Even though there will not be a new Harry Potter movie hitting the cinemas this holiday season, that did not stop the folks over at EA from trying to milk the franchise for all that it’s worth. I suppose that this is the less than illustrious way that Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup found its way into the world.
If you have not read the Harry Potter books and/or seen the movies, you probably have no idea of what Quidditch is. Allow me to explain: Quidditch is a wizard sport unique to the world of Harry Potter. It is played on broomsticks, and there are three goalposts at each end of the field shaped like bubble wands. There are also three different kinds of balls: Quaffles are carried by Chasers and are used to score goals, bludgers are hard balls that are hit by bat-wielding Beaters who attempt to peg the quaffle-carrying player, and the Golden Snitch is a tiny ball that the Seeker has to catch in order to end the game. The Snitch is also worth 150 points, so the team that catches the Snitch usually (but not always) wins the game. In the video game versions of the first two books, there were Quidditch portions but the player could only play as Harry, who is a Seeker. Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup finally gives players an opportunity to play all the positions except for Keeper (goaltender).
If you’ve seen one of the movies or read one of the books, then you already have an idea of what a Quidditch match looks like. While Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup presents a Quidditch simulation that is monumentally better than the Quidditch segments in the other Harry Potter games, this game is certainly not without its faults. To begin with, the player can only control his side to side movement on the broomstick, but not his altitude. There is also little or no skill involved with shooting; one must only fake out the keeper, and the Quaffle will automatically go through the goal. Each team has a special goal-scoring move, but the execution of the special move is rather anti-climactic. One must simply push the correct buttons at the right time and the game will go into a pre-rendered video segment in which the team Chasers perform their special move (much like the Gamebreaker moves in EA’s NBA Street games). Furthermore, these special moves are somewhat stereotypical; the African-American chaser slam-dunks the Quaffle, and the Japanese Chaser uses martial arts to propel the Quaffle through the goal. These special moves do look very nice, but it would have been nice if the developers relied on creativity rather than stereotypes.
Curiously enough, you cannot jump into the World Cup mode right away, despite the fact that the World Cup comprises the majority of the game. Before you even get to the World Cup, you have to select a Hogwarts house and lead them to victory in their intra-scholastic competition. The Hogwarts mode serves as a tutorial; before you can participate in matches, you have to unlock them by completing training exercises. Once you have unlocked a match, you may replay it as many times as you’d like to improve your score. I understand that this feature is in place because one cannot advance to the World Cup without winning the Hogwarts Cup, but the ability to replay matches makes them seem more like missions than competitions.
Gameplay itself is fairly repetitive. The player must tackle the opponent by going up next to the player in possession of the ball and pressing “X”. Or, if the player wants to mix things up, he can have one of his Beaters hit a Bludger at the opposing player in possession of the ball. Once the player has possession, he doesn’t even really have to pass the ball before shooting. This process is repeated over and over and over again without very much variation.
The control scheme is fairly easy to learn, since the game introduces one concept at a time in Hogwarts mode. The only aspect of gameplay that I had a bit of difficulty with was the Bludger; the player uses Square to hit the Bludger and then controls the Bludger’s path with the control stick. However, the player cannot really see the Bludger very well and I found aiming the Bludger to be an equally daunting task.
It should be noted than in the movies and books, Quidditch games will last until the Golden Snitch is caught. In Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup, there are two Snitch halves at either end of the scoreboard at the top of the screen, and the game enters Snitch mode when these two halves come together. The problem is that this happens after a pre-determined amount of time; randomizing when the Snitch is spotted would provide a more accurate portrayal of the game. Since I knew exactly when the Snitch would be spotted, I could anticipate how many goals I would need to score in order to give myself enough of a cushion so that it wouldn’t matter if I caught the Snitch or not.
The actual process of catching the Snitch is a lot of fun. The player must guide the Seeker along a golden path left in the Snitch’s wake. By flying along this path, the player builds up boosting power which is used to propel the player closer to the Snitch. Once the player is in range of the Snitch, he can press “O” to try to grab it. Snitch mode is like a little racing mini-game within the game and it is by far, my favorite part of a match.
