Harry Potter 6: Game

As an adult when the first Harry Potter film hit the silver screen, I was hardly interested in jumping into a children’s fantasy. Though since it hit during Thanksgiving weekend, I took my young nephew and niece to see the film, as was tradition in my family. While sitting in the front row at the far right of the screen I watched the three hour film, my neck screaming in pain, a miracle occurred. I found my inner child that grew up with the Goonies, The Neverending Story and Disney’s Aladdin. By the time the third film rolled around I had caught up with the books and enjoyed both mediums.

Prior to writing this review I have read the book, but have yet to buy my ticket for the film, which I am sure will be soon. I jumped into this game looking for a darker Potter and hoped for a polished game.

Set up & Presentation

J.K. Rowling created in her books the Hogwarts School and campus with great description and wonderful, believable character (as far as personalities, not abilities) to fill the world. Warner Bros. films filled in the gap where imagination is usually required with every bit of care. And now EA has brought us down into Harry Potter’s shoes to freely explore Hogwarts ourselves, which sounds very cool; and it is at first.

The story in the game is really just there as a refresher for those that have read the book or seen the film. Plot points come up but do not necessarily connect, they are there merely to help you learn the campus and find new things to do. This game is not a retelling of the story, but here to let you experience a piece of Harry’s life as a sixth year student.

Game Play

The game consists of crest collection, mixing potions, playing Quidditch and dueling. Since the Hogwarts campus is fairly large, EA included Nearly Headless Nick as a guide who will lead you to where you want to go, if desired. Nick is a relieving addition and always has something different to say as he pops up.

Potions are a very important part of the sixth story and they are as well in the game. You will be prompted to make different potions for class, teachers, and if desired for the potions club. You will be given step by step directions to add ingredients to the cauldron, heat and stir. The color of your brew will change as an indicator of when you need to cork your bottle of leach blood and shake.

Quidditch consists of flying through stars while in pursuit of the snitch. The stars fill your timer to give you more time in your Sneeking. Quidditch is always on rails and all you need to do is press up, down, left or right on your control stick to keep yourself in play. It is cool the way you swoop around the arena, down under the bleachers, and out of the court, unfortunately this is one of the places in the game where you can tell not much time was spent on the graphics and looks like it could have been created for the original XBOX. An example is the crowds that look like three different 2d images that cycle; something that even table tennis in Wii Play has 1UPed. Some extra time spent designing on an arena that the player faces many times would have gone a long ways in creating a cinematic experience.

Deuling is by far the most enjoyable part of Harry Potter 6. As you take on students from the different Houses you will learn new spells to use. Each spell consists of flicking the analog sticks in different directions while using the shoulder buttons to dodge your opponents spells. It is a very good idea to practice with each house during the course of the game to make your spells stronger for battles against Crabbe, Goyle and occasionally a Death Eater.

There will also be points in the game where you get to control a different character, or even change perspective. One of such points is actually the most fun I had in the game.

Controls & Polish

The controls for navigating the Castle are pretty poor. Why EA decided not to map the controls the way most games this generation do is beyond me. The controls for the mini-games are fairly good; go figure.

As with controls I can only guess why parts of the game are really polished and others are not. It especially confounds me since they received an extra eight months to work on the game when Warner Bros. decided to delay the movie at the last minute from November 2008 to July 2009. I guess they had a budget and stuck to it. Some examples are that two thirds of the time you see Dumbledore his mouth doesn’t move while speaking to Harry, even everyone else in the game does so while speaking. Also you will see areas of the castle that have much finer textures than others. Fortunately I did not encounter any bugs to speak of.

To Buy or Not to Buy:

Save your money. Or maybe pick it up in a bargain bin when it hits $20 (though $10 would be my sweet spot). The few redeeming parts don’t make it worth the purchase, even though a little more polish might have pushed it in that direction. Yes there are fun parts of the game and yes there are some easy achievements, but there is much more fun to be had out there for the full price of a retail game.