 Review By: Andrew Joy |
Developer: | EA UK |
| Publisher: | EA Games | |
| Genre: | Action | |
| ESRB: | Everyone 10+ | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | HDTV 720p |
Unlike some people, I make no secret of the fact that I am a Harry Potter fan. Sure, the books may be derivative (just look at Wizard’s Hall, The Midnight Folk and countless other older books if you don’t believe me) and essentially written for children, but I also find that Jo has woven all the pieces together into a compelling read for any age. Like most people, after I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I’ve eagerly awaited each subsequent volume and, more recently, I even threw myself into a sort of "media blackout" until after I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the series. And, like most people, I have my favorite – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is not it. (That honor, in case you’re wondering, goes to the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, though the last one was a great end to the series.) It isn’t that I have anything against the story itself, just that there isn’t enough of it and the whole thing seems comprised mostly of little subplots rather than major events. Some may disagree of course, but personally I would have been much happier if it had been broken up between Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the fourth and sixth books, respectively), though all three are quite massive in size. However, even if you do like the story, it shouldn’t be the reason you pick up this game.
As most of you likely know by now, Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived. Years ago, when Harry was just a baby, the powerful dark wizard Lord Voldemort tried to kill him, but the curse rebounded on the Dark Lord, seemingly bringing about his downfall. However, thanks to means that aren’t fully explained until the last two books and the events of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, He Who Must Not Be Named rises again; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is set directly after his resurrection. Harry hasn’t even started his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry yet, and already things have started off badly: the Ministry of Magic (and most of the magical community) refuses to acknowledge Voldemort’s return, Dementors attack Harry while he is on summer vacation, and his attempts to fend them off land him in court for the use of underage magic. If there is any glimmer of hope, it is that Hogwart’s headmaster Dumbledore has once again formed the Order of the Phoenix, a society of witches and wizards united against Lord Voldemort. Once Harry gets back to school, he finds things aren’t as good as he’d hoped, as the Ministry of Magic has appointed one of its own officials to teach – or rather not teach – Defense Against the Dark Arts and spy on Dumbledore. So, in order to learn practical defensive magic now, when they need it most of all, and to usurp the reign of Dolores Umbridge (the new DADA teacher), Harry and his fellow students form an underground movement called Dumbledore’s Army.
As I’ve said, the story shouldn’t be why you pick up Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and that is mainly because it only represents a relatively small part of the game. In fact, the main plot (and, really, that’s all you get, as most of the superfluous stuff is either represented by an oh-so-brief cutscene or has been cut entirely) is actually rushed along at quite a nauseating pace. In the beginning, you cast a quick spell to ward off the Dementors attacking you and your cousin Dudley in Little Whinging, then you’ll have a quick controls tutorial at 12 Grimmauld Place, the headquarters for the titular Order (which you’ll visit once again later in the game for some key plot points that’ll pop up in the later books), and then it is off to Hogwarts, where you’ll spend the rest of the game, until you head to the Ministry of Magic to face off against Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Even though all this stuff may seem considerable, if you only play from plot point to plot point, it only seems to take a few short hours, which is ridiculously unacceptable in my opinion. However, even if it isn’t a selling point and it may leave you feeling somewhat gypped in the end, the gameplay more than makes up for it.
For example, even as you rush along to all these locations, you won’t always be stuck playing as Harry (who is accompanied almost constantly by Ron and Hermione), but you’ll actually get to step behind the wands of Fred and George Weasley (in a sort of on-rails broomstick ride), Sirius Black (Harry’s outlaw Godfather) and even the venerable Dumbledore, though you won’t really get a chance to experiment with their playing styles too much, particularly since the events are usually highly scripted. But, in the end, the main reason you won’t care is because, even after you finish the story, you’ll be too busy trying to find all the secrets in the wonderfully massive and seamless castle. From the moment you step foot in Hogwarts, you are herded along to learn the basics behind the biggest draw in the game: exploration. For almost everything you do, you’ll earn a handful of Discovery Points, which slowly but surely unlock movies and trophies inside of the Room of Rewards. In order to track down the thousands of points, you’ll really do a number of fairly mundane activities, from cleaning up Hogwarts to tracking down passwords for passage-guarding portraits. However, there are also numerous other activities to do in the school apart from just exploring and discovering things, and in your time there, you can do a sampling of schoolwork and challenge other students to some of the magical games, like Wizards Chess, Gobstones and Exploding Snap.
Much like the Nintendo Wii version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the very basics of controlling your underage wizard are indeed fairly traditional (though you’ll likely be able to pick it up a lot faster, as the controller itself is also much more traditional), with start and select opening up the menu and Marauder’s Map (respectively), the left analog stick actually moving your character and all that. And, for the most part, it works fairly well, though I must admit centering the camera and the first-person perspective don’t work as well as I’d like, but that seems to be a problem universal to every version of the game I’ve played so far, from console to handheld. However, once again, when it comes to casting spells, things take a radical turn for the unusual, and unfortunately not for the better. As opposed to the Wii, some spells – like Accio and Depulso, which require two quick taps either down or up – can be easier to pull off on the PS3 and Xbox 360, as you essentially gesture with your right analog stick. However, some of the later spells can be almost impossible to cast when you are in a hurry and, as a whole, the setup is far less graceful and intuitive than the Wii’s motion controls.
Posted: 2007-09-03 17:04:22 PST