Title     Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 Developer    EA Bright Light Studio Publisher    Electronic Arts Platform    Xbox360, PS3, Wii, DS, PC (Xbox360 version reviewed) Genre    Third Person Adventure, Action Release Date    19th November, 2010

With the latest film in the series currently showing on cinema screens worldwide, the accompanying video game instalment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) is sure to have many a Wizard or Muggle in a flurry of excitement. Equipping my robe and wizard’s hat, I sit down to immerse myself in a world of magic, adventure and friendship.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, despite being a bit of a mouthful, has you once again taking the role of, the now rather grown up, Harry as he sets out to defeat ‘he who shall not be named’ once and for all, joined along the way by his trusty companions, Hermione and Ron.

It’s Potter’s darkest hour and, backed up by the age rating on the box art, proudly displaying a twelve, the notion of this being a children’s game hops away quicker than a chocolate frog out of a train window. Could this be the game older fans have been waiting for? It certainly gives off the right signals but inside the tale is slightly different.

The game plays out much like any third person shooter and thankfully doesn’t really suffer from the control issues that seem, all too often, to plague the genre. Moving is just as you’d expect and the character’s response to your analogue stick twitching is good enough to keep up with even the most frantic of controller bashing.  You’d expect that a game based on one of the most prominent stories of the last few years to have a feeling of continuation, a sense of flow at least, but it is so often the case that a mission will end abruptly and the next one will begin just as quick.  It’s as if you’re stuck in a feeling of rubber banding; you keep trying to go so far but the game just pings you back to start out all over again.  Every now and then you’re presented with a choice of three missions, and the order in which you complete them is entirely up to you.  It is the game’s way of trying to derail some of that extremely linear  gameplay, but seldom does it work.  With each of the three missions being completed in no more than five to ten minutes, each the game’s attempt to mix things up again only serves as a reminder as just how disjointed it really is.

A mission that has you escaping from a Dragon’s lair has so much potential that you can almost capture the imagination of it all, but it’s over so fast that within half an hour you’ve all but forgotten about it. It does pick up towards the final third of the single player experience, with missions being considerably longer and a lot more memorable, but the sour taste from earlier on still lingers. It’s not that it’s a particularly bad campaign, but it’s not a good one either. It’s almost as if the game was subjected to two different design ideologies and the end result is a bit of a mess, lying somewhere in between.

The biggest gripe I had though is that I had literally no idea what I was doing half the time. I’m no stranger to the world of Hogwarts and Muggles, but even so, a little help regarding what the potions that I was necking back were doing would have been nice. I spent the majority of the game looking for a Horcrux, and still have no idea what it is, let alone what it does. It’s as if the game has pre-determined that I have a never-ending font of knowledge tucked away when, in reality, I don’t.  Sure, I can tell the difference between a Whomping Willow and Wingardium Leviosa, but there is a limit; a bit of information on screen would have gone a long way to assisting the player instead of leaving him stood scratching his head.

There are some things that do work well – the magic system being one. A simple spell wheel grants you access to a number of different spells, each proving to be useful depending on the situation you find yourself in and that’s the thing…there are times when you do genuinely think “this spell isn’t up to the task, I need to be using something different”, but even then those times are rare.

Again, it’s as if the game wants to sabotage itself to the point where anything remotely good is counter-acted with something twice as bad. The magic system shows promise, but then it’s completely ruined by combat that is so repetitive that, towards the end, you find yourself running through the waves of enemies just to hit the next auto-save point. After all, anything beats the constant tapping on the right trigger to cast a spell, which pretty much sums the combat up really; it is nothing but right trigger tapping with the ability to throw potions for good measure.

Sure, the spells themselves are good and I can now boast of knowing half a dozen spells and their uses, but that’s where the good stuff stops; you find yourself almost pleading for the game to give you something more but it just constantly lets you down.  Even an attack by a Dementor lacks any sort of excitement and is quickly pushed aside with a quick Expecto Patronum spell – as cool as that may sound, it lacks any of the punch it has within the books or films as there’s a distinct lack of any sort of summoning of a protector going on, instead you’re left with a bit of glowing bubble, of sorts.

The addition of Kinect does little to rescue any sort of lasting enjoyment from the game, feeling more like a ‘stuck-on-at-the-end’ feature than a well thought out idea. It’s good for all of five minutes but, eventually, watching young Harry travel around maps in an FPS-on-rails style is rather boring.  More so, you are, for some baffling reason, only limited to casting two different spells per Kinect level.  Calling it a level is being generous – it’s actually more like five minute gaps of gameplay while you flick your wrist.  Casting spells actually works rather well and, from a technological stand point, Kinect does a good job at picking up what you are doing, but it never feels quite enough.  Not once did I feel like I was performing magic, never did I believe I had a wand in my hand – so what’s the point?  The premise has potential but it severely lacks any sort of lasting gameplay with every Kinect mission being completed within forty minutes and only one not achieving the full five stars on offer.

Pros

• Good voice acting
• Spell system is fun and works well

Cons

• No cohesion, every time you start getting into the game it pulls you back
• Lack of basic information on offer
• Combat system is highly repetitive and boring
• Kinect feature feels bolted on as an afterthought
• World is boring and dull, not one that is full of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Summary

This may not even be one for fans of Harry Potter and certainly not for anyone without any interest in the franchise at all. It not only fails in pivotal areas, but it’s as if the game wants to fail; there’s just nothing in it to keep you going back for more and, towards the end, you’re literally tapping your foot waiting for the credits to roll.

The lack of information on display is shocking, even to the point where I had to Google certain characters to see who they were. If there’s no place within the actual story for that sort of thing then loading screens would have made the perfect place to detail any information that could be considered relevant, instead of telling me about Wingardium Leviosa time after time.

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