Game Factory has been given the license for Code Lyoko, a popular Anime-style show on Cartoon Network. They wasted no time in producing a game for the DS, to capitalize on the show’s strong following among kids in their early teens. The player takes the role of Ulrich, Odd Yumi and Aelita, in their fight against X.A.N.A. in the virtual realm of Lyoko. The final product is an ambitious little endeavor that stays true to its source material but has a few flaws in execution.

This game is sure to make fans of the TV show happy—it includes all of the main characters in playable form, and is divided into to play styles: adventure and Lyoko mode. In this way it encompasses the show’s premise, which concerns a group of middle schoolers who find a way to transport to a virtual world called Lyoko. The game takes advantage of the DS medium’s storage capacity by squeezing a lot of full motion video cutscenes onto the card, most of them taken right from the show. The locations and environments are faithful to their animated counterparts with good attention to detail.

The game’s division into two forms of play reflects the show’s contrasting styles. In the show, the “real world” is represented with traditional animation and Lyoko is done in CG. The game follows this pattern by having the real world school presented in a point-and click, sprite-based style while Lyoko is rendered in 3D polygons and follows an action beat-em-up format. Each level has two halves, where the characters start at the school and then progress into Lyoko. The two modes complement each other but they don’t function on par with other games in their respective genres.

The 2D adventure mode follows the formula established by older titles, albeit simplified. Most of the objectives involve finding a critical item and then taking it to a certain person or location. Navigating the school proved somewhat confusing, because depth within the scenes wasn’t consistent from one area to the next. The overhead map, displayed on the top screen, added to the confusion by having a strange orientation; up on the D-pad could mean left on the map. This made finding objectives unnecessarily frustrating and marred an otherwise enjoyable adventure experience. Each character got their fair share of time in the adventure levels, but there wasn’t a big difference between each one.

That all changes in Lyoko. Odd, Ulrich, Yumi and their virtual friend Aelita all have different skills and play styles, which add some strategy to the 3D gameplay. For example, Ulrich fights only with a blade, whereas Odd is strictly a projectile fighter, so choosing characters for the right situations is usually the difference between success and failure. Lyoko is a hazardous environment, and the entire means of interaction changes from point and click to a 3D quest. The polygonal landscapes have a surreal quality and are nicely rendered and textured to represent a virtual Tron-esque world.

Lyoko is a bit more interesting than the school because there’s more to do—namely, combat. Creatures will spawn and project life-force barriers to trap the player, and attack from all angles. Code Lyoko gets very challenging during these fights, almost to the point of hardcore arcade difficulty. Without the right character or skill upgrade, the player will often end up dead, and several times in a row too. This challenge is welcome for older, more experienced gamers, but the younger crowd that watches the show might just get frustrated after dying so many times.

To be honest, some of the difficulty results from how the ch...