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Scenery is spectacular, exploring is fun for fans

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: August 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I evaluate this game in three parts (playing at "normal" level):
1. exploration/discovery
2. tasks
3. dueling

1. exploration/discovery - 5 stars
Hogwarts castle and surrounding scenery are truly spectacular on the PS3. Everything from the owlery to the Gryffindor common room to the grand staircase is amazingly detailed and beautifully rendered. As a fan of the series, it was a joy to seek out the nooks and crannies, gain "discovery points", and feel like I really lived there.

2. tasks - 3 stars
The tasks in the first half of the game were my favorite - finding all the students in the DA. These tasks gave me a reason to explore the castle and grounds, and find hidden objects and secret passageways. They also required improving my spellwork using the PS3 controller. I found some of the tasks after Christmas tedious, however, and sometimes I felt bored or downright irritated (especially when tasks required too much repetition.)

3. dueling - 1 star
Here's where the game really missed an opportunity. I thought I was practicing my spellwork with all those tasks so I could become very good at dueling when the time came to meet Voldemort, Malfoy, and other baddies. Instead, it felt like the game practically took over for me, and I'm not sure I had much influence on what happened (although I do cast a good protego!) This was a shame, because OOTP has good fight scenes.

My game has hung once, and charms practice in Prof Flitwick's classroom has a bug and doesn't work properly.

I'm still pleased to own the game overall, for the sheer fun of "being at" Hogwarts and discovering fun treasures and clever rewards (I love the prefect's bathroom!) I also love seeing all my old favorite characters and hearing the real voices of the actors and the wonderful music. EA put a lot of effort into the game. They missed in some places and exceled in others. For fans, I'd say it's worth the investment.

Someone forgot that games are supposed to be fun

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: July 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is no fun at all.. it is boring and a waste of time. We have had this game for a couple of weeks and played it maybe twice. The quests are a joke.. the special items you can win are movie clips and interviews with the cast.
They only good thing I can say about this game is that the creators really did a great job with the graphics.. Hogwarts was huge.. but it reminds me of a virtual book or virtual movie.. there's really nothing to 'do'. The controls are akward, changing the view just can't be done unless you completely reposition the character.. and when you do.. 9 times out of 10, you're bumping into someone behind you.

We have really enjoyed a lot of HP games.. Prizoner of Azkaban was great.. but it seems that the creators are really overdoing it with the graphics.. but losing the point of 'why' games are played.. they're supposed to be fun! Personally.. I'd rather have cartoon graphics if it means that the game will hold our interest...

The only reason this game got 2 stars overall from us is that the graphics were good.

Short but fun.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Bought this for my son for christmas but discovered he had already completed the game for the Game Testers Club he goes to. So have returned it. He enjoyed the game but felt it was a little too quick and easy for him (he's 13). Probably better for a younger child who make take longer to complete it.

Harry Potter

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 13
Date: July 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I got this video game for my teenage daughter. She said that it was hard to figure out at first but, she really thought it is a fun, entertaining game to play if you are into to fantasy and magic things.

ok game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: August 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

a lot of hype but the graphics are not that good. Very crisp but the design itself isn't good.

Good, and at points, really fun

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The Harry Potter video game series has been a mixed bag since the beginning. There have always been some really nice elements to the series--the quidditch scenes in the earlier episodes, for example, were quite fun. But when it all comes down, these games have been about finding stuff. A *lot* of stuff. If you like finding stuff in the environment of Hogwarts, you are going to love this game more than any of the others.

This game tells its story only by sugestion. There really is little hope of following the story line unless you are already familiar with the story. I suppose that it really would be asking too much of the game to tell such a complex yarn, but still, with such great source material, one could hope for a little more. That is the biggest complaint, in my opinion.
If you already know the story, then you will be able to follow on without issues. The graphics are really lovely, and at times are actually breathtaking. Hogwarts, more than ever, is a fully realized environement. Threre are secret doors and moving portraits, gliding staircases, and hidden entrances galore. There are tons of people to interact with, although the types of interaction is a little limited at parts. You are tasked with a lot of finding of secrets. If you are (like me) a little obsessive in your approach to video gaming, you are going to be enchanted here. You literally have hundreds of secrets to get. You get little rewards when you collect enough of each. There are also a wide variety of tasks to complete--unfortunately, most of these are simply of the "find the x" category.

Cut scenes are nicely rendered. There are some mini games that are actually quite fun (playing gobstones against the other houses), and some that are more frustrating (playing wizards chess against the other houses). I found this frustrating not because the game was bad (it wasn't) but because I am not a chess champion, and you literally cannot complete every task unless you can win in chess against a pretty good AI.

All in all, we ended up playing this game for about 25 hours, prety steadily, and although at times we wished it were a little more varied, we couldn't stop. I guess that is ultimately a testimony in favor of the games.

I would hope that for future installments EA will try to use a little more creativity, but based on past performance, probably not.

This game is recommended for HP fans (Hogwarts is so beautiful and so fun to run around, it alone is worth the price of admission), and for folks who enjoy finding tons of little things in games. Otherwise, rent it.

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