Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

It’s been a busy couple of months for Harry Potter. There’s another Harry Potter movie just out, the final book due to be released to the swarming masses any day now, and oh yes, here’s another new film spin off game to go with the movie. Film spin offs are funny things, especially if you’ve seen the movie already. I’ve seen all but the latest film, read all but the latest book, but not played any of the games before. I must confess I picked up the game with some trepidation, thinking for sure this would all be a case of ‘been there, done that’. So was I right? Well, yes and no.

I find it hard to believe there’s anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know the Harry Potter story, so I’ll spare you the full recap. In any case, I don’t think you’ll find you miss much if you don’t know the details of this particular book. It’s Harry’s fifth year at Hogwarts, and he and his classmates create a group called Dumbledore’s Army, in order to learn some practical defense skills so they can fend off the Dementors (and Lord Voldemort to boot). The game follows Harry as he and his mates race around solving puzzles and performing all sorts of different tasks and even mini games.

Exploring Hogwarts is great fun. All your favourite characters, ghosts, portraits and moving staircases are there. There are loads of things to manipulate with your different spells, and pleasantly, you can cause quite a bit of havoc with your spells. You can wingardium leviosa your little heart out, whether it’s to put more wood on the fire in the Gryffindor common room, or to cause a little chaos in the library by wedging a large table up against several students while they're studying.

The discovery doesn’t end with your surroundings either. Early on in the game you discover a Room of Rewards, in which you unlock different rewards by gaining Discovery Points, but also for achieving different goals, such as getting all Os for your classes, or finding all of the different house ghosts. Discovery points also help to amp up your spell power. Other things worth aiming for are to become the best in school at Wizard Chess, Gobstones and Exploding Snap.

Hogwarts looks great, and will be instantly recognisable to most of you. The characters themselves are meant to be rendered so as to portray the actors more reliably, but I find myself sinking further into the uncanny valley when I look at them – they’re similar, but still a bit creepy to look at. Luckily the voices are excellent. I’d say most of the cast has thrown their hats in for the game. It does make all the difference.

There are a few things about the game that add a bit of tarnish to the shine, of course. The worst I found was with regard to the overall gameplay. Namely, there isn’t a lot. You move Harry around Hogwarts, and of course you’re free to go wherever you like and do whatever you want, but there is always someone with you (Hermione, Ron, or Myrtle the ghost) saying things like “we should really get back to the Common Room now”, or “Let’s go find Neville”, and off you go, trotting from place to place when everyone tells you to.

I could be over-emphasising this, I suppose. After all, there’s a movie storyline to make your way through, but all the same, I couldn’t help but feel that the game would be that much nicer if it could lead me to make those decisions on my own, rather than being told what to do by every other character in the game. Even the paintings yell at you when you go by. Actually – that’s kind of cool.

Other things that were annoying included: having to watch the Warner Brothers intro every time I loaded the game, not being able to skip cut scenes if you forget to save and the game crashes, the rampant use of trade marking in the manual, and the difficult navigation keys (I’ve been playing for hours and still keep walking into things).

I suppose that’s the most difficult part about liking Harry Potter. Just when you find yourself immersed in the environment, totally loving everything about the world, the reality of the commercialism and marketing, and, well, hype, comes back and makes you see that at this stage, it’s all about getting bums in seats and money out of wallets. I love it, and then I hate it. It’s too bad; I really think this game would be an absolute stunner if it wasn’t part of the Harry Potter machine (i.e. had been given a bit more development time and not had to stick so slavishly to the storyline), yet at the same time being able to roam around the Hogwarts you’ve read about and seen on the big screen is just so damn cool.

The puzzles and games are pretty easy (I was hoping Wizard’s Chess would be harder), and for that reason I suspect this game’s been marketed at the younger set. At the same time, if you’re looking for something a bit light-hearted and fun, you could do a lot worse than to spend a bit of time with this one.