Before the 2010 “Tron Legacy” movie was released, this FPS game could be seen as paving the way for Disney to continue the film series. Set in an alternative plot in the early 2000’s, Tron 2.0 is picking up its theme and overall style of the original very well and makes its own modernising additions to it, partly ahead of their time. The story is quickly told: some bad guys take over a computer company and the son of the owner gets sucked into the virtual computer world through a digitisation machine by accident (or so it seems at the beginning). He’s fighting his way back and the company out of the stranglehold of the gangsters attempting a hostile takeover. With lots of puns and an interesting plot development, the game will keep you entertained for a while. It could have become a masterpiece, but it does have some shortcomings preventing that. After about 12 hours of gameplay, here’s my pros/cons list:

Pros:
+ great, unique, colourful computer Sci-Fi setting, partly incorporated into the 2010 Legacy movie later on
+ graphics & style
+ even 20 years later, textures still seem rather good
+ story connection points with the 1980’s film
+ roleplay game elements like character improvement mechanics (version builds!)
+ variety of weapons
+ useful equipment for character
+ equipment gathering (loot) & upgrade system
+ diverse missions
+ entertaining story
+ great puns, tech metaphors and IT rules intelligently incorporated into the game
+ sound effects
+ background story bits in e-mails scattered all over the world
+ dive into the internet
+ design & sound of corruption
+ challenging lightcycle races
+ eerie corruption level
+ general story progression
+ general, unique sound design
+ impressive firewall level!
+ great end boss fight

Cons:
- Strange hitboxes on enemies
- Sometimes strange effect areas on objects, even mission critical ones
- Generally combat system could be improved a lot
- A few times hard to find next mission objective
- Repetitive, very long seeker boss fight
- Very hard lightcycle races, hard to orient and manoeuvre
- Mouse sensivity issues
- Music in cutscenes too loud and not adjustable, drowning out dialogues
- Flawed sneaking mechanics
- Nice to have sneak missions but then they should also work that way

Conclusion:
In my view a great game for tech geeks and Sci-Fi enthusiasts or anyone generally fond of the Tron universe in a refreshing setting. This shooter is really good fun because of its story, setting, puns and mission variety, although it does have some minor frustrating shortcomings that hinders it from becoming a masterpiece at the time. Would love to see a game like this again in the future, although it’s rather unlikely because the Monolith studio which developed other equally refreshing games at the time has long stopped doing so.

Rating: 7/10 points

Classic, fun game