A Review of Lego Harry Potter: Years 1 - 4 (PS3)
So, I'm a total Harry Potter nerd. I've read all the books (multiple times) and seen all the movies. I may or may not have quoted said books and movies several times while playing this game. Harry Potter is such a rich universe, with tons of characters and an interesting story. Even before this game was announced I remarked several times that I wanted to see a Lego version. I greatly enjoyed the Indiana Jones and Star Wars version, so I was super excited when this finally hit store shelves.
The actual gameplay is fluid and easy. You learn a bunch of spells over the course of the game that you can access easily with the press of the triangle button or R1. You gather ingredients for potions that you can use to pull handles (strength potion), turn into another character (polyjuice, of course) and age (aging potion). There's even an invisibility potion. You even learn transfiguration and herbology (handling those pain in the ass mandrakes and their screaming) and get to ride on broomsticks. (Only Harry is any good at it though. Hermione rides one like it's a mechanical bull.) You spend plenty of time just running around Hogwarts Castle and attending lessons and exploring inbetween story levels. Nearly Headless Nick will lead you to where you go need to go next - helpful because the castle is huge and detailed.
One thing that's different in this game is that you only unlock characters by finding their character stud. So even if you get to control a character during story mode, they're still not available until you find their character stud. This makes it hard to unlock large portions of the game until later. There are several special abilities you'll need to get through the game, the biggest one being taking control of a dark wizard. (Snape counts.) Other abilities include using a time turner, sending your pet out to dig or go through tubes, and using a book to unlock cabinets.
Each book has six levels, for a total of 24, plus there's all the lessons and castle exploring, which makes for a pretty involving game - especially if you're looking to collect all the spells/gold bricks/characters and cheats. So this game will keep you busy for awhile. It's not a difficult game, as Lego games never are. If you die, your character just appears again, ready and raring to go.
The cut scenes, which of course have no speaking in the Lego game tradition, are pretty humorous and entertaining. They tend to follow the movies more than the books, and although the humor can be pretty absurd sometimes, it never detracts from story completely. There are so many characters to collect. As I've said, I'm a huge Harry Potter nerd and know pretty much every character. But there were a few that made me think twice about where they came from! If the character was in the first 4 books, they're in this game. There are even totally generic characters that you'll probably never want to use.
Two things are annoying about this game. Friendly fire and glitches. If your playing partner isn't watching where they're aiming, they can easily hit you with a jinx and freeze you/turn your head into a plant/make you bald etc. It's not devastating by any means, but it's annoying to have to be frozen for a couple of seconds because you can't prevent friendly fire.
But worse than that is the glitches. So far we've only been able to get through one playing session without experiencing any freezing or - worse - restarting while loading. The freezing has occurred during loading between scenes or when using the time turner. The restarting happens randomly. The game will suddenly freeze and then restart, returning not even to the game load screen, but the PS3 menu! It's really a ridiculous amount of glitches from a game that's been in development for awhile and from a company that consistently makes quality titles.
Glitches aside, if you enjoy the Lego games or Harry Potter, you will love this game. It's tons of fun and there's lots to do, especially if you've got someone else to play with. This is the perfect game to kick back, relax and play with your significant other. I'd have to give it a 8 out of 10 - the deductions mostly being made for the glitches.
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