Opening Notes
For scores or a quick review, skip to the bottom, labelled ?scores?.
The game Code Lyoko: Quest for infinity, falls into a genre that, on the wii at least, has gotten a very mixed bag of reviews, and I personally would call that genre the ?action/platform/puzzler? a combination of platforming, fighting for your life, and trying to find how to move on to the next section of the game.
On the Wii this genre, and infact most platforming genres have had a bit of a struggle, the limitation of a single thumb stick on the nunchaku means that the traditional platformer method of controlling the camera with one stick and the character with another has gone out the window on the wii and this has left allot of platforming games wallowing about in a serious struggle to make the game playable.
Games have tried everything to solve this game, an on/off button for the camera so you can hold down a button to toggle between character movement and camera movement on the stick, a camera that tracks behind the player, using the D pad, or even the point controller to control the camera, and to be honest in most games this has sucked.
CL:QfI has chosen to take an interesting route, and that is to stick the camera to a set of invisible railway tracks roughly the same height above the character the whole was and set the camera off to follow you. This differs in an important aspect from the camera that follows the character in that the camera moves backwards and forwards in exactly the same path, it follows that path even if your character runs along the edge of the screen or the middle of the screen, and it is at once both a help and a hindrance to the game, though most of the hindrance was removed by clever design, most? not all.
The Gamplay
So let?s talk about the actual game play first as that?s what a game is for, which splits between a very Japanese graphic novel style turn the camera and choose people to talk to format for the story aspect that takes place between missions, and the main body of the gamplay that is the action-platforming sections that take place on the fictional world of Lyoko and small tunnel shooter style vehicle sections in the ?digital sea?.
The storyline sections are just still backgrounds with characters super imposed, whom you can select to talk to, this gives you some link to the story, and all the conversation is voiced, even if the voice acting is somewhat wooden and uneven (we?ll discuss that more in the storyline section). Point and click, listen/read, move on? not the most inspired but it tells the story well enough.
In the ?Lyoko? or platforming sections you have four characters each of whom control pretty much identically, with slight differences in their movement patterns, all run the same speed and jump the same height, with the basic controls being d-stick for movement and A for jump, which is a robust and easily used method of control that flows reasonably smoothly.
Combat for three of the four main characters controls using a point and shoot method with the right hand while dodges and rolls are done with the left, this is supported by an ?auto-lock? feature which is reasonably effective, unfortunately the variation between the three characters weapons is too small to allow for much choice, you have a chainable select multiple targets, a point and shoot rapid fire, and a hold to charge point and shoot, but all three work so similarly in practise that you?ll likely end up using the rapid fire weapon in most fights..
The fourth character is a bit different rather than being a shooter with one variation of shooting weapon or another he wields a melee weapon which the game forces you to use against predominantly raged opponents by coating certain enemies in ?armor? making them immune to ranged attacks. As with most wii games that have swords in them you swing your sword by waggling the wii-remote, but the game adds the intelligent design of a push button then waggle to swing sword, this stops random sword swinging, but does pose the question of why not ?push button swing sword? why add in a waggle? oh wait it?s the wii, if we aren?t pretending to do inappropriate hand gestures it?s not a wii game.
Combat primarily takes place in arena style areas, where the otherwise quite narrow paths of the games platforming sections open out into slightly larger areas allowing for more free dodging and running, and a set number of opponents appear in an arena style combat game, that at some points feels slightly secondary to the game, like a random minigame that pops up and tries to kill you from time to time.
The combat is supplemented with ?special? skills for each character, a single skill that run the gambit from computer controlled attack clones for our sword swinger, to time freeze for our rapid fire shooting character? all in all not bad, if somewhat uninspired or unoriginal.
There is a degree of variation in combat mainly is through the opponents, but most fall to a spam the fire button combat technique that still makes combat a bit samey.
When it comes to the platform-puzzling sections of the game, also known as ?fine magic mugiffin a to open path?, sections, these are extremely linear and a bit boring but that is somewhat necessitated by the rail-track camera system that gives you limited views of pretty much any area, even when you run right over to the corners.
During a FEW these sections and also due to the limited camera it?s quite easy to loose your sense of depth, or your angle for a jump and fall down into the digital void, a frustrating event, that thankfully is minimised by reasonably intelligent level design, that while making the levels linear also makes sure you have a decent camera angle for most of the acrobatics you need to do.
