Written by: Ian

 

 

 

This is officially the 1 gazillionth Lego game to come out on the 360- and I’ve played almost all of them- does this second Harry Potter game stand out from the crowd? I’ve found the Lego games to be rather mixed over the last few years really, after my initial love of them, and the last Harry game was probably my least favourite to date.

 

Can this be the perfect kids game for Christmas?

 

 

Thanks to the extremely long title, gamers should be relatively comfortable with the content which they are getting with this release- equating to the final three books and four films in the series. The game follows the films pretty closely as far as I can remember, although there are an awful lot of moments in the hub world of Hogwarts. The game is played out as silent cinema, as always, and whilst this may not be very good at telling the story for newcomers, the plot is not really essential to the gameplay or progression, whilst the game is pretty good at dropping hints.

 

 

 

I’m really not sure what else I can say about the Lego games by now. They’ve all had the same mix of puzzle solving and platforming, and whilst the last Star Wars game included some more strategic and open objectives, this game eschews all of the recent innovations completely in favour of a traditional Lego experience. The one major difference is the addition of Hogwarts as a huge hub world which you have to traverse between levels. I actually found this to be a huge pain in the arse, as most of the rooms look similar. Generally, you are led around by a ghost, but he moves way faster than you, so you get, at best, a rough estimation of the direction you need to head in.

 

Clearly the developers agree with me, because when you finally reach the door you need to go through, it’s marked with a giant, flashing, blue neon sign like Hogwarts has been invaded by Las Vegas. I found the loading times frustrating, and the standard of the gameplay substandard compared to the main levels- by the end, I really wished there was just a traditional level select.

 

 

In comparison though, I found some puzzles in the main levels to be really quite obtuse, exactly the opposite of Hogwarts, and navigation to be clear and easy. It’s a weird and frustrating combination. There’s plenty to do and see, and loads of collectables, like in all these games, although your mileage will depend on your saturation of the Lego games- whilst it plays much better than the last Harry game, which I really didn’t get on with, it is very, very similar to the Star Wars games.