Tron: Evolution looks to be a cut above the usual movie tie-in dross, and it completely nails that seductive retro-futuristic ambience

• Steve Boxer
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 August 2010

Gamescom isn’t particularly renowned for its big, blockbusting announcements – those tend to be made a few months earlier in Los Angeles at E3. And this Gamescom hasn’t bucked that trend.

But the show really hits the spot when gamespresented as heavily choreographed demos at E3 have come on sufficiently that by mid-August, their developers feel sufficiently confident to let journalists get their sweaty paws on them. Multitudes of sins can be hidden by developers playing their own games and, anyway, the way a game feels to play can be vastly more important than its graphics and the like. We found Disney Interactive’s Tron: Evolution in a somewhat obscure part of the show – the Sony stand. The reason is that it was running in stereoscopic 3D and Sony, of course, is the greatest of all 3D evangelists (which may not be unconnected to the fact that it makes 3D TVs). Tron: Evolution is certainly high-tech: as well as running in 3D, its light-cycle element also works with a Move controller, which you hold as if it were a pair of handlebars – although we used a conventional controller.

Before we got stuck in, Darren Hedges – game director at Tron: Evolution’s developer, Propaganda – supplied the back story. First up (cue sighs of relief) Tron: Evolution isn’t a game-of-the-film. The name gives it away: December’s cinema reboot of the 1982 classic will be called Tron: Legacy. Hedges explained: “Tron; Evolution is a prequel to Tron: Legacy. It concentrates on Isos, sentient programs that don’t belong to any particular user.” This, of course, is a clever device which lets you play as something more or less indistinguishable from one of the film’s two human protagonists (only two humans are allowed inside the world at any time), yet which technically isn’t human.

The game explores how the Isos came into being, which places it chronologically somewhere between the two films, and the one you play is called Anon. Basically, you control a typical-looking Tron character, who quests through the game world either at the wheel of a light-cycle or on foot.

The first level, apparently picked from a point roughly in the middle of the game, was a light-cycle one, and it will definitely give fans of the film a warm glow – it has all that unique Tron atmosphere, and looks great, particularly in 3D. You’re essentially racing to make it to the end of a long Tron roadscape, punctuated by jumps, obstacles, bombs which eat away at the road-surface and, of course, other light-cycles that paint orange lines on the landscape which you must avoid. It’s pretty forgiving insofar as when you die, you respawn at the last checkpoint (and there are plenty of those). The controls are typical right trigger for accelerate and left for brake; brake while turning and you go into a power-slide. You can also throw discs in front of you. While the gameplay in this segment wasn’t particularly original, it was fast-paced and enjoyable. We had to have a few goes at the more difficult bits of obstacle-avoidance, but it has been clearly pitched at a mass audience, so is pretty forgiving.

Anon gets off his bike

The second level we played, in which Anon dismounted from his bike and indulged in some free-running action and combat, was more innovative. Taking its cue from Assassin’s Creed, the control system encourages you to hold down the right bumper, which makes Anon dash, but also means he automatically launches into free-running manoeuvres when you point him at designated surfaces (all of which are carefully signposted with marker discs). Thus, he can auto-jump, although there is a jump button as well, wall-run and haul himself to orange markers, grapple-style, with an orange disk (which is triggered by pressing one of the buttons).

He also encounters enemies, and luckily has a number of attacks – namely throwing a disc, using it as a melee weapon, or charging it up and bringing it down on an enemy to cause more damage. Pressing the left bumper puts him in defensive mode. Late on in the level, we encountered some more challenging enemies which threw discs at us, so we had to defend and perform a button-press at the time of impact, to send the discs winging back from whence they came. Anon can also chain attacks, generating special moves.

Overall, the signs are pretty good for Tron: Evolution, and you can certainly expect it to be a cut above the usual movie tie-in dross. It keeps things simple – nobody is going to struggle to understand what they need to do when playing it, and you wouldn’t expect it to win a hatful of awards. But it completely nails that seductive retro-futuristic Tron ambience, and that should make it irresistible to those who idolise the film. It might even come out before Tron: Legacy, too – the film is scheduled for December, and Propaganda says the game could arrive any time between mid-November and early December (on PS3, Xbox360 and PC). Worth checking out.

link to original post at guardian.co.uk