Everything about this game gives me the impression that it was rushed out the door without being tested thoroughly, and that's just sad. Even the DS game was better than this.
The game loosely follows the plot of the fourth and final season of the show, ending with the freeing of William from Xana's control; the gameplay is almost exclusively confined to Lyoko, with the option to switch between characters at will depending on which weapon or ability you want to use. Also, in addition to the four original sectors and Sector 5, there's a new volcanic sector.
To be fair, the graphics are competent for the most part, if a little vanilla, and the voice acting is entertaining; I especially like the option to switch between English and subtitled French, probably the only opportunity American Code Lyoko fans will ever have to hear the characters' voices as they were originally performed. It's worth pointing out too that the bits in the Digital Sea were fun, although the weapons took some getting used to. But everything else about this game just seems horribly broken to me.
For one thing, every time I played a level on the new volcanic sector, the graphics started to lag and everything suddenly turned maddeningly slow and jerky. For another, the characters' weapons are completely unbalanced; of the four, only Odd has a ranged weapon that can be fired while running--Aelita has to completely freeze every time she fires, and Yumi and Ulrich's weapons are so ridiculously short-ranged that you almost have to be right on top of the enemies before they start to take any damage--so you'll probably end up using Odd almost exclusively. (Incidentally, why does Ulrich start off only using one saber when you can see two hilts on his back?) The health stations and checkpoints are scattered throughout the levels more or less at random, and Aelita's connect-the-dots block building and Odd's Metroid-style wall jumping take entirely too much getting used to. Add in the fact that there's no camera control, and you could hardly be blamed for suspecting that the designers are indeed out to get you.
But the biggest slap in the face is the ending, or the lack of one; once you've beaten the game, you're treated to a clip that lasts about five seconds and a credits sequence that's identical to the one from the show, the one with the Subdigitals song and the file folder. That's all the game has to reward you with; hardly worth the effort it took to get there. I was also stunned to see that the game doesn't even allow you to explore Kadic Academy beyond a tiny strip outside the main gate; and although the other characters from the show are hanging around, talking to them yields almost nothing except the occasional "goodie" (usually a still frame from the show or a bit of concept art). One thing I did enjoy was a gallery of entries from a contest that was apparently held at some point; I don't know any of the details, but it was still fun to see some original monster designs from the fans. I can't recommend this game for hardcore Code Lyoko fans, because it doesn't add anything to the story that you didn't already get by watching the show, and the game doesn't provide nearly enough background for non-fans to have any hope of following the plot. And either way, the gameplay is so broken that it's not worth the money. Give it a miss.Buy Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity!
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