Kyle seems like your average teenage nerd. His parents are divorced, he spends all of his time in front of his computer, he seems like the perfect candidate for the trial test of Evolver. Evolver is a virtual reality game that Kyle is an expert at. In the virtual reality version, Kyle gone into a Tron-like universe and shoots at brightly colored guys who look like skinny Teletubbies. However, the Evolver company has something new up their sleeve- a real live evolver game. They have developed an oversized Go-Bot that will ‘evolve’ at each new level in which it is defeated… it will develop new strategies and new weaponry to defeat the enemy.
At first, Evolver is a lot of fun. Even Kyle’s little sister gets in on the action. Kyle’s best friend Zach discovers that Evolver is also useful to spy and record the goings-on in the girls’ locker room. But things begin to change (of course)… Kyle hacks into Evolver’s programming and discovers that he’s part of a project called S.W.O.R.D. And then the school bully is found dead… could Evolver have something to do with it?
Anyway, you get the picture. S.W.O.R.D. stands for Strategic War Oriented Robotic Device or something like that, and was originally designed as a weapon (his original line-up of weapons included a “napalm-fired grenade launcher”-just think about that a minute!). Unfortunately, even Evolver’s (Or Evol as he’s called for short) creator couldn’t stop him! Evolver is on a rampage! Determined to kill Kyle (aka “enemy Number One”) this robot goes around spouting one-liners like “NO! Game NOT Over!” and “it’s a knife, jerk-off!” before he loads his ammunition claws up with steak knives.
Be careful that Evolver doesn’t start watching television! He gets ideas about holding hostages, and learns swear words. This is why they started rating tv shows! Do you think Evolver would have evolved differently had he been watching “Leave it to Beaver” re- runs?
There’s a mighty show-down in the end, proving that it will take more than making a computer play Tic-Tac-Toe to crash it in the 90s. Even after having been defeated at Round 4, and being beaten with a baseball bat, Evolver continues to evolve. And in the end, after the robot had exploded and is lying in little flaming chunks all over Kyle’s sister’s bedroom floor (which has amazing flame- retardant properties), his glowing bicycle reflector, I mean, “eye” focuses on Kyle and the words “Kill Not Confirmed… ” appear… Ooh! Scary! A sequel, perhaps?
This is a delightfully cheesy tale of technology gone nuts. I thought this genre ended with the 80s. Part Tron, part War Games, this cheesy teen romance is sure to please! John DeLancie (Q on Star Trek) stars as Evolver’s Creator… Evolver! Alpha one-one- eight Delete! Delete!
0 Responses to “Evolver”