Tron: Catalyst captures the look and vibe of the 2010 movie with a top-down action roguelite spin
Mike Bithell's more action-centric take on Disney's Tron universe is shaping up to be a snack-sized adventure worth lighting up the Grid for.
On paper, the world of Tron seems like a ripe candidate for the video game adaptation treatment. The neon-drenched look, pulsating techno soundtrack, and a litany of oppressed characters looking to break free of their own societal system. Tron: Catalyst, the upcoming isometric actioner from Bithell Games, has all these elements and more, setting itself up nicely to be an interesting slice of a franchise that Disney seems intent on making a thing.
Luckily, despite technically being a sequel to the studio's previous visual novel set in the same Grid, Tron: Catalyst works well as a standalone tale and has nothing to do with the upcoming movie, Tron: Ares – I'd say for the better. After playing the first two chapters, I was delighted to see this emphasis on narrative and cool characters still here, only now with action and a cool roguelite narrative backbone at the forefront.
Tron: Catalyst kicks off with a bang, literally, as a job goes wrong for program courier Exo that leads her into the clutches of one of the Arq Grid's shadowy factions. This sets off a series of events that require her to become combat-ready, wipe her identity disc, and try to escape the city by playing off all its various factions against one another.
Admittedly, it's been a while since I've watched the original 1982 movie, or indeed its shinier 2010 sequel that Catalyst takes cues from, at least aesthetically. Bithell Games hasn't assumed players will have seen these either, fortunately, instead looking to craft a competent top-down actioner that pulls from the Disney universe's most recognisable iconography but weaves a tale most people should be able to get on board with.
If I were brushing with the broadest of strokes, I'd categorise Tron: Catalyst as a futuristic old-school style GTA with just a splash of Hades thrown in, but that really does a disservice to the other inventive ideas it's trying to embed. Some of which were quickly made evident in my short, hour-or-so long demo. After getting caught up to speed with playing as Exo and her awkward situation, it wasn't long before exploring the Arq Grid felt natural. This is a neon-soaked cityscape that is constantly raining and full of atmosphere, which Bithell Games has wisely chosen to harness from a far-off perspective to both manage production scope (one imagines) yet also does well to show off the true grandeur of this unique world.
World of light
Progressing through the Grid and surviving its forces means getting to grips with a standard hack-and-slash combat system. Exo has a standard melee attack, dodge, and a pretty superfluous parry ability. Taking down enemy programs is made a tad more exciting, though, thanks to her throwable identity disc, which can pack a punch when aimed correctly.
I particularly enjoyed how you don't even need to throw the disc at the target to deal decent damage, as throwing it against a nearby wall can often see it bounce off and then further hit around surrounding enemy groups. The catch is that, much like the case with enemies, leaving yourself free of the disc for too long makes Exo vulnerable to extra damage, so it doesn't always pay well to spam ranged hits.
As perfectly enjoyable as it was, I came away from my Tron: Catalyst preview hoping that combat opens up further. Mention of new upgrades such as the ability to call back your identity discs and the introduction of certain bulkier enemies certainly suggests as much. For now, however, far more exciting is how the story progresses, since Exo is one of the few programs able to make use of what's called the Glitch, which essentially allows her to reset events back to the start of the chapter or 'loop' as Catalyst calls it, utilising any previously unlocked traversal shortcut or any gained knowledge to her advantage.
Rather than act as a simple reset, the Glitch is built into the fabric of Tron: Catalyst's narrative, with Exo herself aware of any time she's looped back to the beginning of the chapter. An example of how this roguelite system could be exploited came early in my demo, when Exo missed her appointment with a program in the Grid games' viewing stand due to her being busy elsewhere.
Not to worry, though, because rather than stay as a missed opportunity, holding down the thumb stick allowed me to reset the cycle, catching up with said meeting after being able to get there quicker due to a newly accessible route I'd unlocked the last time around. It's a cool way to approach a narrative, and I'm excited to see it built upon.