There is no way to adjust the difficulty in the Hogwarts matches and, while the World Cup matches have four levels of difficulty to choose from, two of them are initially locked. In order to unlock them, the player must collect the appropriate number of Quidditch cards which are earned by playing and winning easier matches. At times, it was difficult to understand what I had done to earn one of these cards and I found it to be rather frustrating that I had to play through the Hogwarts Mode multiple times in order to earn enough Quidditch Cards to unlock a reasonable level of difficulty.
It’s a pretty fair statement that the target audience for this game is Harry Potter fans. However, most of the action takes place away from Hogwarts, and therein lies the problem. As the title suggests, the game focuses mainly on the Quidditch World Cup, an event that was depicted in the fourth book. One of the teams that participated in the World Cup in the book did not make it to the game and the other team has to be unlocked. Therefore, fans of the book have no emotional attachment to any of the teams (except for the team that is locked) and the teams that are playable initially are virtually indistinguishable from each other, because readers have no canonical information about them. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Why does the Hogwarts Cup portion take a backseat to the World Cup? I don’t usually like to complain about things that aren’t there in games, but the developers would have been better off creating a Hogwarts dynasty mode and a smaller World Cup mode.
The graphics are absolutely amazing. Hogwarts matches take place in the Hogwarts stadium, which is an accurate representation of the stadium shown in the movies. After a team scores a goal, there is almost always a little cut-scene of the players or fans celebrating, either on the field or in the stands. These cut-scenes are identical regardless of which team you are playing for; for example, you will always see the Chaser do the fist pump or the backwards cartwheel on the broom. It is nice to see different fans in the stand depending on which team the player has chosen. This is only relevant at Hogwarts, but I thought it was a nice touch to have Ron and Hermione cheering me on when I played as Gryffindor, and Crabbe and Goyle cheering when I was playing as Slytherin. The World Cup mode is where the graphics really shine, as each national team has a stadium reflective of that particular culture; the Icelandic stadium is covered in ice, and the Japanese stadium is filled with beautiful pagodas. I found myself distracted every time I played a match in a new stadium because I was so busy looking at the scenery. I am less impressed with the way matches look; at times, it is difficult for me to tell which players were on my team. It was easier to see which player I was controlling at any given time because there is a big star around his/her broom, and it was equally as easy to tell which opposing player had possession of the Quaffle because s/he also had a star. However, a problem arose when I was trying to tackle or pass; it is occasionally difficult to judge the distance between things so instead of tackling my opponent or passing to a teammate, I tackled the air or tossed the ball to an opposing player.
Sound is slightly less impressive. Voice acting is not really a major part of the game, but when the characters do talk, the voices are reasonable replications of the characters in the movie. That is to say that one can immediately tell that EA did not hire Daniel Radcliffe or Tom Felton (Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, respectively) but their video game counterparts share the same vocal characteristics; Draco maintains his condescending public schoolboy drawl, while Harry is chipper and optimistic as ever. The majority of the noise comes from the crowd who will cheer at appropriate times and chant team names for morale boosts. There is also play-by-play commentary which gets fairly repetitive. It should be noted that the character Ludo Bagman does the commentary for the World Cup matches. I am a little disappointed with the music; aside from a really great rendition of Dies Irae in the introductory movie, there is little or no music during the actual matches.
Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup is very appropriate for children and would be an ideal gift for a young Harry Potter fan, provided you can lure them away from their fifteenth read-through of Order of the Phoenix. I think that most of the problems I have with the game will not be relevant for a child playing the game.
Overall, Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup appears at the midpoint between the release of the fifth book in June 2003 and the scheduled release of the third movie in June 2004. This is probably the best Harry Potter game ever made, but that’s an honor akin to “Best Simpsons Game”. Casual fans will be better off renting this title and even die-hard fans might want to “try before they buy” to avoid potential disappointment.. Over a year ago, I said in my review of Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets that I was not giving up on the franchise. I’m sure that the Prisoner of Azkaban game is already in development and I’d like to re-issue my challenge to EA to produce a really good Harry Potter game for once. Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup is a nice step towards that lofty goal, but it still leaves too much to be desired.
