izigame.me

Bithell Games brings back the world of tron back into the gaming world since 2016’s Tron Run /r, but in a completely different way than we've ever seen of Tron. Instead of going for fast paced combat or light cycle arenas, the action takes a seat in favor of storytelling and choices in this visual novel driven game. In this 1 hour - 2 hours narrative adventure, you are sent out to investigate a crime scene in an important building of the grid with vital information. The whole story takes place in this building, so you will go through different floors/areas of it to question and investigate everyone on it as a suspect. Now the premise itself is interesting, being a detective in a digital world where you are a program, investigating other fellow programs for a potential crime, unfortunately the execution fails to deliver upon it. The game has you making various choices throughout the story that will decide the fate of multiple characters, however there is no right or good outcome by the end of it, which makes the story ending unsatisfying and inconclusive for a detective narrative. Personally, has a fan of games of making choices that shape the story, this was the aspect I was most disappointed with. The game also features some puzzles as the main gameplay where you are "defragging" program codes in between the narrative, but I couldn't get into them, however I am thankful we are given the option to skip them and instead focus on the story.
The game does feature some interesting character designs, they all stand out from each other overall, and introduces a lot of lore to the world of Tron you may not know of from just watching the movies. However, they were a few times I wasn’t too sure if some of these ideas really fit the world of tron, and I think that’s part of the challenge of writing in this world, how can you tell a human story when your characters are meant to be computer programs, in the end you still have to give it human traits. So I can forgive some things that may seem a bit much for programs, and even the game’s run time, as I have played games lasting 3 hours or less that still gave me satisfaction when I finished, unfortunately that didn’t happen here. Once everything ended I felt unfulfilled and didn’t grab an interest to go back and replay for new choices because a lot of the choices in the game are you either do the right thing or you don’t but you are not rewarded for doing either or. The game ultimately ends inconclusive with complete uncertainty of what happens next, and with no new follow up episodes like Telltale style of narrative games, it is hard to think we will ever see what happened without a future game taking our choices into consideration. For these points is why I ultimately cannot recommend this game for its full price, as it feels incomplete and unsatisfying on top of its running time at the end. I will however say that I am still excited to see what else Bithell Games has in store for the future of Tron, and I am curious to see how things go with the upcoming Tron Catalyst game.