Customer Reviews

TRON: Evolution

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Released on December 7th, 2010 Tron: Evolution became available to the general public ahead of the franchise's release of their second film, Tron: Legacy and is available on the following platforms, PC, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, Playstation 3 and Nintendo DS. Although the game does bridge several platforms this review will focus on the PC version available for Windows 7, Vista and XP compatible machines.

Tron: Evolution combines action mostly found in Martial Arts genres and widely successful racing games. With intricate button combinations the player battles computer engineered viruses bent on their destruction. As the game progresses you will be challenged in several different forms in order to navigate intricately laid out maps by using abilities such as running on walls, jumping from platform to platform, leaping over anti-gravity structures and avoiding deadly obstacles. After mastering the ability to navigate the map's obstacles you will be confronted by the evil viruses. Using your disc you will need to defeat them and the more you beat the more powerful you will become. Using the XP gained by your battles you will have the chance to upgrade your disc and abilities. With the control over vehicles the game takes an even more thrilling step towards greatness. Tanks and motorcycles will have your heart beating with excitement.

The gameplay is pretty fun but at times can be a little repetitive. The majority of your time will be spent on running and jumping various obstacles. The story is well laid out, explaining how and why you need to defeat the enemies and the characters sent to fight or aid you are well done as well. The voice overs are quite good and reflect the actors emotions and personalities from the films. Olivia Wilde's character is very good but a little more chubby from the actual actress.

The Graphics are very clean and bright but can be a little sparse at times. The games camera could have been better, on occasion it will go through walls leaving the player without the ability to see where they are going but it is controllable. I suggest using a controller(xbox or PS3) as keyboard controls can be difficult and clunky. There is little in the way of in-game sounds and no background music to entertain.

Overall the game is enjoyable and at the selling price it proves to be worth the money spent. A good game to play once but I doubt I will play it all the way through again. Multi-player is available but not included within this review.

ALL FEEDBACK IS APPRECIATED. THANKS AND GOOD GAMING.

I'm 37 years old. I'm an avid gamer and have been since the Atari 2600 days. With that said, I'm a PC gamer. I don't play console games anymore. I was weaned off of them when I got my first PC years ago. With that said, I love "Tron" the movie. It's part of my childhood, like Star Wars. I spent countless hours in arcades playing the old Tron arcade game - not to mention the Atari Tron games, which I still own. From the moment I heard about the new film and saw the trailer, I couldn't wait to see it. And for the most part, I wasn't disappointed. It's hard to follow-up to such a cult movie, but the film, I thought, was pretty amazing. But that's beside the point...

Being a fan of the movies and previous games, I had to try out this new Tron game for the PC. It almost brought me to tears. No, not tears of joy over my lost childhood memories of light cycles and flying discs and of Tron and the world in which he lives. No, I was crying over having played such a frustrating game!

As others have pointed out here, this game is clearly a console port. And, man, you can feel it if you are a PC gamer, used to using a mouse and keyboard, which allow for far superior control to a game pad - sorry console gamers, but it's true! I don't know how console gamers put up with such horrible controls and camera angles. The very nature of this game requires an extremely fine degree of control of the in-game character. Let me explain (and bring up another related complaint!). The guy(s) who designed the levels of this game is a sadist! :) (I say that in fun!!!) Apparently - and I missed this part in the film - the people who inhabit Tron's world don't use normal walkways, doors, stairs, and such to move around. In their highly advanced digital society, they jump around like monkeys swinging from trees - in this case inexplicably out-of-place hand holds - jumping from platform to platform. I used to suffer from motion sickness from games, and this one nearly brought back the experience. The jumping on and over everything, running up walls, and constantly shifting camera angle, which is made worse by the 3rd person perspective, almost made me spew on my keyboard.

