Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Pros • Quidditch is simple to play, and fun for awhile at least • Excellent, but at times choppy, graphics bring Hogwarts alive • Spell lessons are fun • Keyboard and mouse controls work better than most platform games on the PC • Lots of hidden passageways and secrets to discover • Simple enough for children to play, interesting enough to involve older Potter fans for a time • Not overly frustrating to play • Way bigger than the PlayStation version, and infinitely better	Cons • Crash problems while loading some levels • Too simple for older gamers; the puzzles all have extremely obvious solutions • Nothing truly original in the design, a let down compared to the books • Poor save game feature, especially for a PC game • Quidditch still isn’t as fun as it sounds when you read the books or watch the movie • Follows the plot of the book, so you know exactly what to expect, removing any sense of wonder or surprise from the experience • Lots of hidden passages and secrets, but the actual prizes hidden there are lackluster • Graphic card issues (at least with anything Voodoo)
Bottom Line A game for kids, or parents with kids. Electronic Arts needs to attend more transfiguration classes, as they have mis-cast and turned an all-ages literary experience into a young ages only game. Older (and childless) fans of Harry Potter would do better to wait for something better from Electronic Arts and the Harry Potter franchise. Hopefully, the wonderful world that J.K. Rowling has created, a world that has charmed both young and old readers alike, will soon be recreated in a video game that also appeals to all ages. If you are in your mid to late teens, or an adult without children, wait for the Harry Potter RPG, or adventure game a la the Sierra Quest series; or maybe for the EA Sports Quidditch game. The Potter franchise is filled with exciting possibilities, and the opportunity for some truly excellent gaming; unfortunately, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone isn’t the experience most Potter fans were waiting for.

The world of Harry Potter is one of those licenses that should be full of possibilities for making innovative and exciting video games, but is cursed to continuously fail as developers spend too much time trying to recreate the books exactly; instead, of trying to head off into new territory. I was excited about the Harry Potter games, my mind continuously going over all of the cool games that could be created around J.K. Rowling’s unique and quirky world:

The Harry Potter RPG; a chance to create your own young wizard from scratch, whether a muggle or a pure born wizard, and enter into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy as a first year, be sorted, and roleplay your way through the initial year of wizard’s school. You could attend classes, explore the many secrets throughout the castle, battle magical creatures, build up a party of friends, and uncover your own exciting adventures. There would be trips to Diagon Ally to buy a wand, robes, and textbooks. You would be able to choose your classes and specialize your young wizard in different areas of magic, then have to work your way through the game using your chosen spells. The possibilities for such an RPG are endless; not to mention the developers get to make at least six expansion packs to allow gamers to earn their final wizard diploma.

The World Quidditch League. Can you imagine what EA Sports, creators of the NHL game series (I know there are others, but hockey is my favourite), could do with a crazy sport like quidditch? Create a team name, draft some players, buy the best equipment your starting team can afford, and play your way through a full season of quidditch. Spend the off season improving players, drafting young prospects from schools like Hogwarts, purchasing better equipment, and preparing for the next season. The actual match play would allow you to switch amongst the different positions, getting the full experience, until the snitch is seen and you take control of your team’s seeker in an attempt to win the game. Add in some multiplayer, online play and you have the makings of a sports franchise.

Harry Potter Quest. Kings Quest, Space Quest, Grim Fandago, Escape from Monkey Island, The Longest Journey; the adventure genre is perfect for the Harry Potter franchise. Learn spells, pick up inventory items, and talk with different characters then solve challenging puzzles as you make your way through an original story. Or Muggle Quest, putting you in the shoes of a clueless muggle and dropping you into the middle of the hidden world of wizards.

All of these possibilities were available for Electronic Arts, all of these opportunities to do something original and “wow” Potter fans and gamers alike with an original and solid video game. Yet, in the end the developers have taken the easy way out, and created a simplistic game that sticks almost exactly to the story of the book/movie, and provides gamers with an uninspired experience that will only satisfy younger children and their parents for any length of time.

At its heart, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone has some solid features. The games graphics do a good job of recreating the feel of Hogwarts; pictures change, suits of armor turn their heads to watch you moving, torches flicker, and other students run through the hallways on their way to class. Each character is well crafted in full 3D and instantly recognizable as you approach them. Graphically, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a hit. The game also contains extremely simple controls that make sense, are easy to learn and use, and allow gamers to focus on the actual gaming experience, never having to thumb through the manual to figure out how to do something.

