This is one of those games that reviewers either love or find kind of mediocre; i.e., they either find it very refreshing or just another tired first-person shooter (FPS). I'm not sure what that means, but for my part I fall squarely into the former category; i.e., I think it's a great game because I've had a blast playing it. That's not to say that it's perfect, mind you, only that it's very good. Read on to find out if it's your cup of tea as well.
Serious coolness! The visuals in Tron 2.0 are marvelous. I absolutely love the wild look of everything in the game. Maybe it's because I've played so many "realistic" FPS games (e.g., Ghost Recon, Soldier of Fortune 2, Raven Shield, etc.) that a game set within the neon-nightmare world inside the computer is wholly and radically refreshing. That was one of the big reasons I enjoyed Sacrifice so much; i.e., because it provided a really unfamiliar and interesting world for me to experience. Tron 2.0 is such a departure from anything else I've played that its look alone really sucks me into the game.
I should probably confess, of course, that I really liked the movie when it first came out. It was amazing at the time, because it featured the most cutting-edge computer-generated graphics ever seen in a motion picture. Sure, the story was kind of weird, but the visuals of the film and its timeliness, in terms of the computing revolution, were absolutely spot-on. It was one of several films that set my imagination to flights of fancy, and it probably played a role in augmenting my already keen interest in software and gaming.
Having said that, the game is a wonderful follow-up to the film. Visually, this game absolutely nails the Tron universe. The game is as perfect as I think it could be, in terms of eye candy, given the current state of the art. The environments are fabulous, the animation is very good, the textures are quite detailed, the special effects are impressive, and the much-mentioned glow effect is perfect. In short, the game's visuals pay homage to the original film and manage even to outdo it in several respects.
It is also worth mentioning that the game runs very smoothly. Perhaps this is a welcome side effect of the often-sparse environments, but the framerate stays more than playable at relatively high resolutions with special features enabled. With my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, for example, I can play the game at 1280 x 960 x 32 bpp with 8x anisotropic filtering and 4x anti-aliasing enabled and still have a smooth framerate. That's pretty impressive for as pretty as the game is.
My only complaint with the visuals is one that arises because of the game's artistic vision. The world of Tron 2.0 is a world with lots of straight lines; it's also a world that features very high contrast ratios, juxtaposing absolute blackness with neon bright at virtually every turn. The result is that this game shows the "jaggies" to a higher degree than most other games. True, this can be fixed for the most part by running at ridiculously high resolutions with anti-aliasing enabled, but not everybody has the hardware to do that.
If your system isn't beefy enough to enable at least 4x anti-aliasing, then it had better be able to run at 1280 x 1024 x 32 bpp or higher; otherwise, you are going to be seeing a lot of "jaggies" crawling around. Me, I suggest upgrading, for this game looks positively amazing if you've got the right hardware (grin). Tron 2.0 is one of the first games to make great use of DirectX 9.x (DX9) shaders, so having a DX9 card is best.
The audio is almost as good as the video. The sound effects are all very appropriate for the subject matter and are well done. The music is a beautiful reprise and extension of Wendy Carlos' soundtrack for the original film. The voice acting is generally quite good, and the processing of the voices fits the whole milieu perfectly. Heck, even the sounds for the interface and other minor bits here and there are nicely done.
My one substantive gripe with the audio is that the music still seems a bit flat, and perhaps that's because it relies so heavily upon synthesizers. I often find it the case that synth-only music seems kind of flat, thin, or lacking. As much as I like Wendy Carlos' classic "Switched on Bach" album, for example, I still can't listen to it for that long because it eventually sounds a bit "light". The same is true of the Tron 2.0 soundtrack. Honestly, I don't see how the developers could have done any better, for the synth-heavy soundtrack really fits the game as a whole. I suggest my reader take this as a stylistic gripe and ignore it for the most part, unless he too is terribly fussy about audio.
I should also admit that the game's music gets better as the player moves through the game. The audio tracks in some of the later levels, particularly those that feature a great deal of viral corruption, are positively disturbing in their intensity. It's a pity that not all of the tracks are that engaging, but that's probably because the music is nicely consistent in applying an appropriate theme for each level. It is simply the case that not every level has the same kind of wild intensity as some of the later levels in the game, and thus the music tends to be a bit flat on such "lesser" levels by comparison.
The voice acting is also a bit weak at times. I noticed it most often with Jet, but I occasionally found various other characters' lines unbelievable as well. Still, this is a very minor gripe for a project with generally high-quality audio.
