Tron, the movie, was a unequivocal flop, and perhaps rightly so. The story was flat, and the concept, while laughable now, must’ve been confusing as hell back in 1982. There is a ton of camp value in Tron the movie today, however. From unintentionally funny lines (“Can I have the rest of your popcorn?”) to embarrassingly lame character designs (see Master Control, or Moses on South Park), you’ll sit through the movie with a smile on your face, though perhaps for all the wrong reasons. There is very little camp value in videogames, though. E.T. for the Atari isn’t “so bad that it’s good”; it’s just “so bad that they buried it in a landfill”. Tron 2.0: Killer App finds itself in quite a predicament. Capture the nostalgic, campy feel of the movie, but not be the same commercial failure. Will it succeed in that program directive? Upload this review and find out!

Story:

Tron 2.0: Killer App takes place 20 years after the movie. In the movie, videogame designer Flynn is shot by a laser and sent into the computer world, where an oppressive force named Master Control is making life a digital hell for innocent programs. In the game, the same exact thing happens, except the main character and enemies have different names. Thanks, Buena Vista Interactive, you made my job a lot easier!

To be honest, there are a few cool new elements. The terminology has been updated (obviously), and many modern features have been incorporated into the familiar Tron universe. Seeing corruption, in the computer sense, reflected in the game, is pretty cool. That’s not to say it hasn’t been done better (see the end of Metal Gear Solid 2), but at least it fits in with the theme of this game.

Gameplay:

Tron 2.0 is a first person shooter infused with RPG features. Your character starts out with a weak weapon, and even weaker abilities. There is no ammunition in this game, rather, all weapons but your first drain your energy bar (which is separate from your health bar). During the course of the game, your character can find build points that increase your version number within each stage and earn more by accomplishing objectives. While your version number is consistently changing, it’s only when the first number changes that you are allowed to increase your attributes, which include health, energy, weapon efficiency (the amount of energy a weapon saps), as well as download and disinfecting speeds.

What are those last two for, you ask? Well, since Tron 2.0 takes place in the computer world, there are no items laying about. Instead, there are different pieces of information either held by enemies or carefully tucked away in each level, which you must download and sometimes disinfect if corrupted. There are subroutines, which are best described as armor and weapons. Your character is given a limited amount of subroutine space to fit a multitude of secondary weapons and combat abilities. There are some problems with the concept- jump height shouldn’t be a choice on the scale of identify an enemy’s health level.

The other downloadable items are emails and permissions. Emails are exactly what they say, simple email messages from characters on the other side of the screen that reveal bits of the storyline. Permissions allow you to open doors, and activate switches… they’re keys, basically. Kudos to the developers for making them seem different, though. Thanks to the fact that they’re usually not frustratingly difficult to find, and that you’ll usually find a subroutine along with them, you’ll probably never curse the game for sending you on a “permission” fetch quest.