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I
finished playing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets today. I
would have finished it sooner, but I got stuck fighting the giant
spider and I spent a week wandering around in the dark trying to
burn its web down. I really hate that spider.
I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I have read all four books and I am
anxiously awaiting the release of the fifth. I have seen both movies
on opening night and I own the PC version of the first Harry Potter
game. My gaming experience was just awful- the characters all had
heads that were too big for their bodies and when they talked, their
mouths didn't move. In fact, I don't even think they even had
mouths. I wasn't looking forward to the second Harry Potter game but
then I saw a preview for it on a Game Cube preview DVD that we
picked up at the local GameStop. Needless to say, I was impressed by
the preview and we ended up buying the game.
Gameplay
The Chamber of Secrets game is much better than its predecessor, but
it is still sorely lacking. Once again, you take on the role of
Harry Potter, a young wizard. The game provides a very abridged
version of the book/movie- the entire year at school is crammed into
7 days but this ends up being rather confusing. For example, Harry
and his friends find a magical diary in the book and what the diary
reveals is a turning point in the book/movie. The diary is not
mentioned in the game until an offhanded remark is made about the
diary being stolen. If someone is unfamiliar with the book/movie,
the exclusion of the diary makes the rest of the game very
confusing.
Your tasks will vary each day and they range from completing
obstacle courses to playing in Quidditch matches. Quidditch is a
wizard sport- it is played on broomsticks and it is a little like
basketball because you have to get a ball through a hoop. However,
there is another ball that the opposing team hits with a stick in
order to "peg" the player with the ball and make him/her drop it.
Finally, there is a player whose only job is to catch a tiny golden
ball called the Snitch which is worth 150 points. This is Harry's
job. There are three Quidditch matches in the game and I wish there
were more because Quidditch was one of the best parts of the game.
Besides obstacle courses and Quidditch, there is a lot of sneaking
around in the game. I don't mean to be a picky-pants and point out
every single way the game is different from the book, but Harry owns
an invisibility cape. He doesn't NEED to sneak around. Regardless of
this, the sneaking would be much more enjoyable if you could
actually see the location of the people you are trying to sneak
past. It really would have been nice if the sneaking missions had
been in a top-down mode. There are items that can be used to
distract the people you are sneaking past and this makes things a
little easier, but not that much.
As you make your way through the game, you collect Bertie Botts
Every Flavored Beans. These can be used as currency to obtain items.
You also can collect Wizard Cards which are like baseball cards. For
every 10 cards Harry finds, his stamina will increase a little bit.
My biggest problem with collecting the beans is that if you are hit
by an enemy, you drop about five of your beans. As you scramble to
pick them up because they function as currency, the enemy will hit
you again and make you drop even more beans. I found it very hard to
maintain a collection of beans since they disappear almost
immediately after being dropped. If you have any beans, spend them
as soon as you can. What's the point of collecting something if you
know you are probably going to lose it?
In addition to trading your beans for items, you can also use them
to play mini-games, some of which you play during the game and
others that serve as pleasant diversions. Due to my constant bean
shortage, I considered my beans too precious to waste on mini-games
since I needed to use them to buy items.
Control
There are certain things that I like about the control and other
things that I think are absolutely horrible. To begin with, there is
a decent amount of jumping in the game, but there is no jump button.
Instead, you must force Harry to run off of a ledge and hope that he
manages to jump and grab onto the next ledge. Furthermore if you do
not plummet to your death, if Harry does not manage to grab the
ledge, he will fall and you will lose about a quarter of your life
points. This seems a little harsh to me since there is no jump
button. If there is a jump button and you still can't make the
jumps, then losing your life points is justified.
 The
game uses many spells and you can customize which buttons you want
to set to which spell (X,Y, and B). In case you forget which spells
you are currently using, there is a graphic in the upper right-hand
corner that shows the A, B, X, and Y buttons as they appear on the
controller. A little icon corresponding to a spell will appear next
to each of the buttons if you have a spell set for that button. This
way, you will rarely use the wrong spell. If you want to use a
spell, you simply hold down on the button corresponding to the
spell. The longer you hold down the button, the more powerful the
spell becomes, but if you hold down the key for too long, Harry will
fall onto his wizard posterior. If you are using an attack spell,
you can target things with the L shoulder button.