Tron: Catalyst is the type of licensed video game clearly attempting to punch above its weight, and mostly doing a good job of it. The more action-oriented approach is totally new for developer Bithell Games compared to its past titles, while the concept of a narrative roguelite mixed in with a hack-and-slasher seems new for Tron. So far, however, from what I played, Tron: Catalyst has a lot of potential to be a solid video game adaptation of what is undoubtedly a great-looking and sounding universe, one that could appeal to newbies and veteran franchise fans alike.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Disneyland at 70: artists on the park's five best rides – and why they still captivate
A visit to Disneyland can be an exhausting experience. The line for a ride can be hours long; there are hordes of overstimulated children and the sheer quantity of gift shops is overwhelming. When the park first opened, on 17 July 1955, an adult ticket cost $1 and kids were 50 cents: now a single day's entry for one person can easily run $200 or more. Despite all the kitsch and cartoon capitalism, though, Disneyland still delivers moments of actual magic, and that's largely due to the inventiveness of its theme park rides. Disneyland's most beloved attractions are not simply rollercoasters or carousels – they're enduring works of immersive art. Teams of visionary designers and fabricators have collaborated to make and remake these rides over the decades: some popular rides from the park's opening in 1955, such as the Jungle Cruise and the Mark Twain Riverboat, are still in operation, while the park's newest ride, inspired by Tiana, Disney's first Black princess, opened just months ago. Alongside its beloved mid-century relics, such as Sleeping Beauty's Castle, Disneyland has constructed new 'lands' to woo new fandoms, including a replica of Batuu, the smuggler's outpost on the Outer Rim of the Star Wars galaxy, which features new tech and more interactive Star Wars rides. Disneyland's new work and its seven-decade creative legacy continues to inspire some of today's leading experience design and immersive theater practitioners. 'You could take any single medium from any of these rides and it would most obviously be art – whether it's sculpture, scenic painting, the sound design, the storytelling,' argues Vince Kadlubek, a co-founder of Meow Wolf, an American art collective that has built interactive art experiences in five cities, including Las Vegas, Nevada, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. But the fact that many of Disney's rides have been designed with children in mind means their creative merit and ambition is often discounted. 'Why is fun not part of art?' Kadlubek asked. 'Why is joy and play not a part of art? Felix Barrett, the artistic director of Punchdrunk, a UK-based immersive theater company responsible for transformative hits like Sleep No More, agreed. A Disney ride 'is a complete hybrid of all the disciplines, and will deploy everything simultaneously', Barrett said. And with an amusement park ride 'you're feeling alive in a way you very rarely are when you experience single-discipline art, because you're physically present'. Even the long wait times for Disneyland rides have been turned into opportunities for creative innovation, Barrett noted. Disney's 'mastery of queue design', particularly on newer rides, is an inspiration: 'It's not just about the ride, it's about the anticipation building up to that ride.' The park turned 70 this week, and to mark the occasion we talked to artists, designers and historians about five of Disneyland's greatest artistic masterpieces, and why these rides continue to inspire new generations of storytellers. It's a Small World is a placid ride, without big thrills or surprises: visitors sit in small boats and glide past arrangements of animatronic figures dressed as children from cultures around the world. The ride's tinkling theme song plays overhead. But six decades after it first premiered as part of the 1964 World's Fair, the ride still has long lines. The mid-century aesthetic of the ride's building, scenes and characters, is mesmerizing in its detail. Mary Blair, the concept artist for Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, designed the look of the ride and chose its bold colors; Rolly Crump designed its gleaming tower and the Sherman brothers, who wrote many of Disney's hits, composed its signature song, with major feedback from Walt Disney himself. The rides' themes of youthful innocence and longing for global cooperation still resonate, said Bethanee Bemis, who curated an exhibit at the Smithsonian and wrote a book on the reflection of American history in Disney's parks. 'All children share the universal language of play,' Bemis said. Today, some of the cultural symbols chosen in the 1960s may read as racial or ethnic stereotypes: there is a snake charmer in one scene, and crocodiles and hyenas in an African tableau. Disneyland has tried to strike a balance between preserving the ride as a nostalgic time capsule and meeting more contemporary expectations about cultural representation, Bemis said. Some of its most successful updates have been adding new touches of cultural authenticity, like including traditional parol lanterns during the Christmas season for Filipino visitors. Long before it inspired the early 2000s film franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean was a standalone ride – one that put visitors in a boat and sent them on a seafaring journey. The ride is the last one that Walt Disney worked on himself – and it's ambitious, both in the quality of its audio-animatronic pirate figures and its narrative sweep – not to mention the engineering challenge of digging the tunnels underground necessary to build the ride, Bemis said. The experience begins gently, with riders drifting through the dusk of a bayou and listening to a banjo play. Then the boats descend into darkness, and with a sudden drop, emerge into the dangerous world of the pirates where cannonballs fly overhead, ships glide past cities on fire and pirate crews fight and carouse onshore. While the ride has been updated with details from the more recent film franchise – such as animatronic figures made to look like Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp's character in the films – what makes it work is the attention to the ride's fundamentals, designers said, from the pirate costumes that the ride attendants wear, to the temperature at different phases of the ride: humid and warm in the bayou, and then chilly when riders plummet into the skeleton-filled 'Davey Jones' locker' under the sea. 