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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Review (continued)
More User Submitted Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Reviews
Date: 2007-12-03
harry potter order of the pheonix (video game)
i thought this was a dvd when i bought it, not a viedo game. i gave it to my great grand daughter for christmas. she likes it very much. rbw i did not play this game so i cannot rate it
Date: 2007-11-27
What happened, EA?!
It seems that EA did not learn a thing from the user feedback about the 4th game, GOF. But I sure did! I did not buy this game this time, but saw it from someone who did. I did not pre-order it and wait in anticipation like I did the previous times. Boy, an I glad! It has the same problems as with the 4th game. Where was the joy and - yes, magic - from the first three games? It doesn't matter if your game has cool graphics if no one can play it comfortably on a PC with a mouse.
Go away, EA! Give the Harry Potter game contract to someone deserving of it.
Date: 2007-11-13
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix PC Game
I bought this game as a gift for my 11 year old son. He LOVES it. He has no problem with using keyboard controls. The graphics are great.
Date: 2007-11-12
A replica of the Playstation 2
If you haven't played this game on another platform, you will have fun. The graphics are absolutely beautiful. My daughter couldn't believe how much better they were over some of the previous games. Ron and Hermione get in the way of Harry's movement but you can get them to move if you walk toward/into them. Of course, they also move out of your way when you want to talk to them so you end up talking to them from farther away. It took a little practice to get used to controlling the movement with the arrow keys but was not a problem after mastering.
I was disappointed to find that the PC game seems to be a replica of the Playstation 2 game. I had not played the GoF game on the PC, so I didn't realize that they had done this before. The first 3 PC games had more action areas than was in the console versions, probably because there is more memory for playing on the PC than on a game console. If this is the direction EA is going, I'll stick to the game console version and not waste my money on multiple platforms.
Date: 2007-09-10
Wonderful graphics and sound, ok adventure
Spell casting: Aiming Harry's wand is simple in concept, but awkward. You basically have to face your target, which highlights the object, prior to casting a spell. This is tedious but ok for manipulating inanimate objects. The wand action is clumsy at best when duelling with more than one character, or when multiple characters are in the field of view. You have to learn and perform spells correctly; either by manipulation of the mouse or gamepad, or by key sequence on the keyboard. This is challenging yet more rewarding than the early Harry Potter games. It's gratifying when you can perform a "wingardium leviosa", "repairo" or "reducto" and things happen. It's equally ungratifying when you cast the wrong spell by mistake or by accident.
Environment: Cudos to EA for a wonderful job in recreating the characters, Hogwarts school, and the school grounds! After completing minor tasks the gamer is frequently rewarded with views of the beautiful Hogwarts building and grounds. The game is scored with music from the movie, which is very nice. With stereo speakers and a sub-woofer the effects sound great too. My cats were mesmerized by the realistic bird sounds in many outdoor scenes. The character's voices are the original actors. All in all this exceeded my expectations.
I've played 60+% of the game (by their calculations), and varied the graphic resolution and quality level along the way. This configurability is a nice feature. You can fine tune your experience based on what you find important. I maximize the visuals by selecting "quality" mode, such that the character's faces, the wall portraits and the visual textures all look great. I then adjust the resolution until performance is acceptable (i.e. not slugish). My 1.6 Ghz laptop with 1GB RAM handles 1024x768 (2nd highest game res) and "quality" visuals with only minor slugishness.
Action: This is NOT a First Person Shooter. The wand play is secondary to the tasks; seeking objects, passwords, information, etc. More mature than collecting Bertie Bott's Every Flavour beans like in the earlier games. Yet, this still seems like a game well suited for youth 8+, young teens and all young at heart.
Inaction: The game space (Hogwarts) is big, and fairly complicated. Because seeking things is at the core of the game, navigating and re-navigating the disances can be tedious. Fortunately there are shortcuts, which are helpful once you've uncovered the passwords to access them. The Marauder's Map provides task management and auto-navigation. It's clever and speeds up game play.
Install: No problems.
Bugs: No crashes, no hangs. I'm a software engineer and enjoy poking around for problems. Nothing major to report so far.
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