The A button is context sensitive and so when you can do something
with it, the action you can perform will appear over the A button
graphic at the top of the screen. The problem with this is that you
generally have to be standing in exactly the right place for this to
occur. You can't just "wall sneak" just by standing next to the
wall. You have to be standing in the exact position in order to
perform a particular action. I understand that you can't wall sneak
if you aren't next to the wall, but it can be frustrating when you
are right next to the wall and you still can't wall sneak. Half of
the times that I got stuck was because I didn't see a little tiny
ledge that I can wall sneak from and you would almost have to know
that those ledges were there in order to activate the wall sneaking.
Controlling Harry during Quidditch is relatively easy. The game
allows you to calibrate your own broomstick: during the flying
lesson, you are instructed to fly up a couple of feet and then back
down. Based on which direction you push to go up and down, the game
will set your flying controls. In Quidditch, Harry must fly through
hoops to build up speed and he can turbo boost with the "Y" button.
Of course, actually catching the Snitch means using the
context-sensitive A button and I found myself furiously pounding the
A button and yelling at Harry on several occasions.
The Z button activates Harry's "Rememberall" which keeps track of
all of his items and tasks. It also includes maps of wherever Harry
is at that present moment, but I found these maps to be a little
confusing and hard to follow. Otherwise, I found the inclusion of
the Rememberall to be very helpful.
 Graphics
I am quite impressed by the graphics. The characters looked like
they do in the movie and everything moves smoothly. Hogwarts in the
game looks like it does in the movie. One of my favorite things to
do in the game was to fly around the school on my broomstick and
just admire the scenery. Unfortunately, many of the scenes take
place in the dark and you can't see anything (even when using the
light spell) and this constant stumbling around caused me to make
Harry fall off of cliffs and plummet to his death on many occasions.
Also, the full motion video was messed up on my copy of the game.
While this may have had something to do with my Game Cube, going
into a FMV sequence resulted in a series of extremely loud clicks
from the Cube in addition to jerky video and skipping audio. I would
have wanted to see these scenes as they would have been quite well
done if the skipping/clicking was not so distracting.
Sound and Voices
I liked the voice acting a lot. In fact, in several narrative
passages, the game features the same man who reads the Harry Potter
books on tape/CD. I don't think any of the voices in the game are
they same as the characters in the movie, but they still managed to
sound somewhat like the characters in the movie.
The music was very nice to listen to and it was performed by the
London Philharmonic. It doesn't get in the way of the gameplay but
there is nothing particularly memorable about it. The music from the
game is not the same music featured in the movie.
As much as I liked playing Quidditch, the game commentary got really
annoying really quickly. The commentary is more or less non-stop,
but there aren't that many lines of commentary so you hear the same
lines over and over and over again.
Appropriateness for Children
The game is appropriate for children but it can be scary at times.
For example, you can activate a first person mode in order to look
around. There is one area of the game that has lots of ghosts. If
you happen to look at the ghosts through the first person view and
one of them comes right at you, it can be a very frightening
experience. This is not that big of a problem though because there
is not really any need to use the first person view.
Otherwise, this is a very exciting game for children. The gameplay
is not as good as I would have wanted it to be but children are more
likely to be less discerning and love it because it features Harry.
Just remember, if you get stuck, it's probably because you have to
wall sneak somewhere.
Overall
I find myself somewhat disappointed with the game. The graphics are
good and the sound/voices are good, but the gameplay is sorely
lacking. Between not knowing I could wall sneak because of the wonky
activation of the A button and constantly losing my beans, I became
increasingly frustrated with the game. I am a big Harry fan and I
think that this is definitely a rental unless you are buying for a
child who will be less sensitive to my issues and enjoy the game
because it has Harry in it.
I'm not giving up. They are not releasing the third movie until
Summer of 2004. That gives EA a long time to come up with a decent
game.
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