Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince (NDS) Review

So are we truly potty about this hand held iteration of Potter?

In short – and as you have already seen the score – No.  That’s not to say this game is bad, or without merit.  It is just decidedly average even for a movie tie-in and at points is screws up spectacularly.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. Harry suspects that dangers may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows is fast approaching. Together they work to find the key to unlock Voldemort’s defenses and, to this end, Dumbledore recruits his old friend and colleague, the well-connected and unsuspecting bon vivant Professor Horace Slughorn, whom he believes holds crucial information. Meanwhile, the students are under attack from a very different adversary as teenage hormones rage across the ramparts. Harry finds himself more and more drawn to Ginny, but so is Dean Thomas. And Lavender Brown has decided that Ron is the one for her, only she hadn’t counted on Romilda Vane’s chocolates! And then there’s Hermione, simmering with jealously but determined not to show her feelings.

As romance blossoms, one student remains aloof. He is determined to make his mark, albeit a dark one. Love is in the air, but tragedy lies ahead and Hogwarts may never be the same again. In the game, players return to Hogwarts to help Harry survive a fraught sixth year. They also have a chance to engage in exciting wizard duels, mix and brew magical ingredients in Potions class and take to the air to lead the Gryffindor Quidditch team to victory. Players may even get sidetracked by Ron’s romantic entanglements as they journey towards a dramatic climax and discover the identity of the Half-Blood Prince.  All this ounds spectacular in principal but in playhing it leaves a lit to be desired!

Now let me just state, before we continue any further, and much to the ribbing I will get from the team, I am a Harry Potter nut.  I have read all the books several times, watched and own all the movies and even have a plush Dobby somewhere about the house.  So please understand it is not the subject material I have my issues with.

Graphically HP & THBP is a real mixed bag.  The backdrops are all static, basically hand drawn’ish, images with the character and minimal environmental animation laid over the top.  This at once makes the game look great and aweful in similar measures.  The DS simply does not handle the scaling of these 3d object very well and they look rough and jagged.  With that said the environments are great looking, if a little grey, and the character models, when you can make them out, look very good.  At times the game almost looks like a bad SNES title (see the image of the Quidditch match below for some nasty, almost vector based, text fonts.  That said it is only a DS title and the majority of he issues the game has graphically is that they developer has tried to push what the DS can do.  So where as it might look shoddy in places, in others it looks nicely done for a DS title.

Sound wise all the relevant noises are in place.  There is not speech in the game as you would imagine from a DS game but the reproduction of the famous Harry Potter theme music rings out clearly from the DS’s little speakers.  Spot effects are well managed and help to capture the mood be it exploring, dueling or dropping slug jobbies in to your potion mixture.  The rest of the incidental music used in the game is also more than pleasant and is a highlight of the product at times.

The game plays in a similar fashion to old time point and click adventures.  This is a genre I LOVE, just see my gushing love for Broken Sword (And be prepared for similar gushing when Monkey Island is released on XBLA / PSN!).  The overall mechanic and structure of the game is simple.  Explore at times to discover secret passageways, ingredients, items of interest etc.   Create potions to help with quests and make progression in the potions club. Undertake duels both in formal fights and from nasty Slitherine scum as you walk the corridors of Hogwarts.  The principle story arc follows Harry and his chums (sounds a bit of a british word that – sorry!) as they try and survive another year at school and discover exactly what Drac Malfoy is upto.  Small nuggets of the story unfold in the speech bubbles and this version more than the others on PS3/Xbox360/PC does a better job of conveying exactly what is going on in the story.

Harry makes his way around the school learning new spells and taking on new challenges – these mostly consist of fetch and swap missions to be honest and feel a bit hollow as you are supposed to be the chosen one after all.  My main gripe is that the gameplay could belong to any game what so ever and does not really seem particularly “Potterish”.  Spells are cast using the touch screen, a swish here or a flick there will see you through and it never really becomes more taxing than that to be honest.

Fundamentally the game functions – nothing is broken and what is there is manageable and playable.  It is just a shame that you will most likely be sick of the lather, rinse, repeat approach to the game.  Sure there is plenty to do outside the main quest as long as you enjoy retrieving Wizard Cards from stacks of books using Accio.  The Quiddich kinda works in a weird table top football/hockey kind of way but even that pales after a few goes.

This game seems so squarely set at the younger audience, the 8 – 13 margin.  The trouble is the certificate on the product is 12+ locking out a large chunk of the demographic it seems to shoot for.    As a title for a younger player I would be generous and say add another 1/2 to 1 point to the score as they would find it more enjoyable and less monotonous.

Final Thoughts :-

Ho-Hum.  I am on the horny parts of a dilemma my friends.  On the one hand the game really is Potter-Light with only bases touched in the Potter universe.  The storytelling on the other hand compels the story well enough which niggles even more that it just does not play out well.  If your a total Potter fan and want/need a hand-held solution then pick this up, there have been far worse movie tie-ins and worse Potter games.  If you are dipping your toe in the Potter universe I would maybe try before you buy.  Either way this is no bad game, it just manages to be squarely average in all ways (except possibly the music) – hence the average score.  What irks even more is that the big brother titles are leagues ahead – look for the PS3 review coming soon!

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