The fine control is utterly necessary because the entire game consists of jump puzzle after jump puzzle. I finished the game in a few days of heavy playing, but most of that time was spent reloading the game from the automatic save points - which is yet another lame carry over from consoles! Seriously, I must have died 1000 times! A lot of this has to do with the awful design of the game. For some reason, to gain energy, you have to jump over objects in the game like consoles and lights (???). (I'm going to have to try this in the real world by vaulting over my couch and kitchen table and see if I get an energy boost!) When you jump over these objects, you are launched into the air... and sometimes right off the ledge of a platform to plummet to your death. Good times! :) Many of the deaths from jump puzzles are completely unavoidable. The perspective prevents you from seeing where to jump next. Fate forbid that it be as simple as following a path from point A to point B. You'll run along walls and grab hand holds not clearly seeing the next point until you fall of yet another wall to your death. Again...good times! If this is what console gamers call fun, I pity you. Wack-a-mole would provide more entertainment and less stress!

The other problem I had is that they game is extremely monotonous. Between the jump puzzles, you simply go room to room fighting enemies with your disc. Occasionally, you will experience what I believe to be the most fun aspects of the entire game: riding the light cycles and tanks. Outside of this, the game is boring. It's too much of the same thing over and over again ad nauseum.

To be fair, the game is beautiful. The characters are animated well, and they look very realistic. The game ties in well with the film, too, which I liked. It also introduces you to some of the characters from the film, which was very interesting to me. The music is nice, but it would have been nice to have more of the music from the film. The cut scenes throughout the game are very good, and load times are not a problem. They are very seamless with the in-game action and do not detract from the game play.

I finished the game. I'll never play it again. The jump puzzles and console-esque game play are a huge turnoff for me. It's just illogical and odd - and not in line with the movie at all - that you should have to traverse the game world by jumping around like squirrel on a live power line. The monotony is another killer as far as reply value goes. Once you get through it, you'll not want to go back. Overall, the game is worth a play, but after that, it'll be relegated to your pile of forgotten games. If you're a Tron fan, I suggest you go see the movie instead. It's a much better experience than playing this game - especially the PC port.

Cheers,
J.A.G.

I pre-ordered the game, and as always, Amazon.com had it to me on release day. Awesome!

I am a fan of TRON, and am very much looking forward to the new movie, TRON : LEGACY
TRON : EVOLUTION definitely sparked my interest, and Amazon.com had a great price on it.

Installed, and up and running. My PC is well beyond the minimum requirements, so game play was very fluid.
I selected the best graphics resolution allowable within the game, and it looked GREAT.

I played in the single player mode for a while - I am still getting used to the game and its controls.
It will take a while, it's a lot different than most of the games that I am used to. So far so good, though!

I recommend this game for anyone who is a fan of TRON.
I believe this game will compliment the original movie, and the new one.

Now, this is where I mention MY complaints. That's why four stars instead of five.

Complaint #1
You have to sign up for a Windows Live account to be able to use the multiplayer option, at least, on the PC version.
While I agree, there is no additional cost, I bought a legitimate copy of the game. (Amazon.com verified purchase!)
Buying a legitimate copy of the game should be the ONLY requirement of using the multiplayer option.

Complaint #2
My second complaint is a technical issue. You may, or may not care. If you don't understand it, it won't matter much, either.
I'm still mentioning it, because it is important TO ME.

I was glad to see that the game supports multiple language options, however, this is where the developer really could have done better.

The game has support for English, Italian, German, French, and Spanish. Personally, I only read, write, and speak English, so that was the ONLY language support that I needed.

When I installed the game, it installed ALL of the languages. For me, support for German, French, Italian, and Spanish were COMPLETELY unnecessary.

The support files for those four extra languages consumed (roughly) 1.15 gigabytes of hard drive space.
On a one terabyte drive, the wasted space only adds up to around 0.12% of total capacity, but that's more than zero.

It would have taken very little effort on the part of the developer to have the installation process copy only the support files for the language(s) selected by the user.

With an 'English only installation', the extra languages' support files are spread among 4,864 files, and that adds 4,864 entries to Windows' index.
A larger index can slow down searches, and overall PC performance. It also makes fixing potential disasters that much more work.

