenshots, the visuals are incredible. Movement is everywhere, and your head will be swimming in remembered color if you play for too long. The menus are completely unremarkable, and not entertaining in and of themselves (such as Blizzard game menus). --- LIGHT CYCLES --- The light cycles are a staple-crop of Tron, and they are done in Tron 2.0 with panache. The game presents a light cycle experience that is visually beyond that offered by the original movie. Light cycle racing occurs occasionally as part of the SP campaign as well as in their own mission-based single-player game off the main menu. These "missions" are not story-driven, and are just a set of about 15-20 challenges in various stages that allow you to unlock things like different color cycles (with improved stats) or the ability to use make certain power-ups available in custom games. Sadly, as good as they look, this is not the best version of 3d light cycles available. There are only two camera options available: ****pit and adjustable-height (and zoom) spot-view from behind. There is the additional option of "unlocking" the camera, so you can use the mouse to look around. If you are using the external camera, this gives you complete flexibility of how you want to place the camera relative to your cycle's position. However, aside from locking the camera, there is no way to have an adjustable view that stays relative to your cycle's HEADING. This means if you do a quick 180 degree turn (two 90 degree turns) you will be heading blindly towards the camera, and by the time you swing your view around, you may already be dead. You can compensate for this by zooming out and trying to get a wide-area vista of your cycle revealing a decent amount of both front and behind...but if you pull back too far, and/or center your view too much, many of the trails become too difficult to see. The end result is too many needless crashes--the camera is either too limited (when "locked") or too sloppy (when "free-look" is on) to be effective. It would have benefited greatly from "glance" keys to quickly look left or right, snapping back to straight ahead when released, and/or a "relative" free-look that would keep your camera positioned relative to the directional HEADING of your cycle, not simply its position. For examples of light cycles done better, check out (google for) gltron, or even better: Armagetron. Both of these games provide far superior game-play experiences on the gaming grid. This is a shame, since the Tron 2.0 cycles has much better graphics, sound, and even has a good feeling of control, as well as additions to the grid, such as powerups and obstacles. The camera issues make it ultimately less enjoyable, as well as control issues: it shares the same key-mappings as the FPS portions of the game. So if you wanted to use your right mouse button to lock/unlock your camera during cycles, then you better remember to re-bind it to "disc block", or vice versa, whenever you are going to/from light cycles and FPS. Separate bindings for light cycles would have been wise. --- MULTIPLAYER (MP) --- The MP portion of Tron 2.0 is disappointing, due to lag and lack of servers. Currently, it's unplayable as the finesse game it should be. The only online MP option is "disc arena", where two teams fight in small arenas with discs. Just like SP, discs can be blocked, which causes them to ricochet out of control for a while, offering good chances for counter-attack. The two teams are separated by an impasse...either shoot-through walls or a chasm, and often parts of the floor can disappear, either by shooting them with a disc, shooting targets on the wall, or just as a time-based environmental hazard. Given that discs can be steered in mid-flight, and damage can be inflicted on a disc's return path to its user, there are a lot of opportunities for fancy shots and blocks. All nearly impossible due to current lag conditions. When (if) this lag issue is fixed, things should improve greatly, but it's still incomplete. There is no death match, no capture the flag...only the disc arena game-type. It feels like you're playing a small-time (but high quality) mod for a larger MP game...except that the rest of the game doesn't exist. Given the richness of the Tron universe, some unique weapons and dynamics, hopefully the community will step up to the task to create good mods...if the lag gets fixed. ------------------------------------- --- COMMENTS ON GAMESPOT'S REVIEW --- I think Gamespot's comments on the game's use of FPS "conventions" receives too much emphasis. Tron 2.0 offers so much from a visual standpoint, that you barely even notice that life is continuing on outside your computer room, much less dwell on whatever it is you are doing in the game. Playing Tron 2.0 is almost like walking around through Wonderland, delivering a Fed-ex package. Which do you focus on, your menial delivery task? Or Wonderland? Additionally, the game-play actually represents some of the higher end of the "convention". It shares a lot more in common with the puzzles in No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 than with Return to Castle Wolfenstein. In terms of puzzles and "conventions", I'd say the game holds up very well next to or even surpasses the highly rated Jedi Knight II, Elite Force, and even Half Life. Gamespot's deba****t of the enemies as being "cannon fodder" is also a bit non-sensical...what else do you want to do in a FPS besides SHOOT the enemies? It would be more interesting if the AI had been better, but these enemies are no worse (and probably better) than those in any other FPS save perhaps Half Life. The reviewer then bemoans the fact that you must do "cliche" things like defending an ally or fight a boss, leaving me to wonder what sort of genre game they thought this was? I suppose the reviewer probably thinks that roller-coasters are unimaginative and boring when they do such "cliche" roller-coaster things like go upside-down, or take a precipitous drop. The bosses are admittedly a mixed bag in terms of how cool they are..and generally all involve fighting them in a static area, but for their part, they are difficult and action packed. and not a detriment to the game. I guess I did not receive the memo that said we're not allowed to defend people anymore, because it's a boring cliche. I'd call Tron 2.0 "complete", not a cliche. Tron 2.0 is a solid, exceptional shooter. Not a solid, unexceptional one. I will not say it's revolutionary, evolutionary, or wondrously innovative, because it's not.. But it is just as solid and creative as Monolith's previous FPS outings, such as the No One Lives Forever series--games which also did not bust through the gaming envelope (for their time), relying heavily on "cliches", unexceptional AI, and typical weapons..Yet Gamespot viewed them far more fondly. Tron 2.0 is better than 85% or 90% of the FPS games that get released, unless you are judging it on multiplayer, which is not being billed as this game's strength and is obviously there just as a cave-in to unavoidable demand. The things that will ultimately keep Tron from surpassing a game like Half Life, is not the button hunting and key hunting (which is shares in common with HL), but the relatively sparse battles, the lack of quality transitions or explanation on what's really going on, and the relative obviousness of what needs to be done at any time, which highlights the game's linearity...a linearity that is no more or less linear than Half Life, the path along the line is simply more visible, so you notice it more. --- SUMMARY --- In the end, I would have to say Tron does have some problems, which I may have dwelled upon here in lieu of praising the game, but in the end it was a highly satisfying experience, that continues to fill my head with questions and ideas that make me crave a sequel, or maybe even a MMO game based on Tron. By the time I finished the game, the whole experience had been very cinematic and interactive, and lived up to the movie and surpassed it in nearly every way. The game presents a lot of details that cater to old-school Tron fans, in addition to providing a lot of its own goodness. I do not think that this game will win any awards (other than graphics-related ones), and I think that's appropriate. But what you have here is solid game-play, complemented by incredible graphics, and a very robust form of level design (more like environment or "atmosphere" design) that truly creates a new world, delivering satisfaction on so many levels. The end result is nothing short of amazing.
This will be a pretty short review. The main review really sums up a lot of how I also felt. Visually, the game is fantastic - from the glow effect to some extremely large and varied levels, the visual presentation i... Read Full Review
Say what you will about the groundbreaking CG effects used to approximate a virtual world in Tron, but that movie bored the heck out of me. Due to what I suppose were enormous budgetary and technical constraints, most o... Read Full Review