'Somehow, they have manipulated the environment to set mood and tone through temperature and humidity control,' said Noah Nelson, the publisher of No Proscenium, a publication that covers the US immersive experience design industry. He called the technique 'super effective'. 'Every single aspect of these rides has been designed with the most care and attention. I don't think we go inside a lot of places like that these days,' said Jeff Stark, who teaches a course on design for narrative space at New York University. 'The craftsmanship that you encounter inside of Disney – the level of thought, of preparation – matches what it is like to go inside a cathedral. The amount of care that was put into Pirates of the Caribbean is far more than the care that was put into the church that I grew up going to.' The Haunted Mansion begins with a group initiation in the dark tower room of an old Victorian house. The tower appears to grow to uncanny heights, as the oil paintings of ancient dignitaries on the walls expand to reveal their deaths. 'We have 999 happy haunts, but there's room for a thousandth,' a deep voice asks. 'Any volunteers?' The ghostly figures and spooky tricks of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion were created in the 1960s, and they're decidedly low-tech, made with old-fashioned smoke-and-mirror devices like Pepper's Ghost. That only makes the ride more appealing, said Kathryn Yu, a Los Angeles-based game designer. 'In a world that's increasingly digital, it is charming to see these physical effects in person.' As candles flicker, visitors are led through the dark halls to the tombstone-shaped 'doom buggies' that will whisk them through one haunted scene after another: a ghostly banquet hall, a seance, a graveyard. Many Disneyland's first 'imagineers' came from backgrounds in animation, 'so they really understood cinematography, and the perspective of the audience as a camera', Yu said. In The Haunted Mansion, as in the Pirates ride, the designers packed each spooky vignette with 'character development, backstory, an emotional connection to one of the ghosts'. One of the famous moments in the Haunted Mansion is when the 'doom buggies' swing backwards before descending into the graveyard, putting viewers on suddenly their backs, staring upwards at skeletal branches, as if they themselves are being lowered into a grave. In creating Punchdrunk's latest experience, Viola's Room, a gothic mystery now playing in New York, the British team repeatedly referenced Disney rides, Barrett said, including discussing how to create theatrical surprises that would affect viewers' bodies in the same way as a sudden drop in a roller coaster. (One tactic they're trying is asking visitors to go through the experience barefoot.) The 2006 cartoon movie Cars, a toddler favorite, might not seem like the most inspirational source material for an immersive work of art. But Radiator Springs Racers, Disneyland's Cars-inspired ride, is massive in its ambition: it's nothing short of a full recreation of the red rock spires of the American south-west, complete with native plants and the replica neon-lined main street of a small desert town. (At a reported $200m, it was also the most expensive Disneyland ride at the time it was built). If you visit Zion national park in Utah or Monument Valley in Arizona after seeing Radiator Springs Racers, Bemis, the Smithsonian curator, said, 'You feel like you've already seen the real thing.' The ride taps deeply into the American nostalgia for Historic Route 66 in the 1950s, Bemis said, an era of nostalgia that came too late for Walt Disney himself to appreciate, but that strikes a chord with the park's other tributes to small-town American life. 'It's really stunning work,' said Kadlubek, the Meow Wolf artist. While the ride ends with a shriek-inducing car race and includes plenty of interaction with fast-talking cartoon automobiles, it begins with a more contemplative cruise through the faux desert landscape. 'There's this really beautiful romanticism to it,' Kadlubek said. The most popular new ride in Disneyland's new Star Wars-themed area 'surpasses everything that's been attempted before' in experience design, Kadlubek argued, calling it 'ambitious to a pretty absurd degree'. The ride is set in a newly built area of the park, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, that allows movie fans to visit a replica of the battered frontier planet of Batuu. There are bars, restaurants, a giant version of the Millennium Falcon and Storm Troopers who stalk the streets, occasionally interrogating visitors. Several designers who are Star Wars fans said the atmosphere feels eerily like being inside the films: Nelson said he's sometimes content just to sit in the replica Docking Bay 7, listening to audio of space ships streaming overhead, and drinking a cup of 'Caf,' as coffee is known in the Star Wars universe. 'My first time stepping into it, I felt like I came home,' he said. Rise of the Resistance tells an elaborate story that begins in the waiting line, where visitors are treated as new recruits to the resistance against the villainous First Order. After an early mission goes awry, they are taken captive. Costumed actors playing members of the First Order mock them while marching them off to an interrogation cell: members of the resistance have to break them out of prison, then lead them on a wild escape journey. The process of moving the visitors into the experience, and even getting them into the 'transports' they ride in, is deeply embedded in narrative. 'It goes from being a 3-minute ride to this 20-minute long saga. They really reinvented what we would expect from a ride,' Stark said. Under pressure from Harry Potter world at Universal Studios, Stark said, Disney introduced newer ride technology in Rise of the Resistance, leaning heavily on trackless ride vehicles, which are programmed to move the visitors through space without physical rails, creating new opportunities for ride tricks and surprises. But like the best early rides, what makes Rise of the Resistance thrilling is the accumulation of tiny details, Stark said, like the moment when 'the sparks from Kylo Ren's lightsaber are showering around you, and you feel like you're in this moment of threat'.