I am a huge Tron fan. I've played all of the video games available for this franchise, especially Tron 2.0 (released several years ago and touted as many to be the best game available for Tron.) I was excited about this new release in conjunction with the up-coming movie.

Talk about a disappointment. It is obvious that this game was designed as a console and ported to the PC. The result is a cluttered interface with awkward controls. Graphics and the camera system in the game struggle and the parque thing found in "Prince of Persia" feels out of place.

The multiplayer doesn't fare much better - the main reason I wanted to buy this.

This game will quickly fall into the obscure realms of movie video games that were done poorly and rushed to market. In 6 months, nobody will even know that this game existed. Let's hope that the movie is better.

The only positive thing to say is at least the PC version is only $29.99, making the expense a little less-painful.

First off-- if you don't have an Xbox controller for your PC, add one to your cart along with the game. It is *impossible* to play without.

Second, if you have a monitor with a decent resolution, you'll probably need to edit the gridengine.ini file to put in your actual resolution. I don't know why the game thinks that my i7 940 with 6GB of ram and Radeon HD 5870 can't handle over 1680x1050. It actually runs fine at 2560x1440 on my 27" Dell lcd after changing the ini file. Google it if you're curious.

I haven't ever been a big fan of the Prince of Persia / Tomb Raider style game play. If I had known this game was going to be 90% jumping around, I would have passed on it.

Lastly, it is just amazing to watch. It's incredibly cheap now, so go ahead and pick up a copy. Just download a trainer (Google Tron Evolution trainer) to help you past the parts where you're running/jumping around the place and the ground gets blown up and you have no where to jump until you've done it 6 times and finally see the sticky pad on the other side. #$^(*@#^$

Well, what do I say about TRON: Evolution for PC?

First off, I say get a PC Controller, this game will be a pain if you don't have one. Secondly I recommend you have lots of patience because you will die...a lot.

I'm no new gamer, I'm a veteran of Assassins Creed I&II, COD (all of them), every Star Wars game you can come up with and tons more and none of them have given me nearly as much of a challenge so far like TRON: Evolution. The A.I. is great in my opinion and the gameplay is amazing. However getting a handle on the controls will take...quite a while... and figuring out how to kill the various enemy types will take more time than getting use to the controls.

Right now I'm on the 2nd level, I've been playing for three days for about one to two hours each day. Normally I'm a good ways into the game by this time but TRON is a different animal than most games. Sometimes you can be fighting two or three enemies, and then in the very next room you can be swarmed by guards with discs (The normal guards aren't that hard, but the more advanced versions are a pain in the rear) or you can be facing five or six infected programs.

Now, here is what everyone has been waiting for.. The LIGHT CYCLES. I tell you now, the Light Cycle sequences are amazing both in gameplay and graphically and they are loads of fun. I have only played one of the sequences and I was blown away by how amazing it was It was one of the most amazing gaming experiences of my life. However from what I hear there are no real Light Cycle arena battles.

Here is my ratings for this game.

Story: 10\10 (Great use of the back story to TRON: Legacy.. I love it Disney!).

Gameplay 8.9/10 (Targeting enemies needs to be a little more accurate and easy but this is the only gameplay problem).

Graphics: 10/10 (Great use of graphics Disney, just like the movie!)

Difficulty: 11/10 (Those advanced guards are kicking my tail, and it's not even past the second level yet...However Its my first play through and I AM starting on HARD difficulty and I was hoping for a challenge anyway).

Fun: 10/10 (I'm having a blast, it's accurate to the movies and is a mix of Assassins Creed II Free running and LOTR/Dante's Inferno hack'n'slash I love the combo and TRON is just epic on it's own. Disney definatly got it right in this game.)

So, for my conclusion.. I BEG YOU READERS, I implore you.. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, don't take the negative reviewer's word for it and actually..Don't take mine. If you're thinking of buying the game then BUY IT and MAKE YOUR OWN OPINION of this game. I got scared because of the reviews and I put off buying this game, I wish I hadn't because this game is amazing. So don't pass it up, buy the game and I'll see you on the Grid user.