The actual game breaks down into four general areas; exploration, magic lessons and challenges, story challenges, and quidditch. Initially, exploring Hogwarts provides one of the best experiences in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The castle is full of staircases, ledges, pictures, bookcases, mirrors, cauldrons, vases, and armor, each holding the possibility of hiding a secret passage, room, or prize behind it. The early stages of the game are spent simply walking around the school and looking at your surroundings, while attempting to cast different spells to discover a secret. Unfortunately, these secret areas never hold anything very exciting, and your exploration never turns up more than a few Every Flavour Beans, or a wizard card. The entire process quickly becomes repetitive and boring, similar to cutting through grass in search of hearts in Zelda, or whacking wooden barrels in Diablo. Some more inventive secret areas and better prizes for discovering these areas would have greatly improved this important aspect of the game.

Similarly, the magic lessons and challenges in the game are also interesting initially, but grow old fast. Learning to cast spells is a fun, but overly easy, process of using your mouse to trace out a shape on the screen in a set amount of time. For younger players this can be challenging, and provide a sense of accomplishment; for older players getting a near perfect score is a given. After tracing out the spell four times you have access to the spell, and can cast it with a single click of the mouse button; eliminating any sense of waving your magic wand to perform magic, a disappointing feature that takes away from any feeling of being a wizard in training. Once you have mastered the spell you enter a challenge area to collect stars and practice your new knowledge. These challenges require a lot of platform jumping, a lot of casting your spells, but only a bit of thought, detracting from the whole adventure experience and returning the game to nothing more than a sequential series of familiar challenges.

Although, filled with a number of lessons, challenges, and abilities to explore, the main focus of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is to recreate the events told in the original book, and later, the movie. The game does a good job, too good really, of following the plot line of the book, and anyone who has read the book (which would be pretty much everyone that buys this game), will know exactly what is going to happen. This loyalty to the original work results in a game filled with little sense of wonder as you always know what to expect, and are simply playing the game to reveal the action you know is coming. This wouldn’t be so bad, if the obstacles and challenges presented in order to uncover the plot were developed better. In the end, much like the games lessons, the story challenges are simple, easy to solve, rely heavily on platform jumping and spell use, require little thought, and quickly become repetitive in a “been there done that” sort of way. A wider variety of, and more difficult, challenges would have improved the experience, and made revealing the well-known plot twists worth it.

Finally, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone provides Potter fans with the chance to play quidditch, both within the main game, and by entering a quidditch league separate from the main game. The quidditch field is recreated perfectly from the movie, and the overall feel of the quidditch matches is well done; other players whisk by you chasing the quaffle, or dodging bludgers, competitors are knocked off their brooms, and the sound effects help create a sporting atmosphere. Unfortunately, you can only play the part of Harry in the matches, and chase the golden snitch around the arena in an endless game of cat and mouse, that, even after playing a number of games of quidditch, I have no idea how to complete. I can fly on my broom, I can knock the other seeker off their broom, I can even catch the golden snitch; I just have absolutely no idea how I do it. There is no pattern, or logic that I can find to catching the golden snitch. At times you will run right into the winged ball, but it passes through you. Other times you will follow close behind it, but never gain ground. However, throughout the chase a small meter at the bottom of your screen turns from blue to orange and eventually you are given the opportunity to grab the snitch and win the match. Overall, playing quidditch is fun and exciting for about two matches, at which point (you guessed it) the game becomes repetitive and boring.

In the end, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a good effort at recreating the first book of Rowling’s excellent series, but it could have, and definitely should have, been better. The books, the movie, the toys, and the trading card game have all provided top-notch experiences and proven that a multimedia franchise can be successful on all levels, for a broad audience. The video game falls short of the quality Potter fans expect, and provides nothing more than a simple platform/adventure game that young fans will adore, but older fans will feel disappointed with. Hopefully, Electronic Arts can provide a better quality game when they try and mimic the next three books in the series. Personally, I will be waiting for a more original Potter experience that deviates completely from the plot of the books, and provides a unique experience in JK Rowling’s world of wizards and muggles.

Anyone up for a multiplayer “Muggles vs. Wizards” real time strategy match?

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