Okay, so who’s played any of the Prince of Persia or Assassin’s Creed games of the last few years? Lots of you? Yep thought so. So how many of you have seen the Tron Legacy movie and thought that the official game of the movie should be a badly-designed, poorly implemented PoP or AC clone that consists of about 90% indistinguishable, zero-fun wall-running and poorly animated “Parkour” sections? No, I thought not.

Well, that’s what you’ve got, Tron Evolution is neon-lit Prince of Persia, without the Sands of Time to make the inevitable, frequent and soul-destroying death falls repairable and bearable. You play as Anon, a monitor program written by master hacker Flynn (Jeff Bridges) in this prequel to the Legacy movie. The story pans out like pretty much any other adventure movie with computer terminology taking the place of ordinary names, people=computer programs and Flynn has created a world that’s going out of control. Apart from the endless platform sections there are also get some short and mind-numbingly bad tank driving and light cycle sections (that even have occasional frame rate problems despite the basic graphics) to get past, before you will without doubt be trading this weak cash-in for something better. Actually, the light cycle sections are the best part of the game by some way-but that’s not saying much.

The game certainly captures the ambience of the movie but the scenery is low-detail, rather jaggy in places and nothing to shout about colour palette wise either, it seems to consist of black, harsh white or neon blue with a few tones in-between. The most impressive moments are where wall-running sections occur in wide open “city” locations that show the game engine at its best, with Recogniser ships gliding ominously past. There is little or no interactivity with NPCs but the likenesses of Bruce Boxleitner and Jeff Bridges (Tron and Flynn/Clu) in cut scenes are pretty good, and the Bridges soundalike does a good job.

The chances are you’ll have tired of the game before you escape Arjia city but if you persevere Bostrum colony is a depressingly dark, powered-down area that leeches the colour even further from the game so you’re wandering around in a grey/brown/neon-green nightmare that could cause suicides in manic depressive gamers. It probably goes without saying as the Tron universe isn’t about blue skies and pretty trees, but if scenery is your thing Tron Evolution definitely isn’t the game for you. If however you’re one of those people who goes to the big city and is fascinated by all the neon signs you’ll be in hog heaven...

The game uses a simple XP system to unlock upgrades and new disc abilities, and the facility to use XP earned in the online game for your offline story character is a good idea. The problem is that there are so few people playing the online game at the time of writing that this doesn’t really work. When I did find a game the players were often using a downloadable map pack that costs an extra 400 MS points, so that was never going to happen.

As a fan of the original Tron movie (and many of the games that accompanied it) I’d love to say something nice about Tron Evolution, but the game even commits serious gaming no-nos like sticky scenery, or alternatively pieces of scenery that you actually want to run over (in order to recharge your disc powers) that act like they’re slippery. Platform sections often reward a fall by plonking you waaay back to a distant checkpoint so there’s too much retreading of old ground, and central character Anon has no sense of self preservation, so he’ll seldom grab a ledge and will frequently launch himself out into space because a platform is narrow and the controls lack subtlety. Anon isn’t exactly poorly animated but runs like a saddle-sore cowboy who’s pooped his pants, and moves too suddenly, meaning many deaths will be caused by unintentionally large movements rather than erroneous button presses or jumps.

Rather than being a quality companion to the Tron: Legacy movie I found Evolution to be a real disappointment; gameplay that is so repetitive, predictable and just plain tedious is thankfully rare in big name releases these days. Even if you enjoyed the Legacy movie I’d avoid Evolution as it may taint the memory.