:D
Sincerely,
Daniel

This review was based of my playing the opening tutorials and first few short missions without vehicle missions but now I have played a large portion of the game so I am dropping my review from 4 to 3 stars.
- First and foremost, gamers need to be aware that as far as the hand-to-hand combat and navigation (walking/running) go in TRON Evolution, you need to like games like Prince of Persia and Assassins Creed. You will: do a lot of wall walking, jumping from that wall to another wall-walk then jumping to a grasp-and-climb type maneuver to a ledge and if you miss that ledge, you fall to your death or to the lower level to start all over again, and again, and again. It can be frustrating for some gamers so be warned now.
UPDATE: All through the game, this is the case. It has to be noted that the entire navigation (walking/running) part has become, for lack of better words, are frustrating and cumbersome. I hoped at one point you could actually walk around the city, free roaming but no way is this happening.
- As for the basic controls and gameplay: Controls are somewhat fluid and easy to adjust to. From time to time the camera will change and lock the view while you are trying to run up a wall and when you try to do a leap off that wall, you quickly have to change the direction key you would hit because the camera angle changed on you mid-maneuver. Again, this is frustrating but takes some getting used to and lots of patience.
- Do not listen to any reviews that say this is open world gameplay. You are told exactly where to go and what to do. By pressing TAB, the path to your next point is shown to you.
UPDATE: Sometimes in the game, on some boards the TAB assist is disabled and you have to figure the path out yourself. I'm not sure why they did that.
- Combat: A PLUS in my book. You can quick-throw your disc, charge it up and throw it for a powerful strike, chain attacks using both your left and right mouse button, jumping attacks and once you learn to block (CTRL key) and counter-attack, some of the attacks from there are very cool and devastating. You can also do melee attacks if they get too close.
UPDATE: You will progress to obtaining 4 different types of discs that do different types of damage. So, for some enemies, you MUST change your disc type and some you can just keep using normal attacks. The game book tells you nothing of how to change discs. If you are using a keyboard, it is 1, 2, 3 and 4. The tutorial it provides for using a new type of disc is for gamepads only. It is useless for keyboard and mouse users.
- Games for Windows?: The first attempt to log me onto Windows Live was unsuccessful but it said it connected the second attempt. When I logged out to my desktop, it said my progress would not be saved. I have had problems with Windows Live like this before not saving my progress just because the Windows Live connection was lost. Not sure why it won't just save my progress temp to my computer?
UPDATE: It still saved but it still tells me that my progress will not be saved each time I close out. This is not cool and makes me second guess each time I stop playing.
UPDATE: - Vehicles: I have now had experience with lightcycles and tanks.
- Lightcycles are so fast that you will be dropped into one with no tutorial and told to get to a specific place but there will be obsticles and broken roads. You will crash often and get shot by phantom guns forcing you to restart frequently. Sometimes you will restart and not get more than 10 ft before getting shot dead. You have no way of avoiding these hits. There will be no traditional lightcycle battles in the single player. It is all mostly linear racing to one point while avoiding orange cycles' energy walls that might get ahead of you. Somewhat boring.
- Tanks were just awesome. A real high point in the game where you get to take out enemies, other tanks and flyers.
- Graphics: Are awesome. I don't have a high-end computer. I have maybe 3gb RAM, 500gb hard drive but have a NVidia 9800gt video card. It looks great with my so-so computer specs. If only I had a DX11 capable card?
- Voice acting: Well done and the characters to include CLU (looks like Flynn cuz he's a program created by him), Flynn himself and Tron looked very much like the original movie. You play as the program created by Flynn's son so you are basically "no-name program" or "Anon" but it's still cool. You seem to be a new program that from day 1 already have the skills to take on the bad guys (Abraxas virus program).
- I am dropping my review from 4 to 3 stars due to the frustrating parkour style traveling and controls regarding that throughout the whole game, tutorials only geared towards gamepad users (useless to most of us), Windows Live forced save progress and forced camera angles that cause frequent death and restart.
A great looking game with a few high points but if you paid the high starting price, it may not have been worth it.

