Code Lyoko: Quest For Infinity 0
If you’re a Wii owner, you may have noticed, and by “may have noticed”, I mean that it must be painfully obvious to you that third party support of the Wii is abysmal, at best. Whether developers don’t understand the control system or whether they don’t want to put their full effort into an “underpowered” system, the fact remains that the majority of games not made by Nintendo mostly amount to poor-quality ports with tacked on motion controls.
“Code Lyoko: Quest For Infinity” goes to great lengths to prove that even a smaller game design company can make a game that makes sense on the Wii, and makes you wonder what the major leaguers excuses are. While Code Lyoko is a bit of a kid’s game, it does offer a fair amount of challenge to more seasoned gamers and makes excellent use of the Wii’s unique wii-mote and nunchuck control design.
To fill you in, Code Lyoko is a popular cartoon in which five teenagers enter a virtual world known as “Lyoko” a la “The Matrix”, to do battle with an evil artificial intelligence known as “Xana”. The game revolves around the struggle to stop Xana from replicating itself and invading the real world in a bid for total world domination.
You begin Code Lyoko in sort of a 2-D animated hub world, in which you can communicate with other characters similar to a point-and-click adventure game. There is little incentive to do so other than to flesh out the story and learn more about your team, which can be helpful as there is little introduction for those not already familiar with the story. It’s a little cutesy for my tastes, but anime fans will enjoy it I’m sure.
When you’re ready to go into battle, you virtualize yourself at “The Factory”, and enter the digital world. Once there, you will control four different warriors, each with their own unique powers and methods of attack. The powers are where the game really shines, as you are constantly finding new ones and powering them up with experience gained throughout the levels. Almost all of the powers require some sort of unique motion control that takes excellent advantage of the wii-mote’s unique capabilities. These may range from telekinesis and flying, to wall jumping, balancing and freezing enemies.
Another neat feature is the limited space shooter levels that pop up every now and again, which again make good use of the wii-mote controls, and almost feel like playing Panzer Dragoon back in the Saturn days. There’s not much to do here but steer and shoot, but it feels very intuitive and is a nice diversion from the action.
One downside of the game that you will notice, and one that I was hoping would be addressed after previewing Code Lyoko in September, is the startling lack of detail in the environments. I understand that the look calls for a stark, digital representation of the real world, but it almost looks like a PS1 game at times, the textures are that simple. There won’t be any awards given for the character models and their giant foreheads either. For some reason the boss fights (Which are excellent, Zelda inspired affairs) are incredibly much more detailed, with a really cool cel-shaded look to them. Unfortunately, these can be few and far between.
Another thing that sort of bugged me throughout was the fixed camera. While it almost always was pointed in the right direction, it still allows enemies to get behind you, at which point you are completely vulnerable to their attacks and unable to return fire. Also, there are a couple of places where the camera will switch directions ever so slightly in the middle of a tricky jump, throwing off your trajectory and sending you flying into the abyss. “Super Mario Galaxy” this is not.
One last gripe, and probably the worst thing about the game is the repetition. You will see the same cut-scenes (which are thankfully skippable) at least a hundred times while playing through the game. Also, one of the major plot points revolves around Xana “replicating” areas from the game, forcing you to play through slightly different versions of the same six environments like fifty times. But the fact remains that the action itself is pretty fun, and Code Lyoko is a solid Wii platformer that offers a lot of replayability and has great potential to be a real sleeper hit, especially on the Wii. This is not a game for “Halo” and “God of War” players, but younger and casual gamers will be pleasantly surprised.
Code Lyoko: Quest For Infinity - 7/10.
