Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity is based on a mildly popular French animated series starring a cadre of kids that use a supercomputer to battle a digital villain named X.A.N.A. in the virtual realm. The show is up to its fourth season, which is the basis for this Wii game: One of the kids' friends has gone missing in the virtual realm and X.A.N.A. is mounting a major attack by erecting towers in the different digital planes. To save the day, four of the friends must slip into the computer world and dismantle these towers. And for you to help them, get your wrist ready for a little waggle.

Admittedly, I have very little experience with the Code Lyoko series. I've caught some promos on television, but most of my knowledge about the show comes from checking the official site and hitting up Wikipedia. However, even armed with this background, it's still not exactly easy to make sense of the plot in Quest for Infinity. The game uses a handful of cutscenes and a ton of voice work over static portraits to advance the story, but unless you're really familiar with the source material, I wish you luck.

At the start of the game, you're looking in on an afternoon at the kids' school: Kadic. The game operates like a point-and-click game, with you using the Wii Remote to touch fellow students and teachers, as well as investigate a series of doors that lead to an option menu, a gallery of drawings from contest winners (which is very cool, actually), and a hub for bonus content like stills from the show. There is little here to nudge you toward the Factory door, which is where one of the students, Jeremy, works the controls of the supercomputer that blasts his friends into cyberspace. But as soon as you do click on that door, the game lurches forward.

Between each mission in the computer world, you are returned to this hub screen. Any collected bonuses from your travels are banked can be viewed, but the real point of touring this static shot of the campus is to click on friends and listen to story updates that may or may not have anything to do with your adventures in the virtual. Some of the dialogue is, such as anything regarding Paco the Disco King, just bizarre. One character even refers to his time battling Columbian cartels. (Parents, enjoy explaining what a Columbia cartel is to your kids.) These campus visits might be great to a real fan of the show, but an outsider like myself is likely just to wonder why all the voices for these teenage students sound like adults barely trying to mask their age.

Now, things do indeed pick up once you slip through the supercomputer and get to the action stages in the digital world. The first mission in the desert sector acts as a tutorial of sorts, where you only control Odd, one of the more flamboyant students. He runs a little like a cat. Once you reach the second mission, you control all four student heroes: sword-slashing Ulrich, Odd, Yumi, and Aelita. Each hero has their own attack as well as special moves and you must use the proper student to defeat certain enemies or overcome obstacles out in the realms. You choose heroes on the fly by pressing the d-pad on the Wii Remote.


Ulrich has a sword attack, unleashed by holding down B on the Wii Remote and waving the Wii Remote around. Waving in different direction unleashes different swipes, but the end result is always the same. Odd shoots energy arrows, aimed by pointing the Wii Remote at the screen. Yumi uses homing fans, locked on by pointing the Wii Remote at targets. Aelita releases charged attacks, fired the same way as Odd's arrows. Each hero also has a special move that taps into a power meter. These power moves mostly help overcome obstacles, such as Yumi balancing on narrow spaces or Odd's cat jumps on smooth surfaces.

Now, you don't have access to these special moves at first. If you want to collect all of the goodies and bonus content, you will revisit almost every single area to use these updated moves. Ulrich's special triplicate attack pounds through giant rocks, for example. These stop the other heroes cold. Whether you want to actually backtrack is largely dependent on how you like the game play itself, and that leads into Code Lyoko's biggest weakness: It's just such a basic 3D platformer.

Quest for Infinity takes absolutely no risks, instead opting to trade on game mechanics that have been staples since the very first 3D platformers of the PSone era. You will spend most of your time running through the worlds, jumping over gaps, riding platforms across empty spaces, and operating switch puzzles to lower gates or open bridges. The combat is also cookie-cutter, with enemies just pouring into areas. Some enemies require a specific hero, such as a mantis-like bug that is sliced with Ulrich's sword. Otherwise, it's just too easy to stick with Odd and pond everything with energy blasts from a distance. The Game Factory seems to be relying too much on the novelty of the Wii Remote to cover up the cracks in such creaky game play.

The game also uses collecting to hopefully extend game play. Each hero can upgrade their moves with data bits found while out exploring the digital realm. To uncover data bits, you simply blast open debris or defeat enemies. The rate of data pick-up doesn't exactly keep pace with the escalating prices of moves improvements, so it's obvious the developer wants players to keep zipping back through areas to grab additional data. The game never gets hard enough to demand most of these power-ups, so there's not exactly much incentive here.

The best parts of Code Lyoko are the flying sequences. The kids must occasionally cross the Digital Sea in the Skid, a polygonal cruiser. You control the Skid by pointing the Wii Remote around the screen and it works exceptionally well. While holding A, you lock on to incoming ships and release to unleash a series of blasts. The enemies get progressively tougher as you dive deeper into the Digital Sea, too. At first, you can easily pick off some incoming ships, but soon you have to deal with shielded enemies, enemies that dart in close, and obstacles like laser walls. When you defeat certain enemies, bonuses are released that restore hull integrity. Unfortunately, these sections are just too few compared to the otherwise mediocre platforming.



Code Lyoko makes very little effort to push the Wii. The worlds themselves are very, very plain. Surfaces are flat and painted with a single color. There are very few decorations or ornaments, especially in the ice world. The bland game worlds may match the show, which appears to use less-than-cutting edge CG, but that still leaves them unexciting. The characters themselves have decent animations, but there are a few nice touches, such as how Odd will look at the point on the screen where you point the Wii Remote.