Tron: Evolution (Microsoft Xbox 360, 2010)

Created and released in conjunction with Disney's feature-film sequel, Tron: Evolution is an action-driven adventure that plays through story events taking place between 1982's original Tron and 2010's Tron Legacy. The various console and handheld versions of the title are set at different places in the timeline, with the Xbox 360 game focusing on the ten years between 1990 and 2000. The main hero is a monitor program, created by Flynn. Like other characters, the hero appears as a human in the neon-gridded cyber-realm in which the movies and games are set. In third-person perspective control of this personified program, players face parkour-influenced platforming challenges and regular assaults by computer-controlled enemies, as they endeavor through levels that reveal key moments in the Tron narrative. The Tron disc is used in combat, hurled for ranged attacks and wielded like a circular blade in melee. Battles involve agile dodges, vaulting leaps, and diving strikes. Superhuman acrobatics move players through some of the game's most vertigo-inducing areas, as well, with leaps, flips, and gravity-defying wall-runs through Escher-esque corridors. In other sequences, players pilot light cycles, leaving behind labyrinths of impenetrable energy walls as they race ahead. As the hero progresses through the adventure, players earn upgrades that can be used to enhance disc or light cycle abilities. Player-characters can also gain upgrades in the game's online multiplayer modes, which feature team-based styles of disc and light-cycle combat.