Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Bright Light
System requirements: Windows XP SP2 or Vista SP1; 1.8 GHz or faster CPU; 256 MB RAM (512 MB for Vista); 8x DVD drive; 5 GB hard-drive space; DirectX 9.0c-compatible video card
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now

In a comment to one of my colleagues the other day, I indicated that in the video game industry, games made from movies tend to be “penny dreadfuls.” While some of them are decent, in many instances they are simply quick and dirty vehicles intended to cash in on a movie license (I’m looking at you, Ubisoft Tiwak, and the shameful job you did with Beowulf: The Game). I was therefore rather skeptical when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came up in my review queue, since it’s a video game based on a movie that is an adaptation of a novel. Sadly, it turns out that my skepticism was completely justified.

Half-Blood Prince is a game that aims to do two things: let players participate in major events in the story as Harry and his friends, and let them experience various Hogwarts activities such as dueling, Quidditch and potion making. Half-Blood Prince is also geared towards Harry Potter fans who are more likely to be young adolescents and casual gamers. Thus, it’s not surprising that many activities revolve around talking to important characters, doing tasks that you’ve read about and seen before in the book or the film, and dealing with relevant nuisances in the lives of Harry, Ron and Hermione. My disappointment doesn’t lie in the choice of content for the game, but in its lazy and flawed execution.

Taking up Quidditch as the first of the game’s major activities, I thought I was going to have to read up on all the rules and techniques involved in the sport in order to succeed. As it turns out, that was not necessary, since you don’t really end up playing Quidditch. Instead, every practice, warm-up and actual match involves you controlling either Harry or Ginny, flying on your broom and following the snitch. This wouldn’t be so bad, since Seeker is Harry’s position on the team, but you don’t even get to choose your direction of flight. Instead, Quidditch boils down to a race against the clock. You auto-follow the snitch through star-shaped rings, changing your position on the screen rather than actively pursuing your target. Going through a star grants you extra pursuit time. There is no skill in catching the snitch; you simply keep flying until you get to the end of the series of rings. While there is some occasional rough interference from the other Seeker, you never really get involved in playing the game. And since the flight paths you follow in all the matches tend to be similar, playing Quidditch is more akin to playing an advanced form of Pole Position than the most popular sport in the wizarding world.

Since Harry has a vested interest in doing well in Prof. Slughorn’s class, making potions is another important feature in the game. Potion-making is largely mouse-driven. You move the mouse around to stir, add ingredients and so on. Using a color-coded system, you perform every action until the potion changes to the correct color. Too much of something causes the potion to burn and create lots of smoke, which you must clear before moving on. Creating potions is a timed enterprise. You have a set number of seconds to add an ingredient or perform an action; making a mess on your workbench or creating smoke uses up precious time. On the other hand, excellent execution gives you a bonus to the time allotted. While this would make for a nifty mini-game, it’s not something upon which to base a third of the game, especially considering the ease with which you make most of the potions. Also, the plot makes potion-making even more annoying by interjecting a number of extra instances in which you make potions as busy work in the middle of the story.

Dueling is the part of the game to which most players will be attracted. Fighting Death Eaters armed only with your wand and fancy Latin phrases is part of the attraction of Harry’s world. It’s also the part of the game that illustrates EA’s laziness in great detail. Harry can join a number of dueling clubs to practice his skills, and he takes part in duels with Death Eaters as well as with students from Slytherine House. Fighting in a duel involves moving around and dodging with the keyboard; the mouse is used to make gestures to cast spells. This part of the interface is quite good, and with a little practice you can have Harry dodging jinxes and stupefying his opponents with a flick of your mouse. The problem is that no one at EA bothered to check for any balance or good sense in the way spells work. To win a fight against any opponent, whether they be the lowest-ranked member of Gryffindor dueling club or Bellatrix LeStrange, you simply cast “levicorpus,” get closer to your target and cast “stupefy” until they are defeated. While levicorpus is a good spell, it’s not some kind of “I win” button in either the books or movies. Also, the Death Eaters seem to have an uncharacteristic streak of fairness. They never use any of the Unforgivable Curses against you, making duels with them disappointingly similar to the battles with students at Hogwarts.

To top off all of the lackluster elements in Half-Blood Prince, the rendering of the characters is rather poor. The quality of the graphics is not on par with current technology, and it’s inexcusable that the animation of the characters is so wooden. But what is unforgiveable are the two places in the game in which the animators didn’t even bother to have the characters’ mouths move while they were talking. Seeing Slughorn stand there like an immobile mouth-breather while a voice actor reads his dialogue proves that EA simply didn’t care enough to make a quality product. Thus, Half-Blood Prince is unsuitable for even casual gamers who are fans of Harry Potter. Priced at $29.99 and having just over five hours of playing time, you might as well give this one a miss.

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