REVIEW : TRON EVOLUTION

DEVELOPED BY :

PROPAGANDA GAMES

GAMESTAR

SUPERVILLIAN STUDIOS

PUBLISHED BY : DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS

RELEASED IN : 2010

I had promised a review for Tron Evolution a few days back , so here it is. I just finished with it last night. Tron Evolution is another one of those games which come out as a tie-up with the movie it is based on. Just like I said while posting a review for X-Men Origins Wolverine, these games try to generate more interest for the movie, and are released alongside the movie itself. Although most of these games have a plot similar to the movie but with a more elaborate story-line, Tron Evolution is a prequel to the movie. It bridges the gap between the original 1981 movie Tron and the 2010 movie Tron Legacy. There have been some tron games released in the past as well like Discs of Tron, Tron 2.0 . I had played Tron 2.0 long time back but just casually and never completed the game. It had some good graphics though.. However, Tron Evolution is better than Tron 2.0 though some of my friends and some other critics think otherwise.

Graphics : 6.5/10 The graphics in this game was good, bit still honestly speaking, I somehow expected it to be better than what it was. Some characters appear a bit blurred during the gameplay. Apart from that, stiff animations make the cool moves of the playable character less spectacular than they actually should. The animation is neat though. However, the digital world created for the game is impressive enough. It's like a glowing futuristic metropolis with blue neon lights glowing here and there. The appealing appearance of the digital world you play in is one of the major attractions of this game. Camerawork is not impressive . The playable character is high on jerkiness and therefore, even though there are some cool combo moves, it becomes difficult to say what happened and you hardly enjoy the comb moves. The aesthetics are pretty good and cool and make the game look good.

Gameplay : 6/10 Honestly speaking, the multiplayer aspect of Tron Evolution boasts of much better gameplay than the original story mode. The most appealing, spectacular and iconic aspect in the entire Tron franchisee is the Light cycle race. Unfortunately, you don't get that thrill in Tron Evolution. The light cycle sequence comes up 4 times in the story mode and though the sequences are quite cool, it's nothing like what you see in the movies, or even the trailer of this game. You just need to race through the grid while escaping a particular area and avoid some exploding stuff. I enjoyed the light cycle sequence the first time but then, I plainly got bored every time it came up. The concept of creating a light path behind your cycle which could derezze your enemies was almost absent in the game. However, the multplayer aspect of Tron Evolution does some justice to the light cycle aspect. You get the feel of TRON. You can even have 10 player light cycle deathmatches which is extremely fun. Other than light cycle, the game requires a lot of running on walls, making high sprint long jumps etc. Basically, you can perform various gravity defying moves ( of course you can't have gravity inside the grid, it's a digital world inside a computer). However, a level doesn't have much more to offer than what the previous one offered. The combat is not boring. It's quite cool but it lacks variety. You have 4 different types of light discs with different attacking capabilities. The whole game is running on walls, jumping long distances, throwing around light discs and running around to refill energy and health . The worse thing is the light tank. You get to control this vehicle as well sometimes like the light cycle. It's horribly slow, difficult to control and boring. I groaned every time I came to a point I had to step into a light tank . Despite all this, the game play isn't bad. You won't hate it.

Story : 8/10 The story of Tron Evolution describes what happened in between the two movies. You play an unnamed Security monitor program, created by Flynn to bring about peace between ISO's and Basic programs. ISO are programs that appeared by themselves inside the grid without being programmed by any user. This meant the system was miraculously evolving. However, Clu , the Basic program created by Flynn takes these ISOs to be threat and decides to destroy all ISOs in the grid and rise to power. The whole game involves you , as the security monitor, trying to prevent Clu's rise to power. The story is quite engrossing and if you wanted to know what happened in between the two movies, this game answers it all. The movie Tron Legacy describes the appearance of ISOs and their disappearance as well, and that Flynn has been trapped inside the grid for years. This game describes how and why all this happened in details.

Music : 8.5/10 Music during gameplay is an important factor that can influence your view about the game. This game does boast of some real good music while you go move around the Sci-fi hi tech glowing world. The two tracks " DEREZZED" and "ENTER THE GRID" were composed exclusively for the game. These tracks play while you explore the digital world and the electronic music totally fit into the world of Tron.. The music aspect is quite good I have to say. The DEREZZD track particularly plays during the light cycle sequences.

