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The imaginative, sleek Tron 2.0 arrives on Xbox with a whole lot of multiplayer. The game was released over a year ago on the PC, and has been available on Xbox for a couple of weeks now. On the PC, it was praised for its innovative visuals, which are still ever-present, but overall, the game isn’t much more than an above average shooter on a console that dominates the genre.
In the game, you take the role of Jet Bradley who is digitized into the company’s mainframe after his father, who works at the same company, by his father’s AI ma3a to investigate what is going on. You’ll quickly learn that a virus was unleashed by a rival company and will need to make things right.
The game is a pretty standard first person shooter, so you’ll find all of the expected weapons, power-ups, keys, and chests. These are all given colorful names, particularly the weapons, but the others are named accordingly to the technical environment so you’ll find that the keys are called permission sets, and the treasure chests are called archive bins. Combat is pretty solid, although the weapons don’t have that expected precision for a first-person shooter. This may be a relic of porting the game from the mouse-focused PC version, but is a tad annoying nonetheless.
The also includes some light cycle action, like was made famous in the film. Basically, this is a much-prettier version of the game of snake. As you move around in the light cycle, you’ll leave a trail, which you must force your opponents to hit. You’ll find some power-ups like turbos but for the most part the action is a bit repetitive. It is fun for a while but can get old in long spurts.
The single-player is made a touch more interesting by the inclusion of role-playing type leveling-up. The character increases transitionally, from build points earned in the missions. You can increase specific aspects like weapon accuracy and energy, among others. Moreover, the character can earn power-ups which make him more efficient at a certain task. There is a limited amount of space, which can be increased, so you’ll need to pick these power-ups carefully. They get stronger as the game progresses, and also, they can be optimized to take up less space.
The game’s multiplayer mode is quite in-depth. The game includes 10 maps and a number of different modes. The expected deathmatch, team deatchmatch, and light cycle combat are found, as is the capture-the-objective-point data capture mode. There is also a mode called override that combines the standard first-person shooter and light cycle modes. Online includes 16 players on Xbox Live, and up to four players can connect per Xbox.
Visually, the game is certainly unique. While not exactly the most detailed as the game is pretty much void of too much texture use, but there are many bright colors and the game accurately recreates the look of the movie, only better thanks to the more detailed character models. The light cycle models are also excellent.
The game’s audio is very solid. The background music fits with the rest of the game. The sound effects are equally impressive and atmospheric. Lastly, the voice acting is above average given the star power that the game holds. The dialogue isn’t all that hot, but extremely solid nonetheless.
As I stated when I began, Tron 2.0: Killer App is an above average shooter. The game is actually good and includes a wealth of multiplayer options. That said, the Xbox has a number of first person shooters already, and Tron 2.0 doesn’t do much to differentiate itself other than the light RPG elements and visual style. If you were looking for another shooter (and already have Halo 2), Tron 2.0 wouldn’t hurt but there are better buys. -- Adam Nunez, PGNx Media
---- Nov 17, 2004
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