Harry Potter Reviews

This is one of those rare games that both very young kids and their parents will be able to enjoy. You don't need the hair-trigger reflexes of a 13-year-old Nintendo ninja to explore the complex and mysterious world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In fact, exploring the school is half the fun. There are secret passages, shifting staircases, and dangerous shrubbery wherever you look. The ultimate battle at the end is suitably challenging, but overall, the game is fairly forgiving. And you don't have to discover every single nook and cranny in order to pass to the next level.

Interacting with one's fellow students is also fun, and a real treat for serious Potter fans. As in the books, some schoolmates are helpful, some are rude, and some are simply awestruck when they meet you, the famous Harry Potter. Nearly all the characters from the book can be found in the game, including Potter pals Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Some characters are even more fully realized than they were in the movie: Fred and George Weasley, for instance, are always popping up in unexpected places via elaborate secret doors. Thanks to excellent voice work and diligent artistry from the game developers, the characters in the game look and sound like the characters from the film.

It's hard not to lose yourself in the lush graphics and delightful conversations, but as Professor McGonagall might say, Harry is at Hogwarts to learn, not to socialize! The way you learn and perform spells is clever: you must trace a specific onscreen pattern with the mouse. Accuracy and speed in your lessons wins house points for Gryffindor. Aside from your schoolwork, you must win Quidditch matches, solve mysteries, and eventually confront You-Know-Who.

The game is charming, but it is unfortunately obvious that a few corners were cut. For instance, sometimes solid walls can go semitransparent from certain angles, and the edges of the oval-shaped Quidditch Pitch look blocky and amateurish. The game also has a few bugs here and there. And finally, disappointingly, the pictures don't move. Still, the fun of this game is not in the playing of the game itself. The main fun lies in progressing through and interacting with J.K. Rowling's unforgettable universe. On that point, the game is a huge success. --Eric Fredrickson

Pros:

• Talking with the characters from the book/movie
• Sneaking around Hogwarts under the Invisibility Cloak
• Quidditch
• Easy navigation

• Obvious that a few corners were cut in making the game
• Relatively primitive 3-D graphics
• Hogwarts pictures don't move

Electronic Arts thankfully bestowed a lot of production value on this release rather than trying to cash in on a quick buck. Aside from the occasional pop-up problem that makes walls vanish quite unmagically, the graphics are beautiful and fun. Chocolate frogs (an appropriate health power-up) and other elements and characters from the book and film are wonderfully animated. The sound effects and, particularly, the voice acting are top-drawer, which helps suck the player into the Potter experience. Also, the gameplay is nicely varied throughout. Players go from learning a new spell in class to retrieving fire seeds for Hagrid to participating in magic fights against the Slytherin bully Draco Malfoy to riding the broom--which is especially fun. There's even a Quidditch level early on, but there's little to do and it's over very quickly.

On the downside, the game suffers from some really odd controls. Like many adventure games, jumping is really important, as many levels require you to clear obstacles or reach out-of-the-way items. But, unlike in nearly every other game in the genre, there's no jump button. Instead, players automatically jump from the edge of a platform from either a full stop or while running. It takes a lot of getting used to; if you're not at full run or full stop, it's easy to just walk right off the edge and fall. And, like too many other games, you can only save your progress at predetermined locations.

Another fault of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is its lack of challenge for experienced gamers. It's nice that the developers are trying to make it accessible to the entire cross-section of PlayStation-owning Harry Potter fans, but without varying levels of difficulty, it's less of a game than a tour through Potter's magical world. Still, it is an interesting world, and even though it's easy, the action is still varied enough to be fun. --Porter B. Hall

Pros:

• Good use of characters and plot elements from the story
• Varied gameplay
• Great production value
• Broom riding is really fun

• Very little challenge
• Odd control scheme
• Lethargic camera movement makes it sometimes hard to see what you're doing