Greetings, Programs!

I got into the cult of Tron rather late, not seeing the ground-breaking (and still extremely entertaining) 1982 film until the mid-90s, and therefore never having much interest in the arcade game. All that changed with the release of the 20^th Anniversary DVD. As a recent devotee of the film that started it all, I relished with great anticipation the arrival of Tron 2.0, a PC game set in the Tron universe 20 years after the film’s events.

I was extremely excited, and although I tried to temper that excitement with caution to avoid potential disappointment, all signs pointed to a great game. Developed by Monolith Entertainment, the geniuses behind the LithTech engine and award-winning games No One Lives Forever and its sequel, and with the publishing clout of Disney behind it, all signs pointed to Tron 2.0 being a rollicking good game. Thankfully, all signs proved good indicators.

The game’s art direction (a subject I take very seriously) is impeccable. From sounds to music (done by Wendy Carlos, who penned the film’s score back in the day) to level design, Tron 2.0 is superior. The voice acting of Jason Cottle (Jet Bradley), Bruce Boxleitner (reprising his role as Alan Bradley), and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (as the businesslike Mercury) proves that good actors can make a game more enjoyable than most movies. The writing is also high quality, with plenty of in-jokes for fans of the film, and a simple enough plot to welcome newcomers.

As for the plot, it goes a little something like this: Alan Bradley, creator of the original Tron program, works for fCon now and is attempting to reduplicate the process by which people can be digitized into the computer realm. You are Jet Bradley, Alan’s young son, also a talented programmer but definitely more of a slacker. Your father is abducted, and you are accidentally digitized. Assisted by an AI named Ma3a and a byte (who’s insulted when you call him a bit), you learn to handle your data disc and light cycle, and attempt to unravel the mystery of what happened to your father. Along the way you visit the Internet, a legacy PC with less RAM than a wristwatch, and a virus-infected server. You also battle other “programs” on the game grid, with a little help from another program, Mercury.

Ah, the graphics of Tron 2.0. I could wax rhapsodic about the graphics for a long time, but I’ll spare you the sermon. Suffice to say that this game’s graphics succeed by not doing what other game’s graphics try to do, i.e., look realistic. There is no attempt at reflective surfaces, no mottled stone or fog effects or shadows, because you spend most of the game wandering the digital world. Yes, there are pools of liquid energy which demonstrate the programmers’ prowess at such effects, but the glory of Tron 2.0 is that it looks so amazing without being computer-punishing. I could run the game at super high levels of detail without taking any hits in performance. It’s difficult to describe the graphics in more glowing terms than to say I was constantly annoyed by ICP programs (trying to clear me from the server because I’d been blamed for the spread of the virus) because I wanted to stand around looking at the level. The artists and level designers of Tron 2.0 have produced some of the best work I’ve ever seen in an FPS, and I play a lot of first-person shooters.

Having Wendy Carlos compose the original music for Tron 2.0 was an inspired choice, given the success of her distinctive synthesized score for the 1982 movie. The score fits seamlessly into the game, exuding a wonderful 80s New Age vibe. The game’s sounds are inspired as well, especially on the game grid racing light cycles.

Playing Tron 2.0 is very much like playing any standard FPS with a well-designed interface and solid grasp of physics. As Jet Bradley, you can install and upgrade certain programs to your “memory” in the digital world. These programs range from armor to weapons to diagnostics like virus shield, and each has Alpha, Beta, and Gold versions which get progressively more powerful and take up less memory space. As you play the game, you collect experience points, in a way, and can upgrade your health and energy capacity, the efficiency of your weapons, and your processing and transfer speeds. As you upgrade, your build number changes, so you can track your progress through the game. If you’re finding an area too difficult, you can switch the difficulty to Easy in mid-level, and back again to Normal when you’re more comfortable.

There are puzzles of the puzzle variety, as well as puzzles of the jumping variety which some players might find tedious. For the most part, though, you fight your way through in good old FPS fashion. For nostalgia and coolness factors, I favored the disc weapons, especially after I installed a program that let me deflect other discs back at their users. There’s a lot of timing involved (see the section on Multiplayer below), but when it works, ah, it’s glorious. You fight different enemies with different tactics, from ICP programs that are like the system’s cops, to programs corrupted by a glowing green virus which infects you and forces you to defrag and disinfect your own upgrades.

The interface is smooth and intuitive, and well in keeping with the game’s overall artistic design. There are some tough choices to make in terms of the programs you install, which ones you upgrade, and energy consumption, and weapon usage, but this type of resource management gives the game even more interactivity.

I enjoyed Tron 2.0 immensely. I found in it a nice blend of nostalgia for the film and arcade game, as well as solid FPS gameplay. The story is linear but intriguing enough to guide the action and keep you wanting to move forward. I was abysmal at the light cycle racing, and was understandably proud to beat several light cycle levels. Tron used to make it look so easy!

There are two types of multiplayer for Tron 2.0: light cycle battles and traditional FPS deathmatch and cooperative deathmatch. With the light cycles, up to 7 players over a LAN (or you and 6 bots) can compete on many different grids. You can steer your light cycle in third-person or first-person mode (they’re both really difficult, in my opinion), and there are various power-ups that let you shoot a missile or survive one hit. I found playing against human beings to be much easier than playing against the computer, although humans are not as predictable, obviously.

The disc arenas are more to my liking. You can play the classic Tron-inspired level, where warriors stand on concentric rings which “derez” when hit, forcing you to use all your skill and cunning, or you can play in teams in other types of levels which feature moving walls and lots of cover. Given the necessity of strategy, especially in team-based scenarios, disc arena multiplayer can be a big hit at LAN parties.

Fans of the movie Tron will not be disappointed by this game (quite the opposite), and non-fans will find a solid and enjoyable FPS experience, both in single and multiplayer. The game is great to look at, fun to play, and well designed all around. Also, the subject matter isn’t overly adult (although there is some real question as to whether derezzed humans are dead in the real world as well, which adds a strange moral test to the game’s story) and the language is suitable for teenagers.

From what I’ve seen of Tron 2.0’s marketing campaign, and of the packaging and the game itself, there haven’t been any noticeable efforts at selling women on this game. The character of Mercury, a female program who helps Jet and is the equivalent of the “Tron” program in the game’s story, is featured in some of the ads due to her voicing by Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. Truthfully, she’s well acted, competent (she’s a light cycle champion, whereas in the film, Tron was a disc arena champion), and beautiful in a “computer program’s avatar” sort of way. She’s highly sexualized in appearance, but not in action or writing, and she manages to bring moments of poignancy to what turns out to be a rather small part. Female characters are well represented among the encounters of the game, although curiously, none of your foes are female save some anonymous bots on the light cycle grid and one female who is part of a team.

Web sites of interest:

www.tron20.com