Harry Potter's latest videogame outing continues to dominate the UK charts - no doubt thanks to the recent launch of the film to which it ties in and last Saturday's release of the final book in JK Rowling's witches and wizards series.
However, it will face stern competition this week from Transformers (number two All Formats, number one on PS2 and Xbox 360), with the live action film in that famous franchise set for general release this Friday.
A former lead designer at EA Bright Light has revealed that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was supposed to compete with Gears of War as "it was quickly established that this was the visual quality we had to beat".
It's safe to say that Harry didn't enjoy the same success on the video game scene as Marcus Fenix, but we'll give him good marks for trying.
Movie tie-in video games are generally made much too quickly, since they need to come out simultaneously with the movie. The result is short, shoddy games. So the developers of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince game lucked out when the movie's release date was pushed back eight months. Those eight months gave developers a chance to make something that comes very close to being a good game."
If you want to turn your lady friend into a gaming fan, here's some advice from Xbox Live community manager Christa Phillips: Don't be a jerk.
Sounds obvious enough, but the statement earned knowing laughs and enthusiastic applause from the standing-room-only crowd gathered for the "How to Get Your Girlfriend Into Gaming" panel at the Penny Arcade gaming convention in Seattle recently.
l confess...I own Harry Potter on the 360...its oddly good. I dont read the books although have done and I must admit its very faithful to detail including many cool things not in the movie.
Its not AAA stuff but its enjoyable non the less if you forgive the camera and some what uninspired tasks. It passes the time until the great games come such as Halo and Bioshock.
yeah, i'm a great big potter fan and sure enough, not only did i have the wii version of this game reserved for launch day, but i was also the first dementor in Eugene OR to pick up book 7 on release night.
this game is pretty good though. Its by far the best game in the series (although I haven't played any of the sorcerers stone or the chamber of secrets games) but i thought that the Prisoner of Azkaban game (the x-box, ps2, and Game Cube one) was a great start in the right direction- the first sand box approach to hogwarts- complete with the very cool three player option. Goblet of fire, however, made a turn in a crappy direction. I just glad they made hogwarts so well this time around. they really did a great job of making the place so true to the film version. having played through the game completely before watching the movie- I could recognize all of the locations in the film and how, realistically, harry could get from one to another. In future installments i hope they expand on this and make hogwarts even larger and more expansive, perhaps include the shrieking shack and the chamber of secrets- hell, even an accessible Dumbledoors office would be nice.
Now, i enjoyed this game very much, but I am very glad to see that someone can who has not read the books can make much sense of it. I felt that they kind of chopped up the story so much and threw it together so rapidly, that i felt that anyone who hadn't read the books would be like, "WTF?" and i agree that it the game did cover some important points, plot wise that the film passed over (like the locket in the drawer, Fred and George making the swamp, and the Screaming painting of Mrs. black).
Overall though, this game was all about exploring. the missions were mediocre and there really wasn't that much to do otherwise. no senseless random battles with various magical creatures. But it was very pretty, even on the wii. In the end, it was something fun to do while waiting for movie 5 and book 7.