The game's interface is both functional and interesting. The menu structure is about as straightforward as any other FPS game these days; this is a well-plumbed genre, and it's pretty clear how things ought to work. The one significant improvement in this regard is the option to continue the last game saved. Tron 2.0 isn't the only FPS game of late to provide such a feature, but it's a very welcome one in my book. I really like being able to fire up the game and select the option to continue my last game without fussing around.
The key mapping is pretty much what one would expect, and I was surprised to find that the default keymap is really quite good. Normally, I have to go in and re-map crouching to my preferred key (viz., Ctrl) and make other minor changes. The default keymap supplied with the game is good enough that I didn't have to do so. Maybe the whole feel of the game is so different that I could easily acclimate to it? Whatever the case, the keyboard portion of the interface works well.
Of particular note is the way Tron 2.0 handles "inventory". It's not really an inventory in the same sense as in a typical role-playing game (RPG), but it bears similar characteristics. The player is provided with an interesting "wheel of subroutines", which he can arrange as he wishes. The interface for assigning different subroutines to memory locations, disinfecting them, porting them, etc., seems nicely thought out. It took me a couple of tries to figure it out, but once I got it I found it very effective. It would be nice if it were a little more difficult to delete a subroutine permanently—a single right click in the wrong place suffices—but a little care prevents such accidents.
Tron 2.0 is a serious mishmash of different game mechanics. And although none of its individual elements are revolutionary, they all come together in a pretty compelling way. Yes, other FPS games have had an inventory system; yes, other FPS games have let the player customize the attributes of the main character; yes, other FPS games have featured weapons that can be upgraded or modified. But few FPS games do it all as well as Tron 2.0 does.
All the FPS basics are here. The player can walk, run, jump, crouch, fire, and even block enemy fire. But the inventory system for managing software subroutines forces the player to make interesting choices without the penalties so many other games impose (e.g., Deus Ex); i.e., if the player made a mistake in configuring his software, he can always change it around. I would have preferred being able to save and load various combinations on the fly without using the interface in the heat of battle, but I can understand how the memory limitations imposed by the various areas could make that a difficult feature to implement.
As with virtually every other FPS game made to date, Tron 2.0 also has crates full of goodies. Yet I think it greatly improves upon the typical crate mechanism in two significant ways. First, it doesn't force the player to run around stupidly whacking every crate in sight. Because the relevant containers are transparent, it's obvious at a glance which "crates" are worth examining. And second, Tron 2.0 makes something of a game out of accessing the contents of said containers. Whereas every other FPS game has the player whack the crate and pick up the goodies, each crate may have a set of permissions required to access it. What's more, each of the items available for download has a set energy cost, takes a certain amount of time to retrieve, and might even be corrupt (in the case of subroutines).
Yes, it can sometimes be annoying to take the time to download stuff, but I find the whole "crate" mechanic quite pleasant. There are a few situations, for example, when the player can sneak out of hiding just long enough to snag that one permission or subroutine he really wants before the patrolling guards see him. In my view, it's a pity that stealthy gameplay really isn't more of an option, as I'll mention later, but I did manage to make it work on a few occasions. I know other reviewers have said that Tron 2.0 is just a futuristic sheen on top of a so-so FPS game, but I don't think they've paid close enough attention.
My one big complaint with the game mechanics is the degree to which some of the character attributes really don't matter. It was a great moment when I "surged" (i.e., maxed out) Jet's health and energy stats, but weapon efficiency, transfer rate, and processor really don't matter much. Respectively, those lower the amount of base energy required for the weapons, the amount of time it takes to download data, and the amount of time it takes to run procedurals (special, always-available subroutines used for defragmenting, disinfecting, or porting). Weapon efficiency is at least marginally useful, but after maxing out Jet's energy it's not all that important. I rarely found myself wanting energy.
Transfer rate and processor are so close to useless, however, that it's hard to grant them any value. Both of them could have been much better utilized, I think, if the developers had simply done a few things differently. If stealth were more often a viable avenue for gameplay, then the transfer rate could be terribly important. After all, if you've got but a scant few seconds to download an important permission before the enemy detects you, then speed is of the essence.
Similarly, the processor stat could have been far more important if the various procedurals were more automated. I might have cared about the rate at which my virus-corrupted subroutines were being disinfected, for example, if the process didn't require me to hit F1 and pause the game completely to micromanage it. As it was, I sometimes had to reconfigure Jet's memory during intense combat, which wasn't much fun because of the degree to which it breaks up the action. Even when I tried I couldn't typically keep up with the corruption, but additional speed in disinfecting wasn't the problem; my willingness to halt the action and fuss around with subroutines was.