Scottish Sun
3 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Shoppers are rushing to get their hands on Disney dolls for under £3 at Home Bargains – and they'd make great gifts
They would make the ideal gift at children's birthday parties WALT A DELIGHT Shoppers are rushing to get their hands on Disney dolls for under £3 at Home Bargains – and they'd make great gifts ANYONE who has a Disney-obsessed son or daughter will know that merchandise doesn't come cheap. But mums are in luck ahead of the summer holidays as Home Bargains is selling Disney dolls for under £3. 4 Shoppers are rushing to get their hands on Encanto dolls for less than £3 at Home Bargains Credit: Facebook 4 You can nab this whole family pack for just £6.99 down from £40 Credit: Facebook Taking to the Facebook group Extreme Couponing & Bargains UK, one mum revealed that Encanto dolls were on offer at the bargain shop. Down from £12.99 the Mirabel Madrigal doll is priced at just £2.99, giving shoppers a hefty £10 off the RRP. Meanwhile you can also pick up a five pack of Encanto dolls, including Antonio, Pepa, Camilo, Felix, and Dolores, for just £6.99 down from £40. Whether you're stocking up on birthday gifts or just feel like treating the kids this summer it means you can bag six dolls for under £10. Fellow bargain hunters were seriously impressed, with Disney fans quick to like the post and make plans to grab the bargain for themselves. If you're on the hunt for more Disney bargains, fans are raving about both Tesco and Asda's crockery ranges, with some designs reduced to just a few pence. Asda has launched a brand new Beauty and the Beast collection, with one shopper sharing a snap of some adorable cups to Facebook group Extreme Couponing and Bargains UK. The teacups have classic characters from the film, including Belle, Lumiere and Cogsworth, while an inscription on the pink-themed chinaware says 'never give up'. Sharing a snap of the cups online, one woman said: 'Beauty and the beast fans Asda have these new mugs for £3.50 each.' Meanwhile another Disney fan spotted some reduced cups in Tesco featuring their most iconic character - Mickey Mouse. Inside brand new Lilo and Stitch cafe in Scots store The cups feature the letters of the alphabet with Mickey in various poses, which have been slashed from £1.50 to just 38p. Snapping them up, one happy shopper wrote: 'All different letters.... reduced to 0.38p.' 4 Disney fans spied a brand new Beauty and the Beast range in Asda Credit: facebook / extreme couponing and bargains
The Sun
3 hours ago
- The Sun
Shoppers are rushing to get their hands on Disney dolls for under £3 at Home Bargains – and they'd make great gifts
ANYONE who has a Disney-obsessed son or daughter will know that merchandise doesn't come cheap. But mums are in luck ahead of the summer holidays as Home Bargains is selling Disney dolls for under £3. 4 4 Taking to the Facebook group Extreme Couponing & Bargains UK, one mum revealed that Encanto dolls were on offer at the bargain shop. Down from £12.99 the Mirabel Madrigal doll is priced at just £2.99, giving shoppers a hefty £10 off the RRP. Meanwhile you can also pick up a five pack of Encanto dolls, including Antonio, Pepa, Camilo, Felix, and Dolores, for just £6.99 down from £40. Whether you're stocking up on birthday gifts or just feel like treating the kids this summer it means you can bag six dolls for under £10. Fellow bargain hunters were seriously impressed, with Disney fans quick to like the post and make plans to grab the bargain for themselves. If you're on the hunt for more Disney bargains, fans are raving about both Tesco and Asda's crockery ranges, with some designs reduced to just a few pence. Asda has launched a brand new Beauty and the Beast collection, with one shopper sharing a snap of some adorable cups to Facebook group Extreme Couponing and Bargains UK. The teacups have classic characters from the film, including Belle, Lumiere and Cogsworth, while an inscription on the pink-themed chinaware says 'never give up'. Sharing a snap of the cups online, one woman said: 'Beauty and the beast fans Asda have these new mugs for £3.50 each.' Meanwhile another Disney fan spotted some reduced cups in Tesco featuring their most iconic character - Mickey Mouse. Inside brand new Lilo and Stitch cafe in Scots store The cups feature the letters of the alphabet with Mickey in various poses, which have been slashed from £1.50 to just 38p. Snapping them up, one happy shopper wrote: 'All different letters.... reduced to 0.38p.' 4 4
