I’m a massive fan of TRON, but more specifically, I’m a massive fan of TRON: Legacy. The 2010 sci-fi sequel has been cemented in my subconscious since the day it came out. The world it built has always been so captivating to me, with sleek metal obelisks and neon colorized highlights dancing around in my dreams most nights. It’s all complemented by gripping audio design, from the roar of the light cycles to the zap of a bouncing identity disc and the iconic Daft Punk curated score. Every opportunity I get to revisit that world is a thrill, so I’ve been chomping at the bit to get my hands on the latest spinoff of my favorite sci-fi property – TRON: Catalyst.
While it doesn’t have a number in the title, TRON: Catalyst pretty much a direct follow-up to Bithell Games’ 2023 visual novel, TRON: Identity. The two titles make a really complementary pair and, after rolling credits on this latest release, it’s clear they’re aiming to continue this story further with a third entry. TRON: Catalyst focuses our sights on Exo, a program working as a courier in the virtual city of Vertical_Slice who lands in hot water when her last delivery of the night ends up being an explosive device that goes off in her hands. She makes it out alive, but not unaffected. Whatever she was tasked to deliver ended up giving her the ability to Glitch, which lets her rewind time to an earlier point whenever she chooses. Hunting for answers on why she can do this and who’s responsible lands her in the middle of a plot of resistance and uprising, and a race against the clock to stop a Glitch storm from wiping out the entire system.
Mechanically, the glitch ability is a lot less exciting than it sounds. I’m a sucker for a good time-loop game, but it needs to smartly loop that concept equally through the narrative and the gameplay. TRON: Catalyst doesn’t strike that balance. Your hand is often held tightly by the game as your objects guide you on when to press the loop button to reset the current chapter, retaining your obtained info and abilities to progress down a new path. Despite the illusion of dialogue choices and branching exploration, the entire experience is incredibly linear, never once feeling like you have the ability to shape any outcomes yourself.
Despite the middling use of time-loop gameplay, I was still in awe getting to run around the world of TRON and explore such lovingly crafted locales. The dense Iso-populated cities and barren, green-tinted Outlands perfectly matched my memories of them from other TRON properties, and the pink-tinted Automata add a new element to the mix that I loved exploring. You’re given iconic tools like the Identity Disc and a Lightcycle to play around with, too.
Tossing and slicing your disc plays out in pretty basic real-time combat, with a skill-tree that helps expand your abilities. It’s hardly the focus of the game or it’s strongest suit, but it helps break up the exploration heavy segments that occupy the rest of the game. Lightcycle chases and battles, on the other hand, are a delight. The top-down viewpoint of the game never properly captures the sense of speed you’d hope for from these moments, but the battles are so satisfying and I could honestly see myself getting lost in a mode that was nothing but those bike battles for hours, if it was on offer.
If there’s one element of TRON: Catalyst that actively disappointed me, though, it was the soundtrack. A major part of the modern identity for the TRON franchise is it’s music. TRON: Legacy introduced us to the electronic and orchestral fusion of Daft Punk excellence that has gone on to influence the music of every spin-off title since then, and the upcoming TRON: Ares film promises to carve out an equally exciting audio identity for itself with a soundtrack composed by Nine Inch Nails. TRON: Catalyst fails to ignite the same excitement that most Tron music does, its score often playing it safe and basic and remaining buried far too deep into the background. It also doesn’t buck trends and try to establish it’s own identity with those tracks. Instead, it feels like the safest, undetectable interpretation of what TRON: Legacy introduced to us.
That’s probably the best word I could use to describe TRON: Catalyst – safe. It has a lot of big ideas, but only gives you the faintest taste of each of them. As a fan of the franchise, I still adored every second of it, but I was never truly wowed or inspired playing this as I was from any other entries in the series. With an ending that so clearly queues up a sequel, my biggest wish is that whatever comes next is bigger, bolder, and louder in every way possible.