The story is pretty darned good. It isn't Shakespeare, mind you, and it probably wouldn't provide the basis for a viable film sequel. But it's more than good enough for a game. Something mysterious is going on, and Jet has to find out what it is, both for the sake of his father's safety and the company's future. The email messages scattered throughout the various levels provide neat little bits of back-story, and many of them are pretty funny for those who have seen the original film.
What Jet discovers is that Thorne, a user gone mad through an imperfect digitization process, is responsible for spreading corruption throughout the systems he travels. I won't give away the ending, but the story is more than compelling enough to keep the player going. I know I was interested in reading every email message that I found, in seeing every bit of the world that I could see. Tron 2.0 has a story that does exactly what it should do, and that's what matters.
Given what I've said already it might be hard to believe, but content is nevertheless where the game shines most brightly. There is a lot of really great stuff in this game, from the wealth of interesting environments and puzzles to the weapons and subroutines. I've read a few reviews of the game which claim that the weapons are dull, that the disc and its variants are really the only weapons one will end up using. This makes me want to ask the obvious question: did those people play the same game I played?!
Seriously, I found all of the weapons to be both useful and fun. The basic disc is surely a bread and butter weapon, but it grows all the more deadly and interesting when sequenced, and I positively love the cluster variant which can be remotely detonated in mid flight. The basic rod primitive was great for sneaking up and quietly eliminating bad guys, its suffusion variant was useful for close-range takedowns, and the LOL variant was the coolest sniper rifle I think I've ever used. I sometimes switched to that thing just to watch the animation unfold!
All of the ball and mesh variants were just as fun, and even more deadly. I never really got very good at hurling the basic ball, but once I got the ball launcher and drunken dims variants, well, I was slaughtering the bad guys with single throws most of the time. Those primitives just look neat, and they're a blast (no pun intended) to use. Make no mistake: the weapons (a.k.a. primitives) of Tron 2.0 comprise one beefy and seriously fun arsenal.
Arguably, the coolest element of the game is its environments. Some of them were so beautiful, alive, and interesting that they literally made my jaw drop (e.g., the city), while others were so nasty and spooky looking that I crept cautiously around every corner because of their horrific ambiance (e.g., the security server). Truly, the developers deserve some kind of award for doing so much with the environments. Heck, some of the environments served as stages for a slew of working jokes that a computer geek like me couldn't help but love. Perhaps the best testimony I can give is to say that I never got tired of exploring and looking around, and that says a lot about the game.
It also bears mentioning that the game's bestiary of enemies is both satisfying and nicely paced. True, there aren't exactly a plethora of different bad guys to face, but the different variants thereof make them interesting enough that I didn't mind a bit. Better still, they show up at exactly the right pace. Just as I was getting bored of fighting ICPs and Finders, I found myself on the game grid racing for my life. After such a pleasant interlude, I was ready to tangle with more ICPs and was all the happier for the introduction of z-Lots. The Seekers, Rector Scripts, DataWraiths, and other enemies introduced later came perfectly placed in the flow of the game to spice things up. The developers have done a great job of pacing the game in my view.
And let's be clear: there's a lot of game to pace. Single-player games of late have taken a nasty turn for the short. I finished games like Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault far, far too quickly to get my money's worth. Call me greedy, but when I'm shelling out a good $30 - $40 for a video game, I expect more than a handful of hours of play. Tron 2.0 is a great value in terms of its length. I finished the game the first time after about 35 - 40 hours of play. Granted, I was moving at a relatively moderate pace, making sure I had gotten the most out of the various levels, weapons, etc., but there was rarely a dull moment in all that time. I know this much: I got my money's worth from this game in terms of its size, especially because I know I'll be playing through it at least once more.
I perceive but two obvious flaws in the content department: (1) a lack of gameplay approaches, and (2) relatively stale AI. Regarding the former, I never thought I would be calling for more stealth-based gameplay, but Tron 2.0 really could be improved by more opportunities for it. The inclusion of the "fuzzy signature" subroutine, which masks the player's footsteps, would really have been better if it also masked the player's visual signature as well. As it was, it was helpful for sneaking up on opponents, but that rarely came in handy. I loved the few occasions on which I was able to make stealth work; it's very satisfying to sneak up on some big, tough bad guy and watch him short-circuit thanks to the rod primitive. Perhaps if said bad guys couldn't see you coming from a mile away, stealthy gameplay would have been more viable.
This dovetails nicely with the limitations of the AI, however, for it is quite generic. Yes, some of the bad guys shout some funny and clever one-liners (e.g., "Stop executing escape subroutine!"), but for the most part their "intelligence" is limited to running toward the player and firing. The enemies generally look quite startling and intimidating, but none of them win any awards for creativity. The most clever thing I saw an enemy do was run for the security alarm, and that's not exactly novel.
