It's been a few days since I finished my Harry Potter Marathon. I've seen the last movie as well, and as a result, there's been a bit of a letdown since I finished. Far from being disgusted and frustrated with a crappy movie tie-in, I left the series feeling satisfied, and wanting more.
It seems that in the gaming media, trashing movie tie-ins is considered a safe and fun thing to do. As I played through each of the Harry Potter games starting way back with the 2001 PlayStation 1 release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and ending with this years PlayStation 3 (and 360/Wii/PC) release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 the one constant that I kept seeing was that the reviewers had it all wrong.
Perhaps it's because the reviewers try to review the games in a vacuum. Meaning, that they play through the game and judge it as a stand-alone product. Perhaps they are looking for innovation. I'm not really sure what it is but a movie tie-in game isn't designed as an innovated product. It's there for fans of the movie, and as such should be judged accordingly.
Let me clear, none of the Harry Potter games I've played would be able to compete with a Super Mario Galaxy, or Red Dead Redemption, or Ratchet and Clank, or Assassin's Creed. But when I see a game get a 4.0 (GameSpot's review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2), that to me says, "Do not play this game as there are no redeeming qualities in this title and you will probably want to gouge your eyes out after you are done playing this."
However, far from that, I found all the games to be fun, engaging and at times, challenging. If there is any complaint to be leveraged against the games, it's that they are far too short, if you plan on just playing through the story. If you decide to maximize your playtime with each game by completing everything, you can probably at least double your playtime, thus increasing the value derived from each game.
The games, like the books and movies, have evolved and matured over time. You can almost see this transition just by viewing the covers from each of the games, starting with the cartoon Harry Potter on the Sorcerer's Stone cover to the photo of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint with a burning Hogwarts in the background.
The first few games were fun, with a bare skeleton of a storyline. They took quite a lot of liberties with the source material, but in the end they were enjoyable if somewhat disjointed from a narrative standpoint. From a gameplay standpoint they were like platformers, with a minimal amount of combat but lots of levels to navigate while solving puzzles from level to level.
Goblet of Fire took a completely different approach, going for a more combat focused game while being structured like a Mario game. Throughout the game there was a total of 38 Triwizard shields you could get (much like stars in Mario) and you had to earn a certain number before you could unlock the next level. While there was more combat, it really just ended up being a button masher to cast jinxes as quickly as possible. Being strictly level based, this game dropped almost all the narrative in favor of the gameplay. Unless you read the books or saw the movie, you would hopeless lost. I'm sure the majority of players were in one or both of those categories but it still would have been nice to have a bit more narrative to the game.
With Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, the gameplay changes once again, this time to an open world/sandbox style. You are given the whole of Hogwarts to wander about in and out of, and these two games represent two of the best games in the series. Both game stick to a light version of the story presented in the movies, with a few embellishments but have added tons of items to do in each game, with collections, classes, Quidditch, and more. Just being able to walk freely through Hogwarts is great in and of itself. Between the two, I'd give the edge to Half-Blood Prince as everything looks better, there's a bit more variety in the events, dueling was really fleshed out as a combat mini-game and the game was actually really funny.
The series took yet a final turn with the two Deathly Hallows games. Both games had a much tighter narrative and the gameplay itself change to a third-person shooter. Best comparison I can make would be that the games were like Harry Potter meets Uncharted. Part 1 had some issues both in narrative (Did you know that Harry Potter, while on the run from the Death Eaters and searching for Horcruxes, would often times pop over to various locations and directly confront the Death Eaters and Snatchers to save Muggle-born wizards and witches? Not really keeping a low profile there, eh Harry?) and gameplay. Thankfully, almost all the issues were addressed with Part 2 which ended up being a great adaptation of the events in the movie. There were fantastic moments captured in the game, that we don't necessarily see on screen, such as Seamus readying the bridge for destruction, or Ron and Hermione's dungeon crawl to the Chamber of Secrets. Of course one of best moments was the long walk as Harry went to the forbidden forest, attacked by Death Eaters at first and then taunted as they realized that the great Harry Potter was actually going to give himself up. After I completed the game and the credits rolled, I was treated to a montage of all the past Harry Potter video games, which, for me, especially having just finished a Harry Potter marathon, was a fantastic ending to the series.
It was a great run, and while I am sad that the current marathon is over, I'm happy to say that I don't think it's really over. There's quite a few of those Harry Potter titles that still need to be completed. Maybe in the future, I can do a Harry Potter Completion Marathon.
2012 sounds good right?
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