Each of your four characters has some special trick or skill they use to get through certain areas of the world, but many of these skills could have been combined into one character as has been done in many other platforming games such as balance beams, wall climbing, wall smashing etc.
So while at times if you are hunting down specials the camera will be evil, and at other times will be evil just because of a moment of forgetfulness on the part of the designer, for the most part the platforming flows smoothly and the jumps are easily made, even if the sections are somewhat 1 dimensional.
This is a little padded at times, with the ability to go back to old levels and use newly found skills to open up new platforming paths so you can gather together some pictures and little cut scene vids that are part of the extras menu.
In the final section, the tunnel shooter, you play as one or another character controlling a little miniature submarine vessel in the ?digital sea? traveling forward at some speed you use the wii-mote pointer to control where your ship flies as well as where your ship shoots. This might seem like a somewhat awkward control method as your ship flies where you shoot, but combined with a push button to add targets and a target chaining system similar to one of the platforming characters, it works quite well, and although these levels are just straight tunnels of dodging and shooting they are fun enough in an old arcade game style to make it tempting to play them a second time.
You gather small motes of ?data? during your questing and use this to choose which skills to increase on which character, levelling up is either done on damage or on special skills on each character, which is something of an uninspired choice, but it does allow you to specialise in a single characters damage and breeze most combat.
So all in all while the gameplay is not inspired, it is for the most part robust, the camera sometimes makes it a bit more challenging that it should be, especially when bad guys appear behind the camera. However you run, jump and discover new paths with reasonable regularity which makes the game fun, and the linear nature of most levels means that the game flows from one level to the next with very few sections of stuck in the mud. It?s not a challenge but it is fun.
Storyline
Ok so this is hard for me to say, but the storyline sucks when stood on its own, why is that hard for me to say? Well because for me it didn?t need to stand on its own, I knew the story that came before and I even knew the story of the game before I played it, because I watched the TV show and enjoyed it. However there is no explanation, exposition or real set up for the game, you are dumped directly into the story arc about where the fourth season of the TV show begins without any explanation of what came before. This lack of background information means that for those not familiar with the TV show will stare at the screen completely lost and confused and will likely only half follow the storyline and in that case without much interest.
However, there is a big addendum to the words ?The story line sucks when stood on its own? and that is that when you have seen the TV show, and you know something of the story behind the game this is where the game SHINES well and truly.
The voice acting from the game matches up with the TV show perfectly, both in the slightly off emotional inflection and the entertainingly silly scripting, read perfectly by either the same actors or very good impersonations.
The between level story sections really give you the feeling of being in the TV show, trapped in the school grounds and forced to talk with whoever is hanging about. It includes elements of the TV shows mini-drama?s that take place at the school, from the ?rivalries? between characters to the drama over who?s in control of the school paper and the little dramas of the characters add a little personality to the game.
The art style of a detailed background with simply drawn characters matches the TV show almost to the most minute detail, and the extended and repeated intermediate cut scenes such as those for the ?scanning and virtualisation? of characters that begins each mission gives you the same ?arrrr stop repeating that? feeling of the TV show.
This is further supported by the actual gaming sections which match the art style of the TV show and which follow the special abilities of the different characters very well, the movement animations and fighting animations also match the TV show well.
With a story taken almost word for word from the final series of the TV show, voice acting and scenes that match, and game mechanics that support the feel of being in the TV show, the game is exactly what it purports to be, it is a game of Code Lyoko the TV, well and truly that.
Graphics
When it comes to the graphics they match the TV in that they are a mixture of cartoon drawn style, and cgi style animation and backgrounds, with most of the game taking part in the CGI animated world of Lyoko. Clean lines, and slightly repetitive shapes and patterns, but decent graphics.
Scores
Gameplay: 4
Breakdown: Platforming 4, Camera 3, Combat 4, Flow 4.5,
Comments: The controls are robust, the camera is a little iffy, the flow is good if linear, and the combat is serviceably fun.
Story: 3
Breakdown: Storyline 4, Weaving 3, Voice & Scripting 2, Accessibility 1,
Comments: The storyline needs some back knowledge, but it is part of the levels, the voice acting in every scene and in convos is fun but wooden.
Graphics: 4
Breakdown: Cut Scenes 4, Ingame 4,
Comments: fun hand drawn cut scenes and between missions, convos aren?t animated though, levels are fun and cleanly designed with few distractions.