A less obvious flaw is that the game has some odd crashes. Maybe this is just a problem with my system, but I have at least one crash that is 100% repeatable. All I need to do to reproduce it is select "Multiplayer" from the main menu, go into player setup, choose a white ICP model, and click the back button. The game doesn't merely crash; it actually reboots Windows XP completely! That's nasty. Thus far, I've been stuck with the basic blue Jet model because I can't seem to select anything else without rebooting my computer. That's not good. The game has also crashed back to the desktop twice, despite my running the patched version (v1.1 at the time of this writing). Overall, it's pretty stable, but it seems like a couple of nasty bugs remain.
Up to this point, I've heaped praise on Tron 2.0, and up to this point it has been well deserved. The multi-player aspect of the game is what prevents it from being an instant must-buy, for the multi-player aspect sucks rocks, pure and simple. First of all, it comes in a mere two flavors: disc arena and light-cycle racing. You remember all those fabulous weapons I praised in the single-player game? All but the most basic disc are completely missing from multi-player! Worse, only the disc arena mode can be played over the Internet; light-cycle racing works only on a LAN. That's great, I suppose, if you happen to live in a game-happy fraternity, or something like that, but it sucks for the average gamer.
To be blunt, the disc arena is about as lame as it can get, and I don't say that lightly. Though there are several maps on which to play, the basic gist is just as awful each time around. Either you whack your opponent with your disc, while trying to avoid his, or you drop the floor out from under him by hitting various targets that appear suspended in mid-air, before he does it to you. As humorist Dave Barry might say, I am not making this up. The degree to which this provides completely and utterly lame gameplay provides a perfect explanation for why there are a whopping dozen servers on-line right now at the time of this writing. Disc arena is unique as games go, but trying to whack a guy with a frisbee is mighty boring.
I wish I could at least try the multi-player light-cycle racing. I wasn't all that thrilled with it in the game, though it did provide an interesting diversion and a beautiful nod to the original film, but it might be a lot more fun against human opponents. Unfortunately, I'll never know. It's not like I have a LAN anywhere on which my friends and I can play. In short summary, the multi-player aspect of Tron 2.0 is the most useless multi-player aspect I've seen provided by any video game, and that's saying a lot. The developers could have saved themselves a lot of time and not even bothered to include it. My very great hope is that a subsequent patch, mod, or game sequel will provide some juicy deathmatch at least, but I'm not holding my breath.
| NB: | As hard as it is for me to believe, the developers came through! The new Tron 2.0 multi-player update adds deathmatch and team deathmatch modes, both of which are a lot of fun. In my estimation, the players move a bit too fast—have you ever tried hitting a rabbit on crack running at full speed with a disc?—and there aren't more than a handful or two of servers on-line right now, but the new multi-player mode is otherwise a lot of fun! Way to go, developers! |
At the end of the day, the question folks probably want answered is this: is Tron 2.0 a must-buy game or not? Unfortunately, the answer isn't entirely clear. On the one hand, if you're the kind of player for whom single-player gaming is merely a warmup for the real action, then avoid Tron 2.0 like the plague; it just won't be any fun for you. I suppose maybe somebody out there finds trying to hit an opponent with a frisbee interesting, but I don't. If that frisbee were but one of the wonderful batch of weapons from the single-player experience, and if the whole thing involved futuristic deathmatch, capture-the-flag, or some other typical game mode, then the multi-player aspect would be great! But Tron 2.0 is pretty much limited to throwing frisbees or racing cycles, though only on a LAN, neither of which work for me.
On the other hand, if you're the kind of player who is looking for a good single-player FPS experience with some refreshing twists, then Tron 2.0 is indeed a must-buy. But beware: this is not a game that redefines the FPS genre, not at all. Most of its cleverness and sense of refreshing play come from providing the player with such a radically beautiful and interesting world to explore, a world that is very clearly distinct from most games clogging the market these days (e.g., semi-realistic squad-based games in a World War II setting). If you're the kind of player who isn't satisfied without a lot of innovation, then even the single-player aspect will fall flat.
For my gaming dollar, Tron 2.0 was a great buy. I love a good single-player game, and that's exactly what it provides. I'm not so spoiled that every game has to be radically innovative in its gameplay. It was more than enough for me that Tron 2.0 took me inside the computer to a phenomenally beautiful and interesting world. Sure, permissions were a lot like keys and the bad guys were pretty stupid, but I still had a heck of a good time, and that's the best thing I can say about a video game.
10/07/2003