Gaming Target - Xbox:

Written by Ryan Genno on September 14, 2004

First Impressions: Now you are really playing a video game!

If you've never heard of it before, Tron was originally a 1982 Disney movie that had a paper-thin plot. However, it also had a cool idea wherein Jeff Bridges gets trapped in a video game program. Despite having some stunning computer generated visuals for the day, many people were shocked that it didn't get the respect it deserved by winning a technical Oscar. Just when you thought that the movie would disappear into obscurity for forever, something surprising has happened. To celebrate its 20^th anniversary, Tron got a special DVD release and Tron mania began all over again. If that wasn't enough, in 2003 PC gamers were able to play Tron 2.0, an official sequel that went straight to video game. Sure, it took a while but now this First Person Shooter/Action game is coming to the Xbox.

In Tron 2.0's story line there is a new, fast spreading virus called СThorne' that appears to have a nearly unstoppable army that infects any program that gets in the way. In a last ditch effort to fight off these attacks, human users are going into the system itself to see if they can eliminate the threat themselves. The world of Tron again throws humans into the awesome looking but very deadly virtual universe, and it is your mission to keep your human heroes Tron (played by actor Bruce Boxleitner) and Mercury (played by actress Rebecca Romjin) alive through 60 levels.

Like many Xbox games out there, Tron 2.0 is going to be a First Person Shooter just like the PC game. What separates it from the pack though is that you use a throwing disc for your primary weapon instead of a gun. You can still find many types of guns like laser rifles and machine guns in the game (there are over 16 weapons altogether) but since the disc doesn't need any ammo you've got it at your disposal all the time. The one player game is planned to be identical to the ones found in the PC original, but developer Climax wanted to add more features to this game's multi-player to liven things up.

Not only does Tron 2.0 have all the features you would want in a multi-player (Split screen, LAN, and Xbox Live 3.0 support) but one big edition to Tron 2.0's multi-player is the new Light cycle battles. If you remember those bike scenes from the movie, you can kill or delete the other cyclist(s) by carefully using your own laser light trails to trap your enemy (kind of like the classic Atari 2600 game СSurround' if anybody remembers that one). There are other modes in the game where you can even switch between man and cycle on the fly, but these cycle-only modes look very exciting.

Tron 2.0: Killer App

First Impressions: Now you are really playing a video game!