Tron: Evolution hands-on at Gamescom

Tron: Evolution looks to be a cut above the usual movie tie-in dross, and it completely nails that seductive retro-futuristic ambience

By Steve Boxer

Gamescom isn’t particularly renowned for its big, blockbusting announcements – those tend to be made a few months earlier in Los Angeles at E3. And this Gamescom hasn’t bucked that trend.

But the show really hits the spot when games presented as heavily choreographed demos at E3 have come on sufficiently that by mid-August, their developers feel sufficiently confident to let journalists get their sweaty paws on them. Multitudes of sins can be hidden by developers playing their own games and, anyway, the way a game feels to play can be vastly more important than its graphics and the like. We found Disney Interactive’s Tron: Evolution in a somewhat obscure part of the show – the Sony stand. The reason is that it was running in stereoscopic 3D and Sony, of course, is the greatest of all 3D evangelists (which may not be unconnected to the fact that it makes 3D TVs). Tron: Evolution is certainly high-tech: as well as running in 3D, its light-cycle element also works with a Move controller, which you hold as if it were a pair of handlebars – although we used a conventional controller.