I am not a fan of the Harry Potter series.  I have seen the first three films and I found them to be reasonable but I won’t be adding them to my DVD and Blu-ray collection.  I have not read a single Harry Potter book and this fact must place me in the bottom (or top, depending on how you choose to look at it) 1% of the world’s population.  For your information I can’t tell how accurate this game is to the film or the original book as I’ve been in contact with neither and unless Hermione wears a miniskirt and stockings in the film I am unlikely to ever see it.

The controls are awkward and it feels as though the game was on the edge of completion and only at that point did someone in the design team wonder how they could squeeze in the Wii-mote as a controller.  Using the Wii-mote as a wand is a great idea in theory but, since the game doesn’t work with Wii-motion plus which would have been perfect for title, the result is a complete mess.

Since this is a game about a wizard you can expect a substantial amount of magic to be going on so it’s frustrating when you make the correct motion and it fails to trigger the designated spell.  Now and again it will work first time but I found those glorious moments to be few and far between.  A large amount of time was spent waving my hand around, while looking and feeling like some kind of idiot, with absolutely nothing happening in the game.  The simple motion of flicking the Wii-mote upwards is something I repeated countless times on any one occasion only for it to inexplicably work all of a sudden.  Let me tell you something, I don’t care how magical your balls are, they are not reward enough for the level of frustration leading up to their appearance.

The graphics are quite strange looking and although it’s not difficult to make out the main characters the random students who wander around the halls are bordering on being creepy.  These random students have a boxy look about them and while they aren’t quite as bad they do remind me of the blocky enemies in that classic N64 title Goldeneye and here you can’t even amuse yourself by shooting hats off these students.

There are occasions when I felt this game should have been called “Harry Potter and the act of following random people around”.  This is made worse because the wandering around is little more than an excuse to present you with opportunities for your magical ineptitude which is down to the poor controls I mention above.  The one area the Wii-mote works well is when controlling your broom in the game of Quidditch which is surprisingly not too bad.  It’s just a shame that there aren’t less following sections and more flying brooms.  Now that I think about it this game would have been better off if those creepy students were replaced with the walking brooms from Fantasia.  Pay attention game developers.  We want more walking brooms in games!

I found this game frustrating and I can’t imagine it’s because I’m not a fan of Harry Potter unless I’m in some way being punished by Rowling for ignoring her work.  For parents out there who want to buy this game for their kids and happen to own a Nintendo DS I suggest you turn your attention to that version instead.  If you don’t own a DS or insist on buying your Harry Potter games on the Wii then I’m pretty sure some people out there will see past the problems I mention and might actually enjoy this.

5/10

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