Tron 2.0 for the PC was one of my favorite FPS games. It probably would have been my favorite game of 2003 if it were not for one of the greatest sins of game design still around: the jumping puzzle. Tron 2.0 threw the jumping puzzle in the game like Tron itself were designed to be some elaborate homage to jumping puzzles. I've never seen a jumping puzzle that made a game more enjoyable ever, and I've never even seen one that rose above the level of annoyance.
So, Tron 2.0 Killer App for the GBA takes a bunch of the stills from PC game, and fuses them together into a new adventure for Mercury and TRON. Of course, instead of removing the jumping puzzles that were the absolute low point of Tron 2.0, they just redid them and put them in the game too. Nobody ever gets fired for making the same game with the same problems, and so they keep doing it. (You all do realize that all you bad designers are just making it easier and easier to automate your jobs, right? I mean pretty soon they'll just add a Diablo-style random map generator, and you'll have slacked yourself out of jobs.)
Story
A hacker named "The H4X0R" has hacked into Encom computers and has planted a virus. You take control of either Mercury or legendary computer hero TRON and fight through the legions of security programs and Grid Bugs that unwittingly keep you from you goal...to take out the Corruptor virus. TRON and Mercury will strike in tandem, both taking separate paths to aid each other.
Gameplay
The D-Pad will move your program of choice. A jumps, B shoots and locks onto targets, L will block, and R will strafe. You'll also get thrown into some mini-games during the course of your mission, obviously the Light Cycle races, but also Recognizer and Tank battles. There's also a little hacking game that's part Pipe Dream, and part Tetris. For the most part, the game controls pretty nice, with the exception of all the new mini-games.
A big part of the last game was upgrading Jet's Build # so he could acquire new functions, and optimizing his code so he could use them all. As you went to different platforms, they had different resources and hence you had to use, different configurations to set them up. In Tron 2.0 Killer App, you pick up chips. (Uh, that doesn't make any sense, guys...why would a manifestation of code need a chip?) You pick up better versions of these chips as you go along through the levels. There are chips that enhance your abilities in the Light Cycle, Recognizer, Tank, and Security mini games, as well. Without the optimization and reconfiguring of the last game, it feels like a pale replacement. Once again, this doesn't take any more resources, just better design.
Graphics
The graphics aren't as good as they were in Tron 2.0, I'm not comparing quality, just the way they represent the Tron world. The random blotches of color just don't work right here, I'd rather just see the world mostly grey as it was in the PC version. Using the PC screenshots for cutscenes just doesn't fly, either. Seriously, re-draw the stuff. I can't think of a single person who thinks reusing those cutscenes at those low-quality highly-compressed formats is an acceptable practice. Spend some money on making your game look decent, or don't expect people to pay money for it.
Audio
You also get low quality compressed audio for the sound, but seeing that's about as high quality as it can really get, I can't complain about that too much. The background music isn't too bad, either.
Gripes
Why is there no real ending to the game? You make the play go through the game twice, and give them no satisfaction at the end, just an infinite loop of the H4X0R promising to get them next time, a la Dr. Klaw. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
I don't think I need to devote much space to how stupid jumping puzzles with bottomless pits, and enemies that knock you back into said bottomless pits are. Any child who wasn't dropped on their head knows how incredibly stupid and pointless those things are, right?
In addition, the 3D minigames are of the lowest quality 3D I've seen since Neo Hunter, circa 1996. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd think the game used the exact same engine. They're completely un-fun and almost as much of a chore as the jumping puzzles in the game are. The tank mode just consists of you running up on people and mashing the fire button as fast as possible. The Recognizer game has you running around in the recognizer, but you can't reverse. That and you continually fall. If you try and increase altitude, it also moves you forward. Did nobody realize that this was a horrible idea? Anyone?
This game seems to have lost all connections with the coolness of both the Tron movie, and the Tron 2.0 PC game. Instead of naming all the of the other programs nifty EXEs like in the last game, now everyone you talk to is name in l33t speak. The main enemy you'll never touch is named "The H4X0R", you'll run into programs named "fir3s4l3" and other such examples of lameness. This game reeks of "slapped together" more than just about anything I've played recently, aside from "Around the World in 80 Days".
Overall
Until game companies stop using the GBA as their platform for "rough draft" games like this, stop buying them. Don't waste your cash on what amounts to a bad version coasting on the success of another, much higher quality game. I'd wait for the GC version of the game in hopes that it might actually have something worth looking into there. In my opinion, this whole game should just be thrown into one of the multitudes of bottomless pits in the game, and de-rezzed.