Total 3.5-4
For scores or a quick review, skip to the bottom, labelled ?scores?.
The game Code Lyoko: Quest for infinity, falls into a genre that, on the wii at least, has gotten a very mixed bag of reviews, and I personally would call that genre the ?action/platform/puzzler? a combination of platforming, fighting for your life, and trying to find how to move on to the next section of the game.
On the Wii this genre, and infact most platforming genres have had a bit of a struggle, the limitation of a single thumb stick on the nunchaku means that the traditional platformer method of controlling the camera with one stick and the character with another has gone out the window on the wii and this has left allot of platforming games wallowing about in a serious struggle to make the game playable.
Games have tried everything to solve this game, an on/off button for the camera so you can hold down a button to toggle between character movement and camera movement on the stick, a camera that tracks behind the player, using the D pad, or even the point controller to control the camera, and to be honest in most games this has sucked.
CL:QfI has chosen to take an interesting route, and that is to stick the camera to a set of invisible railway tracks roughly the same height above the character the whole was and set the camera off to follow you. This differs in an important aspect from the camera that follows the character in that the camera moves backwards and forwards in exactly the same path, it follows that path even if your character runs along the edge of the screen or the middle of the screen, and it is at once both a help and a hindrance to the game, though most of the hindrance was removed by clever design, most? not all.
The Gamplay
So let?s talk about the actual game play first as that?s what a game is for, which splits between a very Japanese graphic novel style turn the camera and choose people to talk to format for the story aspect that takes place between missions, and the main body of the gamplay that is the action-platforming sections that take place on the fictional world of Lyoko and small tunnel shooter style vehicle sections in the ?digital sea?.
The storyline sections are just still backgrounds with characters super imposed, whom you can select to talk to, this gives you some link to the story, and all the conversation is voiced, even if the voice acting is somewhat wooden and uneven (we?ll discuss that more in the storyline section). Point and click, listen/read, move on? not the most inspired but it tells the story well enough.
In the ?Lyoko? or platforming sections you have four characters each of whom control pretty much identically, with slight differences in their movement patterns, all run the same speed and jump the same height, with the basic controls being d-stick for movement and A for jump, which is a robust and easily used method of control that flows reasonably smoothly.
Combat for three of the four main characters controls using a point and shoot method with the right hand while dodges and rolls are done with the left, this is supported by an ?auto-lock? feature which is reasonably effective, unfortunately the variation between the three characters weapons is too small to allow for much choice, you have a chainable select multiple targets, a point and shoot rapid fire, and a hold to charge point and shoot, but all three work so similarly in practise that you?ll likely end up using the rapid fire weapon in most fights..
The fourth character is a bit different rather than being a shooter with one variation of shooting weapon or another he wields a melee weapon which the game forces you to use against predominantly raged opponents by coating certain enemies in ?armor? making them immune to ranged attacks. As with most wii games that have swords in them you swing your sword by waggling the wii-remote, but the game adds the intelligent design of a push button then waggle to swing sword, this stops random sword swinging, but does pose the question of why not ?push button swing sword? why add in a waggle? oh wait it?s the wii, if we aren?t pretending to do inappropriate hand gestures it?s not a wii game.
Combat primarily takes place in arena style areas, where the otherwise quite narrow paths of the games platforming sections open out into slightly larger areas allowing for more free dodging and running, and a set number of opponents appear in an arena style combat game, that at some points feels slightly secondary to the game, like a random minigame that pops up and tries to kill you from time to time.
The combat is supplemented with ?special? skills for each character, a single skill that run the gambit from computer controlled attack clones for our sword swinger, to time freeze for our rapid fire shooting character? all in all not bad, if somewhat uninspired or unoriginal.
There is a degree of variation in combat mainly is through the opponents, but most fall to a spam the fire button combat technique that still makes combat a bit samey.
When it comes to the platform-puzzling sections of the game, also known as ?fine magic mugiffin a to open path?, sections, these are extremely linear and a bit boring but that is somewhat necessitated by the rail-track camera system that gives you limited views of pretty much any area, even when you run right over to the corners.
During a FEW these sections and also due to the limited camera it?s quite easy to loose your sense of depth, or your angle for a jump and fall down into the digital void, a frustrating event, that thankfully is minimised by reasonably intelligent level design, that while making the levels linear also makes sure you have a decent camera angle for most of the acrobatics you need to do.