Possibility of bugs : OK, I don't know if anyone else has noticed this or not but this game strangely has a fetish for bugs. I came across two or three bugs in the game which mainly dealt with strange behavior of enemies. There was a time when the boss of a level didn't move even a single bit or perform a single attack during the fight...I just kept bombarding him with my combo attacks and soon it got derezzed. There was another instance where an enemy was strangely floating in mid air. I don't know how the game got shipped with so many bugs. It has certainly gone against the game. I will dedicate a post excursively to various bugs I have discovered in various games and will elaborate on the bugs in Tron Evolution there. But however, you have to keep in mind that there may be more undiscovered bugs. (undiscovered by me I mean). I am just bringing to notice the ones I encountered.

Overall, this game won't be a waste of money. It does manage to keep you engaged. The limited multiplayer part will be more appealing to most of you. Some critics have called this game a cyberpunk "Prince of Persia". Well that's a good one and I won't deny that. But that shouldn't stop you from buying the game. But then again, don't expect a great gaming experience from Tron Evolution. It just manages to pass.

The Most Irritating Flaws in the GTA series.

The Grand Theft Auto series, published and developed by Rockstar has always been one of the most famous video game series ever. Having played almost all of the games in the series, even I can say that the GTA games are fabulous and can keep you glued to your screen for hours at a stretch. These games have become a cult classic with it's different open world or Sandbox style approach. These games have often also generated controversies for extreme violence , immoral activities you need to carry out in the games, crude references to a particular race ie racism, and also for including sexual content. However, the most astonishing fact was that almost all the games in the series shipped with some major bugs and glitches. Rockstar later fixed many of them in later versions but still, I don't know why the games were not tested well enough. Well some glitches in the games proved to be beneficial to the gamer since the gamer could take advantage of these to get into an area which would usually be unlocked until you complete a certain mission.. For example, in Vice City, you can use your high bike jumps or can use a boat beneath a water bridge ( the entrance to the bridge is blocked because you are not supposed to get to the other side of Vice City before a particular mission) to actually get to the other side of the bridge and thus the other side of the city before the game would allow you to . The developers must not have thought of this. However, bugs and glitches of course have their problems. Sometimes you tend to fail a mission for no fault of your's. In Vice City, when you do the ambulance mission where you have to move about the city to pick up patients and bring them back to the hospital within a limited time period, you normally fail the mission if you don't get the patients to the hospital on time or if you accidently kill a patient by crushing him under the ambulance while stopping near him to pick him up. However, it happened with me TWICE that I stopped near the patient, but another car which seemed to have lost control ran over and killed the patient before it could get to the ambulance. And I failed the mission. That is extremely irritating. Apart from that, there is a glitch in GTA3 during the mission called Uzi Money where in order to fulfill the mission you need to drive around a particular area and shoot and destroy a particular number of Purple Nines ( A particular car model) but sometimes a glitch does not allow any Purple Nines to spawn in that area. You get simply stuck in that mission . Of course there are ways to get around the glitch like loading an old save game or a glitch fix can be got too. Apart from that, in GTA Vice City there is an extremely funny and amusing bug which a close friend of mine encountered while we were playing Vice City together. It happens when you mount a Sanchez and instead of riding the bike, you run while on it, taking the bike with you. See for yourself. You won't get this one if you don't see it.

There are lots of other bugs and glitches throughout the whole series. In most of the GTA games, you often see sights like pedestrians running into a wall to and froth (dashing into the wall, falling back and then again running into the wall again repeatedly). There are bridges and walls through which you can see your bike wheels go through. This happened a lot of times with me. In GTA San Andreas, there is a bridge in the area called Los Flores. The sides of the bridge actually can easily be driven through. Thus the bridge appears not to be solid. Add to all this the unreal ism as in if you commit a crime like running someone over in front of a cop, the cops will be after you but if another car does the same right under the nose of a cop, they don't even look twice.

Let me narrate another extremely irritating experience of mine while playing GTA4. There is this mission (Escuela of the streets) where you are supposed to trail a car without the driver noticing that you are. And you can't even get too close, or else he gets spooked up and you fail the mission. You need a maintain a distance between your car and his car. It so happened that there was some sort of a traffic jam or something, the car I was trailing got blocked by another car which didn't move at all. I waited for more than 20 minutes but nothing budged. I tried to move forward and as soon as I came a little close, I failed the mission. I started from the previous savegame and AGAIN it was the same thing. The car got stuck, I couldn't trail the car anymore and I was stranded. I had to load from a different savegame to get around this problem. These sort of things are in PLENTY in the entire GTA series. I just pointed out the ones I encountered, there are many more you can find if you surf the web. I wonder why Rockstar doesn't test the games well. Perhaps it's because they know that they have already created quite a brand with GTA and their games will sell no matter what. But a game without such flaws would be better all the same.

