Of all the many decent to terrible movies jammed in cheek to jowl at your
local multiplex this weekend, the pick of the bunch has to be the latest
installment of Harry Potter.
So what makes this sixth edition so engaging? Is it the show stealing
arrival of Oscar winner Jim Broadbent as Prof. Slughorn? Perhaps it's the
presence of genuine menace often absent from the other installments, or,
finally, definite proof that Daniel Radcliffe can act (admittedly only for
about five minutes - see if you can spot it).
For a tiny minority, the appeal will be seeing a bunch of coming-of-age
wizards and wizardesses starting to feel the influence of other unseen
powers; namely hormones. That's weird. But whatever your reasons for
seeing this movie, you're unlikely to be disappointed. Have a great
weekend.
Making a video game, even when it's based on a movie, is tough work. You
can't just wave a magic wand at a screen and have a decent, playable game
come out. It seems like that's all EA has attempted to do with its latest
iteration of the Harry Potter franchise, and all that "apparated" was an
incredibly short and boring adventure game with very few clever or
appealing quirks.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince does its best to follow the movie
plot, and at least it does this moderately well. Told mostly in
unplayable cut scenes, the graphics are about what you'd expect from the
Wii's hardware, and the audio impersonators are mostly spot-on, especially
when it comes to the game's leads, some of whom are voiced by the real
actors. Other characters — like Snape, McGonagall and Nearly Headless
Nick — are tolerable if not lovable, and the soundtrack is perfectly
ripped from the movie, all lending to an enjoyable viewing experience.
The almost intolerable parts are the repetitive segments that you actually
play. When you're in the single-player campaign and not sitting around
watching the cut scenes, you'll wander around Hogwarts Castle or the
Weasleys' garden, gathering crests and trying to find objectives. These
are usually simple things like "Go to potions class" or "Meet Ginny
Weasley outside the Quidditch pitch," and you can always call on Nearly
Headless Nick to lead the way if you're not sure where to go. Along the
way, you can stop and shake the Wii Remote at shiny glowing objects to
shake out mini-crests, which eventually add up to big crests. You can
also sniff out normal crests, which usually require at least one spell to
be cast before you can pick them up. It seems odd, though, to have this
collection mechanic in a game where you're almost always following someone
or leading someone. The situations call for you to hurry, but if you're
playing the game for completion, you're going to be wandering meaningless
hallways and always hearing Hermione or Ron mutter about how you really
have to be moving along.
The few spells at your disposal are barely befitting of a Hogwarts
student. Right from the start, you have Wingardium Leviosa, which makes
objects float with an upward flick of the Wiimote. You can then control
anything you pick up and even throw it with a downward flick, which is
essential for collecting some crests that are up on the wall. The
mechanic would work if it weren't for the wonky camera angle, which
suddenly becomes fixed when you start casting, and the uncontrollable
nature of the objects. When you throw, it's a crapshoot as to whether
it'll fly far, high, wide or long, and whether or not it will land on a
hapless Hogwarts student and send you into a fit of giggles. The other
spells are Reparo, which lets you put broken objects together again by
wiggling the Wiimote, and Incendio, which burns a few specific objects
with an upward flick. These spells feel like specific puzzle keys that
are only used on a few items in the whole castle. While you can lift
almost anything you can target, you can only burn cobwebs and plants.
What's the fun in that?
Even with spells and crest-collecting, adventuring is easily the most
boring aspect of the game. Each and every time, it boils down to pressing
the minus button (-) to call Nick and following Nick. The tasks in
between are better, but there still isn't much variety. About half of the
time, you'll be mixing potions, and the rest of the time you're "dueling"
or flying through hoops on the Quidditch field. The potion-making is a
series of escalating challenges, where you try to follow vague shape and
color instructions to mix up the ingredients in a pot. You may be
instructed to grab a triangular flask and pour it until the mixture is
purple, or you might have to flap the Nunchuk repeatedly to fan the flames
and heat the mixture to a bright pink. It's tiring, repetitive and toward
the end, just a little unfair. The story pulls one clever twist by
dropping the difficulty, increasing your time limit and making you
invincible thanks to a stroke of luck, but there is almost nothing else to
bring a smile to your face in potion-making. It's just as boring and
dreadful as the characters in the movies make it out to be.
Dueling can be fun at first, before you or your enemies grasp higher
concepts such as blocking and incapacitation. However, as a few spells
are added to the duel, it quickly becomes a mess. To cast a temporary
shield, you cross the Nunchuk and Wiimote in front of you, but the game
picks up just about every motion with the Nunchuk. If you want to cast
anything other than stupefy (the weakest spell), you have to wave the
Nunchuk, and about half the time, that means that instead of doing any
damage, you will block at the wrong time and probably get hit as soon as
the shield drops. The quick and easy solution to this is to just get off
one powerful spell and then run up and waggle the Wiimote furiously to
knock as much away health as possible. It therefore devolves into an
extremely simple waggle-fest occasionally interrupted by frustrating
miscommunication.
The last distraction available to you is Quidditch, and you can only play
the role of the Seeker. To win, you just have to make it to the end of a
repetitive guided path and pass through star outlines to gain time. For
most of the game, the rings are apparently fixed at the center of the
screen, so guiding Harry around does more harm than good when the
broomstick is veering wildly down its uncontrollable paths. When they
start shaking things up and scattering stars to every point of the screen,
you realize how unwieldy and slow the broom is, and you have to start
leading your Wiimote a second or two ahead of the moves you want to make.
There are only enough of these mini-games to make the title last a few
paltry hours, but you can continue them ad infinitum from the main menu,
taking on harder and harder challenges until you want to pull out your
hair in frustration and boredom. There's little incentive to perfect your
potions, flying or dueling other than peculiar badges that would be
Trophies or Achievements on other consoles. You unlock dueling matches
and other clubs by collecting emblems, so nothing is unlocked by doing
well in the actual clubs.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for the Wii simply does not have
enough magic in it to fly on its own. Wandering around Hogwarts might be
novel enough to draw in dedicated Harry Potter fans, but everyone else
should avoid it. It's not a cringe-worthy game, but it's more useless and
boring than Cornelius Fudge.
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