Each of your four characters has some special trick or skill they use to get through certain areas of the world, but many of these skills could have been combined into one character as has been done in many other platforming games such as balance beams, wall climbing, wall smashing etc.
So while at times if you are hunting down specials the camera will be evil, and at other times will be evil just because of a moment of forgetfulness on the part of the designer, for the most part the platforming flows smoothly and the jumps are easily made, even if the sections are somewhat 1 dimensional.
This is a little padded at times, with the ability to go back to old levels and use newly found skills to open up new platforming paths so you can gather together some pictures and little cut scene vids that are part of the extras menu.
In the final section, the tunnel shooter, you play as one or another character controlling a little miniature submarine vessel in the ?digital sea? traveling forward at some speed you use the wii-mote pointer to control where your ship flies as well as where your ship shoots. This might seem like a somewhat awkward control method as your ship flies where you shoot, but combined with a push button to add targets and a target chaining system similar to one of the platforming characters, it works quite well, and although these levels are just straight tunnels of dodging and shooting they are fun enough in an old arcade game style to make it tempting to play them a second time.
You gather small motes of ?data? during your questing and use this to choose which skills to increase on which character, levelling up is either done on damage or on special skills on each character, which is something of an uninspired choice, but it does allow you to specialise in a single characters damage and breeze most combat.
So all in all while the gameplay is not inspired, it is for the most part robust, the camera sometimes makes it a bit more challenging that it should be, especially when bad guys appear behind the camera. However you run, jump and discover new paths with reasonable regularity which makes the game fun, and the linear nature of most levels means that the game flows from one level to the next with very few sections of stuck in the mud. It?s not a challenge but it is fun.
Storyline
Ok so this is hard for me to say, but the storyline sucks when stood on its own, why is that hard for me to say? Well because for me it didn?t need to stand on its own, I knew the story that came before and I even knew the story of the game before I played it, because I watched the TV show and enjoyed it. However there is no explanation, exposition or real set up for the game, you are dumped directly into the story arc about where the fourth season of the TV show begins without any explanation of what came before. This lack of background information means that for those not familiar with the TV show will stare at the screen completely lost and confused and will likely only half follow the storyline and in that case without much interest.
However, there is a big addendum to the words ?The story line sucks when stood on its own? and that is that when you have seen the TV show, and you know something of the story behind the game this is where the game SHINES well and truly.
The voice acting from the game matches up with the TV show perfectly, both in the slightly off emotional inflection and the entertainingly silly scripting, read perfectly by either the same actors or very good impersonations.
The between level story sections really give you the feeling of being in the TV show, trapped in the school grounds and forced to talk with whoever is hanging about. It includes elements of the TV shows mini-drama?s that take place at the school, from the ?rivalries? between characters to the drama over who?s in control of the school paper and the little dramas of the characters add a little personality to the game.
The art style of a detailed background with simply drawn characters matches the TV show almost to the most minute detail, and the extended and repeated intermediate cut scenes such as those for the ?scanning and virtualisation? of characters that begins each mission gives you the same ?arrrr stop repeating that? feeling of the TV show.
This is further supported by the actual gaming sections which match the art style of the TV show and which follow the special abilities of the different characters very well, the movement animations and fighting animations also match the TV show well.
With a story taken almost word for word from the final series of the TV show, voice acting and scenes that match, and game mechanics that support the feel of being in the TV show, the game is exactly what it purports to be, it is a game of Code Lyoko the TV, well and truly that.
Graphics
When it comes to the graphics they match the TV in that they are a mixture of cartoon drawn style, and cgi style animation and backgrounds, with most of the game taking part in the CGI animated world of Lyoko. Clean lines, and slightly repetitive shapes and patterns, but decent graphics.
Scores
Gameplay: 4
Breakdown: Platforming 4, Camera 3, Combat 4, Flow 4.5,
Comments: The controls are robust, the camera is a little iffy, the flow is good if linear, and the combat is serviceably fun.
Story: 3
Breakdown: Storyline 4, Weaving 3, Voice & Scripting 2, Accessibility 1,
Comments: The storyline needs some back knowledge, but it is part of the levels, the voice acting in every scene and in convos is fun but wooden.
Graphics: 4
Breakdown: Cut Scenes 4, Ingame 4,
Comments: fun hand drawn cut scenes and between missions, convos aren?t animated though, levels are fun and cleanly designed with few distractions.
Total 3.5-4