User blog:TheIkranRider/My...Small Code Lyoko Retrospective

Ever since I noticed that Fanfictiondreamer was a fan of Code Lyoko, not to mention she's included it a lot on multiple pages here (The Ultimate Story 2, the major characters' pages, the Acolytes of the Mystics, etc.), I figured I should explain a little about myself.

Well, my humble beginnings started when I saw glimpses of the show, mainly the CGI segments, while my ex-stepbrothers were watching it on Cartoon Network. I wasn't really into it then, although it did remind me of a couple things: if you remember the Real Adventures of Jonny Quest there's Questworld; where there's the Matrix there's...well, the Matrix; where there's VR Troopers, there's Virtual Reality; where there's ReBoot, there's Mainframe. The list goes on. So, how I saw Lyoko was pretty much a sugarcoated version of the Matrix.

But it wasn't till Christmas of 2007 when I had the first game of the series for the DS, Code Lyoko: Get Ready to Virtualize. It was a blast playing this, and I really think it's one of the best DS games I ever had! The quartet (Jeremy Belpois, Aelita Schaeffer, Yumi Ishiyama, Odd Della Robbia, and Ulrich Stern) were some of the best teams I'd ever seen, X.A.N.A. was a mysterious, intimidating entity since V'Ger from the first Star Trek movie, or Megabyte from ReBoot, or Agent Smith or Jeremiah Surd. Heck, I even liked Aelita's backstory about her old man and the men in black. The world was immense, the game was easy to get into, and it was simple to get around. I'd consider it as one of the best licensed-based games ever! This was what started my interest in the series.

Embarrassingly enough, though, I had this idea back then of having Code Lyoko crossing over with The Time Machine (2002) and have the Forest Sector be the home of Alexander and the Eloi race with the heroes fighting of the remainder of the Morlock; bad idea.

So, anyway, I was lucky to head to GameStop sometime later and I got the second game in the series, The Fall of X.A.N.A. And lemme tell you, this was actually worse than the original! This was a stylus-only game, unlike the original; it was made as an action-RPG, unlike the original; there was hardly anything interesting and has little to no interactivity, unlike the original; there wasn't a lot of substance and the lackey, William Dunbar, was pathetic even though it reminded me of Bane from the Matrix sequels, unlike the original!! I was so damn lucky on beating it with a capital L; Lyoko meant Lady Luck, as well as the original, but I can say this game alone had some very low standards... Sure, it was supposed to conclude the series since obviously it's the "Fall of X.A.N.A" but the game itself was so anticlimactic.

Then, several years later when I got a PSP, there was the third game, Quest for Infinity. It brought back the things on what made the original game so great! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get very far in it, and the gameplay was more complex. On top of that, due to my Showitious involving Dissidia: FF, I eventually had the games and the console confiscated from me. Hey, at least I knew there was a new Sector 6 which involved a volcanic sector, unlike the last 2 games, even the Digital Sea; which was messed up since I really thought the previous title would end the series. Bummer.

A few years back from now, what was even worse was when I'd been trying to get into the actual animated series via internet, but having 97 episodes, eh....it probably shouldn't be that way. See, my first impression was in the games, where it was more fun and fast-paced, not so sluggish like the original material. Ergh..!

So...that's pretty much it. I haven't much to say on the matter. Although, as mentioned, I'd always prefer the first Lyoko game over anything else in what the series has to offer. I also hope that Fanfictiondreamer would make US2 come alive involving that universe, despite others; her stories have been getting more and more stagnant lately.