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05/01 - Brutal Legend
07/01 - Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
13/01 - Sludge Life
17/01 - AER: Memories of Old
19/01 - Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition (Human - Nero/Dante)
05/03 - CrossCode: A New Home
14/03 - Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
17/03 - Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (100cc)
02/04 - Drakengard (Endings A-D)
14/04 - Drakengard 2 (Ending A)
28/04 - Drakengard 3 (Endings A-D)
02/05 - Rain
10/05 - God of War: Chains of Olympus HD
15/05 - God of War: Ghost of Sparta HD
24/05 - NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139... (Endings A-E)
08/06 - Final Fantasy XV (NG+)
02/07 - God of War II HD
15/07 - Scarlet Nexus (Yuito)
20/07 -
TRON: Evolution
I've always been somewhat curious about this game, as I rather like the film it's a tie-on for for its aesthetic and musical qualities. And I've always felt like this universe has a lot of potential for very cool games as well. This attempt however was a pretty bad miss. I went in being pretty aware of what this game is like though. I saw the negative response it got on release, and had some experience with it myself when it was given out as part of Games with Gold some years ago now, when I bounced off it quickly. But since I'm between games at the moment, and this was very short, I figured now would be as good a time as any to get it done.
The biggest problem is one that is ever present. It controls terribly. The game plays out as a very linear experience where you're doing Price of Persia/Uncharted style platforming and melee combat, interspersed with a few vehicle set pieces where you control either the Light Cycle or a Light Tank. All of them feel pretty awful to play. On foot, your character is really twitchy and is very hard to get going in the direction you actually want. You have a bunch of parkour moves to leap over obstacles, run along walls, etc., and it's really inconsistent whether it will do them as intended. Sometimes you'll be getting caught up on these things if you just accidentally brush too close to them, other times they just won't work at all unless you're absolutely perfectly lined up. The camera also makes this far worse, with the way it lurches around wildly, with its strange logic of sometimes being tied strictly to the direction you're going, and other times failing to keep up at all. And if you combine both these things together, it becomes really difficult to get a grip on making the game do the most simple things, and it leads to countless cheap deaths as a result.
The melee combat has similar problems. It seems like what it's trying to do is make the parkour and movement in general important to these mechanics, but it doesn't work. There's all the same problems of not being able to interact with objects you're supposed to climb and the camera, but it has incredibly lacking sound design too. Hits are very quiet and weak, with some hits not seeming to have any sound to them whatsoever. It's also impossible to properly target any enemy while you're trying to keep mobile, as it seems throwing your disc just sends it wherever it wants, and unless there's only one enemy on screen, you have no way of making it go towards the one you want. There is a manual lock-on mode, but that slows down your movement to a crawl, negating the whole concept of the parkour. You have a mix of long range disc throw attacks, and close range melee attacks, but the close range stuff is useless. It never seems to be able to hit anything, usually pointing your character in the completely wrong direction or just simply missing an enemy that is right in front of you. Enemy AI is pretty awful, with them sometimes seemingly unable to perform basic navigation, but they can cheaply hit you from off-screen with no warning. There are also some boss fights that are really bad, often very gimmicky and annoying, especially once you get near the end of the game.
At times the game fails to make it clear what the way forward is, even though that should be next to impossible in such an ultra-linear game. Even worse, the points when it does this all seems to line up with set pieces that can kill you instantly. Like one moment when I was trying to avoid falling rubble but couldn't see where it wanted me to run to, leading to many repeated deaths.
Vehicles are bad too. The Light Cycle lurches from side to side making it near uncontrollable. The sequences you drive it are full of loads explosions and obstacles that are hard to see until it's too late. There are also parts where you're riding through the city and there are multiple roads that you switch between on the linear route. But sometimes there might be a road that it looks like you're supposed to jump to, but you're actually not and you will explode if you land on them. I think you can tell the developers knew how bad these parts were, since they have checkpoints practically every 15 seconds. The Light Tank doesn't go straight, so you're constantly having to wiggle along to try to get it going forward. It also gets confused when you try to strafe sideways, not being able to make up its mind whether it wants to move forward or turn around for some reason.
The story is very dull. It barely exists. Despite it being short enough that I should easily be able to remember it all, I can barely recall it. It's an arbitrary sequence of events that just happen, where you play a nameless, faceless, voiceless character who is just making his way through these action scenes for some reason. I mean, characters from the movie show up, and it shows the events leading up to that, but it still feels more like reading a bullet point plot summary than seeing an actual story play out. TRON: Legacy may have been criticised for its shallow plot, but it's a masterpiece compared to this.
It's a real shame, because I feel like this could have been so much more. TRON is a world that seems ideal for making a cool game out of. You have an interesting setting, and a bunch of weapons, vehicles, and game modes already laid out. And when it comes to this version of the IP, you also have an great aesthetic and a banger of a soundtrack. The basic idea of this game sounds a lot more interesting and ambitious than the simple minigames that seem to be what we usually when it comes to TRON games. I even think the idea of making parkour-focused melee combat could actually work really well and fit this universe perfectly too. This missed the mark on pretty much everything though. They didn't even get the soundtrack right, as you only get short glimpses of Daft Punk's score, and instead for most of the game you just get bland stuff that doesn't stand out at all. At least it looks pretty. Although the performance wasn't great, as it was prone to awful stutters every so often... I guess I can give the developers the benefit of the doubt, that this game was rushed to release with the movie. It does feel rather undercooked.
This game also has online multiplayer for some reason. I mean, I guess it makes sense, with all those ready-made game modes. I didn't try them, but I can't expect they would be any good. With how awful it is to play just the single player story, the idea of taking that in to a competitive context sounds truly miserable. I expect if this game ever had a playerbase, it probably died out weeks after release too.