Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Movie licensed games have always been considered not worth playing since most of them are garbage and squeezed out just before a movie releases. They are usually boring, repetitive, and short. Couple that with bad level design and lame gameplay elements and you’ve got a terrible experience that about 80% of movie license games live up to (guess that’s still better numbers the amount of good game based movies…). Still are there some licensed games worth checking out and the Harry Potter games have always been hit and miss. The first game consisted of a Zelda like gameplay elements and although very short was a fun game. The following games were forgettable titles, up until “Order of the Phoenix”. The first next gen Harry Potter game set out to recreate Hogwarts completely and allow for full free-roaming exploration, and a mission based system to get through the game. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince builds on that game type, and manages to fix and break some things along the way.
The game is once again an adventure game where you explore the castle and complete missions. There are a lot of missions which revolve around making potions. Which fits in quite well with the story of the game.
In comparison to the previous game, Half Blood Prince has more entertaining and varied missions. The castle size is reduced, but the size of the grounds is greatly increased. The main portion of the game is just exploration. It’s mostly unnecessary but its fun. You can go all around Hogwarts castle and the grounds looking for crests. You’ll need to use your spells to get most of them. There are 125 to find and collect. There are also tons of items around you can search for mini-crests. Collecting enough earns you a full size crest, and you can earn 25 in this way. Collecting crest unlock additional features, like more multiplayer characters, but not enough for most players to care to collect them all.
Controls to perform spells are all done using the right analog stick. Performing a certain motion on the stick casts the spell. This is usually pretty good, but there are some nuances to it that you’ll have to get used to if you want to cast the spells correctly.
The spells you can use are levitate and through, fix broken things, and fire. You’ll have to throw items at high crests to knock them down, burn bushes and spider webs that hide crests, and fix broken crests.
Combat has its own set of spells. There’s a typical attack and a charged attacks, as well as a shield that deflects incoming attacks, and 3 different spells to stun the opponent so that you can lay in on them.
The mission types are your typical get from point a to point b and complete events. The events are potion making, Quiditch flying missions, and dueling. Each event type has its own club you can join, which is basically the entire side quest mission system.
Potion making is interesting; you get a list of instructions and have to complete each step. The steps involve pouring the right amount of a liquid or dropping a number of ingredients into the potion, stirring it for a certain period of time, heating it up over time, shaking liquids before dropping them in. You have a time limit and lose time for each mistake. The harder potions can be a pretty hectic trial.
Dueling involves fighting several other characters in combat. It’s pretty simple and tough to lose once you get the hang of it. By competing you also learn new combat spells to help beat enemies quicker.
Quiditch is pretty much a race through checkpoints. You can get more time by hitting dummies placed around the course, and during a game other players will be getting in your way, but it’s pretty easy as well.
Now my final two gripes. First off the game is SHORT. Just the main missions will take roughly 4 hours. The side missions add another 2 to that. The biggest portion of the game is collecting all the crests, but as I’ve said before it’s not worth it. Second, during the climax of the game, they could have created a great scenario. You finally leave Hogwarts and instead of a new level to explore, or even some puzzle solving (as that’s what the story calls for) you basically just end up with another quick boring combat sequence, before you’re taken back.
My final verdict is that if you’re interest in this game, rent it. It is very fun for a couple hours. There’s no lasting appeal here, but it’s good for a one time through. Of course if you don’t care about Harry Potter, just avoid it; there are other games that do everything here better.
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This looks pretty fun! Too bad it’s so short.