Weigh In - Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (Wii version)
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 1:00pm by David
Harry Potter for the Wii sounds like a match made in heaven for the unique controls of the console. Your Wii Remote becomes a magic wand. But is the game able to successfully cast a spell on those who play it?
What they got right
Sound: Music and sound effects are extremely faithful to the film. Plugging into a surround sound system for this game can really make for an immersive experience.
Graphics: Really well rendered environments. Never really feels boring or recycled as you move throughout Hogwarts.
Controls: Another strong point of this release. I have a hard time imaging how this game would play on another console without motion controls. Making items float around feels really natural.
Overall: This is a great game for someone who likes to explore and collect. There are over 4,000 things to collect in this game, no exaggeration! Using a Wiimote as a wand is a lot of fun.
What they got wrong
Sound: Characters tend to get a bit naggy, constantly telling you to go here or see that. Otherwise, no complaints.
Graphics: The pre-rendered cut scenes aren’t bad, but the camera angles and character placement of the in-game rendered cut scenes are horrible. The characters have the always lovely uncanny valley look to them, unfortunately.
Controls: Other than the occasional character getting in your way and blocking an exit, the controls are fairly intuitive and engrossing.
Overall: Too much treasure hunting for my taste. Made me want to go back to read the books again rather than play the game.
Have you played Harry Potter on Wii yet? Weigh in on this title in comments!
July 10th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
the game fucking sucks big time, not as hardcore as I though it would be, run to this and run to that, boooooring. my sisters loves it thou so i got 500 crones to buy RE4 to pleasure me with. That game is a killer for, my fear of the RE games will be conquered soon, hehe
July 10th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Sounds like Elebits… with a magic wand!
July 10th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
“Made me want to go back to read the books again rather than play the game.”
Man, it must have SUUUCCCKEEDD!
July 10th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
No, honestly it was really good .. I just don’t like treasure hunting to that degree. Now that I’ve returned the rental, I kind of wish I could put it back on and play a little further into the game. The game made me want to read the book .. re-reading the book made me want to go back and play the game more …… Guess I’ll just have to go see the movie!
July 10th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
The only Potter games I’ve played were Chamber of Secrets for the Gamecube (the game itself utterly sucked, and is the last movie tie-in I’ll probably ever buy unless I get to try this one out and it sucks a lot less) but the soundtrack is still stuck in my head) and the useless Quidditch title.
I can’t possibly imagine how this could be worse than those, and a Hogwarts sandbox game with Elebits gameplay elements, if that’s what this is, seems really tempting to me.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Pretty disappointing, though oddly addictive…. a bit like watching cooking programs.
The one thing that kills me is the constant camera snapping to look at things when i don’t want to look at them… you just can’t control that damn camera. And the other one thing - the wiimote doesn’t always cast the spells you tell it to. It just casts whatever spells it wants to… making it very difficult in a duel, you end up just jumping round the room waving the remote however you can. And the final one thing - you’ve got millions of things to discover and complete to get points, but your points only get you videos of the cast talking about the game. Seriously… couldn’t they have thought of something better? New games? Crazy stuff you could buy? Dumb.
PS. the character renderings look like zombies.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
This is actually a pretty solid title, and it´s a must rent… Some might feel tempted to buy after rent, as it has huge amounts of treasure hunts and such.
July 11th, 2007 at 3:45 am
Why does EA have to localize everything. My girlfriend loves all other Potter games on the cube, so i bought this for her. She inserted the disc and the only options where german, spanish, dutch and 2 others i forgot. No English. So she started the game with dutch settings and damned the horror of the voice acting. I can’t bear it even when i’m somewhere else in the house and just hear it, let alone be the player. My girlfriend dumped it on the bottom her backlog and booted katamari on her psp again, to replay it for the 3rd time …
July 11th, 2007 at 6:15 am
I thought the graphics were actually quite impressive looking…Until I saw the PS2 version and realised that once again, they were identical, and that once again, developers had treated Wii as sub-Gamecube.