System: Xbox 360
Developer: Traveller's Tales
Story:
The story is based on the movies which were based on the books and remain relatively faithful to both. There are some creative ways in which the story is unfolded so that you are playing the main character instead of just watching what is happening around you. It starts with the brief beginning of how Harry was placed on the doorstep of his Aunt and Uncle and grew up being tormented by his cousin Dudley. But the real story of Harry starts when he gets to Hogwarts and learns to be a wizard.
As you play the story based missions you have interludes that take place in Hogwarts where you go to class to learn spells and can discover things around the grounds. Not all areas are open for you at the beginning so you'll need to learn spells to unlock new areas.
While walking around Hogwarts can be fascinating and fun, it can also be very confusing and easy to get lost if you are trying to go to a specific place in Hogwarts. While you are still playing the story missions Nearly Headless Nick will leave a trail of ghost studs of where you need to go next. Once you complete the story missions those ghost studs go away and you are left to fend for yourself. I had to go online to find a map of Hogwarts otherwise I never would have found my way around.
You had 6 levels based on each of the first four movies/novels called chapters. I wish I could the story a full 5 penguins but some levels were long and tedious, while others seemed rush and short. Inconsistencies in the flow of the story have me taking one penguin away.
Story Score:
Characters:
There are already built in characters to the story that are absolutely wonderful. Bringing those characters to life in Lego form was interesting at times. There are character tokens you find while playing the game and once found you can go purchase them so they can be used in the levels. Some characters, Hufflepuff for instance, will only be able to access areas for their specific house. In addition to the main set of characters in the books (i.e. Snape, Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, Draco, etc.) there are a lot of other characters who's real value to the game is only in finding their token and buying their character. There is no reason to have them other than to pad the character token collectibles. And boy are there a lot of them.
Some of the really interesting characters I wasn't able to unlock until later in my play through of the game. I wish I had had those characters unlocked earlier because they were fun to play with. Unfortunately that isn't the case for a lot of the high profile characters.
Because of how the character tokens are spaced out and who you might need for each level you will probably end up playing each level several times as you unlock a new type of character which will unlock a new thing in a previous level. If you want to wait and get any many characters unlocked as possible before playing the Free Play modes it turns out to be a lot of grinding (and getting lost) in Hogwarts. And even then you won't be able to unlock everything because some characters you find in Hogwarts are needed for the levels, but some characters you find and unlock in the levels are needed for Hogwarts.
The downside to the characters besides way too many to find and unlock is that they didn't offer up a whole lot of variety in what they could do. The evil witches and wizards have the Avada Kedavra spell but that's about it. Depending on which version of Harry, Ron or Hermione you pick you might not get one that has learned all the spells yet. Trying to defeat a Boggart? Make sure the character you picked has learned Riddikulus. The easiest way to fix that is to always pick a character from later in the game. This usually means you play with the same 4-5 characters for all the levels. Not much variety there.
Character Score:
Game Mechanics:
There is one game mechanic that I absolutely hated. And another one that was annoying a lot of the time.
The one that was annoying was the camera. You couldn't always move it around to get a better view of what you were doing. There are 4 banners in the front hall that you have to zap and they unfurl. When they do you will get a gold brick. You need all gold bricks to get 100% in the game. I had all the gold bricks except this one . . . but do to camera angles and such I couldn't get Slytherian and Gryffindor's banner to unfurl. I watch who know how many videos on how other people did it (who didn't seem to have a problem when I did) and still it took about 30 minutes of trying on 3 or 4 nights before I finally got both of them to unfurl. To this day I still don't know how I did it when it failed all the other times.
That was the worst offender for the camera but it was so annoying in so many other instances. It was almost enough to make me pull my hair out and quit playing the game forever. I didn't, thankfully, but I'm really hoping it's not too much of a problem in the next Lego Harry Potter game (or any other Lego game).
The one game mechanic I absolutely hated is partially my fault. But only because the game didn't probably explain things to me.
In the previous Lego games I've played you collect red bricks that you can then purchase which gives you modifiers that can make your game easier . . . or just plain silly. Do you want your Stormtroopers to carry carrots instead of blasters? There's a red brick for that. Usually you find those in the levels that you play . . . not in the hub world. For Lego Harry Potter things were different and the game never explained that to me.
All the red bricks . . . and I mean ALL . . . can be find in Hogwarts. Now I mentioned earlier that you walk around Hogwarts in between story missions. That's great and all but it doesn't explain that you have to come back and walk around and do everything again to find the red bricks to get the score multipliers, the extra hearts, the invincibility, etc bonuses that make playing the game so much easier. I didn't realize this until I was through playing the Free Play modes for the first 2 and half movies. Because I didn't have things like "Character Token locator" or "gold brick locator" there were a bunch of things I missed while playing through the levels for the second time. Which meant I was going to have to play them a third time.
Once I figured out I had to go back to Hogarts to find the red bricks and then buy them I had to spend a lot of time grinding in Hogwarts before going back to the levels. Once I did go back to the levels things were so much easier when I had all my helps turned on. I wish the game had told me that.
Another thing that was annoying, but avoidable, was that all the extra spells that you can buy, but don't really need, are put in to one slot on your spell wheel. If you wanted to use a specific one, like Glacius to freeze people, you'd have to wait until it's icon popped up in the slot and hope you cast the spell before it changed to the next one. Now, you don't have to use any of these spells as you play the game, but they are hilarious to see what happens when you do. But . . . if you want to get all the achievements you have to use the Glacius spell to freeze a bunch of people. Now you could have just bought that spell so it's the only one in the slot but it's a lot of gold and there's cheaper spells to buy and equip. So if you have multiple spells it's just a matter of watching the spell slot and hoping you time it right. Annoying.
Game Mechanics score:
Art Design:
There wasn't really anything too special about the art design of the game. It was whymsy and magically and it fit the game. How they transformed things into the Lego shape and design was interesting but not as rigid as other Lego games. It fit the mode and humor of the game and was enjoyable to look at.
Art Design score:
Overall Impressions:
Other than the items mentioned in the Game Mechanics section the only other real problem I had was with a specific level. The Tome Riddles Diary level where you go back in time and play with Tom as one of your characters and the level is done in a sepia tone theme it glitched out on me 3 times . . . in 3 different places. It was really frustrating the first time. I held my breathe the second time as I made my way through the part where it glitched only to have the game glitch again a little further on. And the same thing again a little further past that. I was afraid that I might have a game breaking glitch and would never be able to get past that point in the game. It took several attempts but I did. After that, whenever the screen would freeze for a bit I was worried that the same thing would happen all over again.
It was fun to play the game and made me immediately want to start playing Lego Harry Potter years 5-7 but I've decided to take a break for awhile. The humor in the Lego games is spot on for the characters and sometimes that is enough to make up for the annoying things that happen along the way. The game isn't ground breaking or revolutionary but if you are a fan of the Harry Potter series (movies or books . . . or both) it should be something you sit down to enjoy. If you're like me and do stupid mistakes it should provide you with around 60 hours of enjoyable game play. If you're better than me at video games (and everybody is) you could probably complete it in 30-40 hours. If you do play it I would take your time and enjoy the experience. It's worth it.
Overall Impression score:
If you want to watch how I played the game (very badly), here's a link to my YouTube playlist for the game.
