Tron

First up, a confession:

I've only ever seen Tron once.

Make that two confessions:

The one time I did see it? I thought it was boring.

I'm not slagging Tron, mind, I'm slagging my choice in movies at the time. I didn't much like Monty Python and the Holy Grail the first time I saw it either.

So yeah, I'm not the world's biggest Tron fan. I ain't a patch on Kelley. I would love to see the film again, give it another go. I love the idea of the film. I was jazzed for the latest games.

Luckily, Kelley (as mentioned) gave me a copy of Tron 2.0: Killer App for the GBA. So I reckon I oughta review it.

It looks pretty nice. The neon laced look is pretty sharp. But I've never been the biggest fan of the isometric perspective. It usually marries the worst of both the side scrolling and top down perspectives. Couple that with the overabundance of jumping in this game and you have a problem.

Not that the combat is much better. It ain't broken, but it could use some fixin'.

I started out talking about the purty graphics and ended up bitching about the gameplay. I have a feeling that'll happen a lot. Maybe I should just get all my bitching out now.

Jumping in isometric games is inherently flawed. It just is. Unless the game is really lenient, which this one is not. A couple pixels off, and you're hosed. Like any kind of jumping in any game, I suppose but it just irks me more. And there are too many bottomless pits. But they aren't bottomless pits, they're just a slightly darker shade of red.

And I didn't fall to my death nearly as often as I was pushed. That's right: pushed. Enemies shots knock you back. Into the deadly red if you're unlucky. I was often unlucky. Your shots knock the enemy back, but never into the deadly red. Is that fair? No. No, it is not.

All the other styles of gameplay fare better, but most have their own 'quirks'. The tank and... flying tank games have pop up issues. The enemies have a bad habit of shooting you and then disappearing.

The light cycle game is perfect. No complaints.
The firewall game is fine as well. If a little boring. I really dig the slightly static-y backgrounds. But the game boils down to Breakout without the ball.

The defragment game is also a bit blah but I still dig it. But I kinda suck at it. I always run out of pieces before the level ends. I'm not sure why that is.

I save most of my bile for the security game. You have a honeycomb/grid of hexagons and you need to connect two or more nodes utilizing the pieces supplied to you within the time given. As you lay down pieces, certain power ups or power downs appear in the play space. All that is fine and dandy. Except for the fact that the placement of the power ups and downs is broken. One of the power downs is an automatic game over. How can you win if the game puts a game over right in front of the node you need to get to? You can't. Is it fair if the game spawns a game over token over top a piece you've already laid? Fuck no. This mini game is broken. Horribly.

So, of course it is the one that pops up most often.

Also on the cart, the original arcade games emulated as best they can be without the arcade controls. My friend owns the arcade game, so I can assure you that the d pad and shoulder buttons are a poor substitute. But I loves me the Tron arcade games and I love the fact that I can play them on the go.

As I said, the game looks great. The sound is pretty good. The digitized voices are muddy, but hey: digitized voices!

I'm impressed with how much they managed to cram onto the cart, but I would have taken less if the quality of each could have been higher. I've beaten the game with both characters and I don't think I'll ever play that part again. But I find myself playing the minigames fairly often.

Thanks K, I never would have played this game if not for thee. And it's a damn sight better than The Scorpion King.