TRON: Catalyst review – ambition and elegance combine in a bite-sized treat

In a world where the dividing line between a handheld game and a Big Telly game is entirely down to personal preference, it might seem redundant to single out TRON: Catalyst for praise as being particularly good on portables. But it is. It has the feel of a really good PSP or DS era tie-in game. It’s engineered for compactness and bite-sized play sessions, with simple controls, short quests, and concise story beats. And its compactness is reflected in the price. There’s no mistaking Catalyst’s modest, indie budget. Its scope and ambition, however, are anything but modest.

TRON: Catalyst reviewPublisher: Big Fan Games, Devolver DigitalDeveloper: Bithell GamesPlatform: Played on PC via Steam DeckAvailability: Out now on PC, PS5, Switch and Xbox Series S/X.

I should back up here for a second and clarify that Catalyst’s penchant for on-the-go play doesn’t amount to a game that is second-rate. Its story, which is delivered here in a visual novel style similar to Bithell Games’ earlier TRON: Identity (which, as it turns out, works much better as an elaborate prologue to this than it does as a standalone game), is a high-stakes road trip across the vast Arq Grid. It unfolds in a manner similar to an old Bioware game. Picture something like a streamlined Jade Empire and you’ve got it. The game batters through chapters and chews through locations at a decent pace, with limited optional side-quests and just enough length on the leash to make you feel like you’re exploring when you’re really just going where you need to.

There aren’t any elaborate CGI movies to sit through, and there isn’t really any choice and consequence stuff. (Again, there’s enough dialogue selection to make you think it’s in there, but it really isn’t.) That might seem odd if you played the studio’s previous TRON game or indeed its earlier forays into This Sort Of Thing. Subsurface Circular, for example, was a single-location science fiction game that told its entire story in an elaborate dialogue system, it was about androids toppling a human empire and you only ever saw the inside of a train carriage.

TRON: Catalyst tells a similar kind of story about an overstretched system of control that is being challenged by an underclass of people – programs – who are fed up. I need not draw the contemporary parallels. What it doesn’t do is give you any real freedom to influence that narrative. Instead, it gives you a big ol’ to-do list and some cool TRON stuff to get it done with.