by:	November 23, 2004

Tron 2.0 is one of those games you want to enjoy as much as possible. Despite it’s current visuals, the corky neon and black look of the movie has stayed intact with this game. TRON 2.0: Killer App digitizes players inside the world of a war-ravaged computer system on the verge of collapse from a seemingly unstoppable army of corrupt programs lead by the evil "user" Thorne. As Thorne's relentless army grows, it infects helpless programs, converting them into savage digital mercenaries aimed at spreading viral agents throughout the system. The security forces in the system struggle to quarantine the corruption, but they are hopelessly outnumbered by the mounting army of infected programs. Only a human "user" inside the computer world can even the odds. Armed with an arsenal of powerful digital weapons, players face off in epic, action-packed warfare along side security forces and against legions of horribly mutated programs as you fight to stop the corruption from spreading and bringing down computer systems worldwide. As the protagonist Jet Bradley, the son of the original Alan Bradley from the Tron movie, you are set into the computer world after your father mysteriously disappears.

In the game you are going through the computer world battling viral enemies, and collecting points to level yourself up. As you collect points you may be able to access certain items, and overall you can build yourself up with these items you receive. You may also be able to increase certain stats such as health. As you build yourself up you will also find you have new abilities and ways to encounter each situation, instead of just running and gunning (or in this case usually running and discing). You will also have a lot of puzzles to figure out in Tron 2.0 somewhat similar to Nintendo GameCube’s Metroid Prime if you ever played those, but a lot of them require you to jump. If you are not leveled up enough to jump good it can become difficult, and you may fall down a dark trench to your doom many times. The combat in Tron 2.0 is still pretty basic, and the guns you have while have cool names, don’t normally do much in the way of cool other than frag the guy in front of you. The coolest aspect in the title is also takes up the least amount of time, and that is light cycling. With light cycling you guide your “digitized motorcycle” through a huge plain and leave a light trail behind you, at the same time another is trying to make you crash into his light trail. You have to try and get him to crash into your light trail first and it makes for an extremely interesting aspect of the game. Tron 2.0 also has Xbox Live 3.0 play, with plenty of modes. Most of these modes are just fancy names for modes you could already find in other first-person shooters though but you will find them to be fairly slow moving. When you play, the character you are is basically as slow as you were when you first started playing the main mission in the game, making for slower combat than any other FPS on Xbox. The strange thing about the multiplayer of Tron 2.0 is, unlike the single player misson levels, these levels are pretty wide and easy to see oncoming enemies. The variety isn’t there either, and the multiplayer is best just left alone.

If one thing in Tron 2.0 keeps it from being fun, it would have to be the load times. When I first put the game in the Xbox I waited fifteen minutes and turned it off thinking the game was buggy. I then tried again, and let it load. While it was loading I washed the dishes in the sink, bought a pack of cigarettes, and went to the bathroom—no I’m serious. When I came back I had a brief five-minute introduction to set up the story then another loading screen! After that there was the sub-introduction to the game showing the credits of the game and then another loading screen! The game is filled with these loading screens. You will be in action for ten to twenty minutes and then abruptly be launched into another loading screen disrupting the flow of the gameplay.

Visually Tron 2.0 represents the feel of the movie extremely well. The environments have that Tetris block feel to them that the movie had, and each is lined with an eerie neon glow. Later on in the game you encounter some brighter levels, but they all still seem to have the same plain feel. Most of the levels are also not that big, and you basically guide your character through a bunch of corridors, encountering “Corrupted” areas every so often were there is green molten like cracks in the environments. The helper character models themselves also have that grey skin look that they had in the original Tron movies, with the brightly colored kneepads and helmets. Many of the new characters, especially the enemies are more inventive, bright, and scarier. It is peculiar that the developer took their liberties with the new characters but kept everything else pretty much the same. Twenty years ago this visual presentation was amazing, and like computers from twenty years though, this game should have evolved visually as well. One thing however that stayed intact which still marvels is the light cycles, and it is always fun to make light trails and foil your enemies.

The developers of Tron 2.0 treat the fans of the original movie with voice actors who were actually in the original Tron movie. It is admirable that they did this, but a lot of it is convoluted by their digitization often making it hard or annoying to listen to them. Still you will hear a lot of voices that, a fan of the movie will immediately recognize, and bring a lot of excitement to them. A new addition to the voice acting is Rebecca Romijin-Stamos, and the soundtrack to the game includes a song from Breaking Benjamin called “We Are Not Alone”. You might also recognize the band from their work on the Halo 2 soundtrack. The music in the game is overall pretty average. It is a lot of techno music mixed with some bleeps and bloops, just stuff you would pretty much expect. The sounds in the game are produced in the likeness of the sounds in the original movie, but there isn’t a whole lot of variety. It still serves the game well though, even if they are all on the same synthesized track.

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Overall nothing about Tron 2.0 Killer App feels very new. The leveling up with build points is interesting, but the weapons, enemies, environments and overall premise of the game isn’t enough to encourage you to finish it. The atrocious load times alone are enough to keep many gamers away. If you are a fan of the movies and must have anything and all that has to do with Tron 2.0, you probably already own the PC version so just rent this one to check out some of the new features in the Xbox version. Otherwise, your probably better off picking up the controller and picking up were you left in Halo 2.

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