Movie Review : TRON LEGACY

Ok folks, it's review time again. This would be my first movie review. I had wanted to do this since a long time but there were no movies coming out in recent times for which I'd take the trouble of posting a review. I finally decided to go on with Disney's Tron Legacy which released last month.

They say that as you grow or expand your franchisee, you get better but I seriously doubt whether this concept is applicable when we're talking about a movie franchisee. I say so because I've noticed that most sequels of a great movie turn out to be crap. Of course there are exceptions. Some sequels really surpassed the original ( Terminator 2, Dark Knight and some more) but in most cases sequels lack the charm that an original movie had. And so, it's hardly surprising that Tron: Legacy falls into this category.

Tron: Legacy is the second installation in the Tron series (and hopefully the last), starring Garett Hedlund , Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde and Micheal Sheen among others and directed by first time director Joseph Kosisnsky. I don't know why the sequel was so late (Tron released way back in 1982). This movie, at all if anything, is a visual effects feast. In fact the movie relies only upon superb special effects and CGI. And to be honest, that's all the movie has to offer. The story is all hotch potch and confusing. The ones who have not seen the previous Tron movie will have a hell of a time trying to understand what's going on. And most people didn't even know there was a Tron movie that released in 1982.

And for some strange reason, Tron, the titular character on whom the series is based appears for only about 10 minutes in the film. He is not even a significant character. The plot is somewhat similiar to the original. The protaganist( this time the son of Kevin Flynn, the originl 1982 protagonist) is digitized into a computer mainframe. Yes, he is actually inside the digital world of a computer where computer programs look like humans and then there are battles and fights between humans ( called users in the movie) and programs,between good programs and bad programs and all ultra high sci-fi stuff.. One of those programs is Tron..who appeared in the 1982 version as the hero...turns villain in this one......then turns good again in the climax... and then dies(oops.. sorry.. I mean gets deleted)...and he manages to do all that by appearing only for 10 minutes in the whole movie..how sick is that ..Gosh...The story sure does suck....I wouldn't recommend this movie to people who want an interesting and engaging storyline.

But hey.......doesn't the story ring a bell ? Where have we heard that before ? Yeah.. THE MATRIX SERIES... The concept of getting transported into a computer digital network with programs walking all around you...It was there in the Matrix movies..but the concept had been treated well...But this movie does not come anywhere as close to the matrix series. The well defined storyline....the extreme style and suspense......twists and turns.....everything that made the matrix movies do well, none of them are visible in Tron Legacy. As said, the only thing that the movie can boast of is fantastic special effects. It is like the movie had been made just as an excuse for showing us some real good effects. The effects are without doubt simply awesome and will totally leave you spellbound. Especially the bike racing scene inside the digital world. And it's all the more better if seen in 3D. The digital world that was created is really worth appreciation. But then these scenes without an interesting plot has no meaning.

Another aspect that i didn't like was the wastage of Micheal Sheen's character. I like Micheal Sheen a lot and he is a damn good actor.I felt his character as that of an insane maniacal computer program who also appears for about 15 minutes and then dies( sorry again...I mean gets deleted) was a total waste. He is too dignified for that role and it could have been done by anyone. Actually his character could have been done without as well as it adds nothing to the already rotten storyline.

I would round up and say the first Tron was much better than this one. People say this one is better due to better CGI but then, back in 1982 the CGI shown was much advanced for it's time. People are forgetting the time periods. The effects can't be compared. See Tron: Legacy only if you are simply craving for some dazzling visual effects. If you want anything else, it's better to see any other good Sci-Fi movie.

MY FINAL RATING : 4.5/10

Checkout the movue trailer

There has been a game released alongside the release of the movie, titled Tron Evolution developed by Gamestar and published by Disney Interactive studio. The gameplay is supposed to from a storyline that is occuring between the two movies. Though I didn't like Tron Legacy, the trailer of the game boasts of some great graphics and gameplay. I am sure to lay my hands on this one. And as soon as I finish playing it, I'll be posting a review for it. Just keep waiting guys. Checkout the game trailer.