The death of a movie tie-in games is something most of us would have cheered in the mid-2000s, as their quality was generally awful and they took up way too much space on the local Gamestop's Used Games shelves. Their complete demise, however, has left us without a steady crop of middling meat-and-potatoes action games, providing basic thrills absent the triple-A cinematic muchness that modern gaming seems to require of every entry in the genre. Tron: Evolution, then, is a nice reminder of how much fun could be gotten from a standard 6/10 action tie-in game when it makes a few basic (but necessary) decisions.

Perhaps the biggest thing going for this game (and all the best tie-ins) is that it tells a different story than that of its film, broadening the universe's lore while avoiding the need to ape plot beats that weren't designed to work in a different medium. Tron: Evolution's story is especially interesting because it pays off plotlines begun in a prequel comic series (Tron: Betrayal) that are more unique and potentially exciting than that of the actual film. The story deals with the appearance of Iso's, programs not created by Users (humans) who are thus not bound by the limits of normal programs. CLU, Flynn's chief security program, sees them as a threat to his goal of creating the "perfect system," causing him to lead a kind of religious crusade against them. All of this is used to explain CLU's falling out with Flynn himself, which is the animating conflict of Legacy, but the themes and ideas here would have made for a much more interesting film plot than the standard narrative we got. The writing is a bit thin but it provides more than enough to keep you invested if you are intrigued at all by Tron's lore.

Second, the game keeps its ambitions modest while aping the trends of the times. The turnaround time for tie-in games was notoriously short, so the more developers tried to do the worse the product generally was. Evolution keeps things simple by focusing on acrobatic wall-running a la Prince of Persia and standard projectile (disc) combat. A few light cycle and tank stages are thrown in for variety but are limited in scope to keep the game focused on what works best. The action here is, unsurprisingly, not very deep, and can get repetitive if you play for long stretches. But again, this kind of brain-dead, button-mashing action isn't something we get much of anymore, which gives it a kind of quaint throwback feeling now. Add in the flashy design of the world and the wonkiness of some of the action or the frustrations of some of the acrobatics become much more forgivable.

I may be grading on a curve here because it's final exam time and I was looking for a mindless game I could play in the background while rewatching my classes on double-speed, but I had a good amount of fun with Tron: Evolution. It may not represent the best the tie-in genre had to offer, but it does embrace many of the things that could make them a lot of fun. Worth checking out if you're a User who loves the universe or just wants some simple thrills on a Saturday afternoon.