This game is basically unplayable. I'm using a keyboard and mouse (thanks to the Unreal engine, it does not support my Logitech Rumblepad 2) and the running/jumping nonsense is impossible. I'm only five minutes into the game and I've spent a half an hour on one jump. And I'm a life-long gamer who has played plenty of platformers before, it's just the controls are so sloppy.

It might not be as bad if you have a 360 controller, but I don't, so I can't say for sure, but I can say that with a keyboard and mouse, this game is junk.

Also:

1. DRM - Securom, Serial number + Online Activation + Limited Activations
2. High resolution monitors (1920x1080 and 1920x1200) are not supported (although your resolution of choice can be hacked into the configuration files).

Overview
--------
This game is does have a prince of persia feel to it like a prior reviewer mentioned. I started playing it using keyboard and mouse... but it just didn't feel right. So, I tried out my Logitech Rumblepad 2 (not compatible), and then hooked up my PS3 Control using Motionjoy. (I'm sure a Xbox 360 Remote would be better as they are much more compatible with Windows.) Once I got my gamepad configured I was off, and loving the gameplay. At first it can be a bit frustrating because monsters take a while to kill, but as you level and powerup your discs you become more powerful. After "Version 30" you really start taking people down.

Storyline
---------
I don't know why this hasn't been mentioned, but the storyline is awesome. Its a bridge between Tron 1 and Tron 2... Not just another cheesy movie storyline copy. It literally starts at the end of Tron 1 and leaves you where Tron Legacy picks up. This is why I give this game 5 stars. I've already played through it twice just to see the story, and level my stuff up.

Gameplay
--------
Singleplayer lightcycles are a little on the touchy side, but you don't really jump on them much. However, no other reviewer mentioned how "EPIC" the multiplayer lightcycle battles are. Check out the youtube videos for you self. The Tanks are awesome, and easy to navigate. Overall Controls are pretty basic and god of war style combos with 4 discs. Very fun switching between discs for different enemies or starting with one disc and finishing an enemy with another. (Try hitting shield guys with corruption and finish with a bomb disc)

Replay Value
------------
If you can get past the initial downsides on the setup (Gamepad / Windows Live) the game is awesome. The more I play it, the more addicted I get. As I mentioned i've beaten it twice now, and will go a 3rd time on Insane Difficulty (Probably will get my rear end handed to me, but will be fun). By all means check out the multiplayer as well, I haven't had too much experience with it yet, but what I have seen is awesome!

Buy the game you won't regret it!

Fired this up a few weekends ago and had the following experience. . .

PROs:

- gorgeous graphics, made me feel like I was in the movie
- Daft Punk soundtrack from the Tron Legacy movie!!
- story arc that takes place at the time of the Purge and explains Quorra's story with Flynn.
- fun and doable combo attacks
- jumping, climbing and acrobatics like spider-man or a jedi!

CONs:
- finished the entire campaign story in 4hrs 10min on "casual" difficulty level
- more difficult story campaign modes means you take more damage more quickly and it's harder to kill the bad guys, so the fights simply last longer
- Have to play through the story arc on harder levels to get the xp bonus to unlock some of the other character abilities, but no additional levels or story line provided. It only makes you more uber to help fight the more difficult baddies
- some camera angles I couldn't control. Trying to make my character look up or down to see where I was supposed to go next was frustrating on about a half dozen parts. If it wasn't for YouTube gameplay videos, I'd be stuck forever on some levels
- the default PC keyboard layout requires you to use your pinky on the left shift key almost the entire time. Unless you're a guitar player with a condition pinky finger, this hurt after a while as it was unnatural. You could change the layout, but I found all my fingers were in use, so no other key mapping would have been a better choice.

OVERALL: I liked it most for the backstory.
It was fun to play a major part in the backstory. I watched Tron Legacy right after playing and the story line fit perfectly.
Worth playing through the campaigns at least once.