PSP - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Recommended

Format
PSP
Publisher
EA
Developer
EA
Country of origin
US
Genre
3rd person adventure

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (PSP)

By David Rasmussen
27th Jan 08

It seems that (until now) we were doomed to an ever decreasingly intelligent chain of hopelessly bad tie-in games concerning the Harry Potter franchise.
It hasn’t been since the PSOne era, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets have we even come close to playing a well thought out and executed game. Until now.
Finally reversing the run and spell button mashing nonsense of Goblet of Fire (of which I only reviewed the GBA version) the Harry Potter franchise begins what hopefully will be a climb back to greatness with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. (Of course we won’t know if this is a fluke or a real about face in the fate of the franchise until Holiday of this year and the coming of Half Blood Prince, but more on that later… like in Fall of this year when the first looks at Half Blood Prince come out!)

Phoenix, the first Potter game for the next gen consoles (PS3, XBox360 and the Wii) comes at us with a few different variants in the gameplay, each requiring a review all it’s own (though I understandably can’t review several versions of this game… like I did with Spider-Man 3, Transformers the Movie and Pirates of the Caribbean : At World’s End -- no, I‘m multiconsole review burned out this year. Thanks anyway).

The Wii version utilizes the Wiimote for spelling, while the DS version uses the stylus for same function. The PS3/XBox360 version seems to have Harry wandering alone (though I’ve only see trailers of him flying about on his Firebolt) while this version uses the group dynamics of past Prisoner of Azkaban (only without the ability to swap characters on the fly, requiring you to play the game entirely as Harry, which has it’s own plus and minuses as you’ll soon see).

Based on the 5th movie of the Harry Potter franchise, Order of the Phoenix, you find yourself on the wrong end of the Ministry of Magic as your going on and on about that rascally wizard Lord Voldemort being alive and well (as seen in Goblet of Fire). This, of course, is not running at all well with the Orwellian perfection of the world of Mr. Fudge (who doesn’t taste at all like fudge… more like badly produced gas station chicken than Fudge… eww… nasty), who moves in a shrew of an evil woman into Hogwarts in an attempt to take over the school from the inside out (until the end of the movie when outraged parents are calling for Fudge’s head on a silver platter).

You have to resist her, so you begin to assemble Dumbledore’s Army in an attempt to prepare for a coming war against Voldemort, which is a major part of the PSP version of the game. To do this you’ll take advantage of the long awaited return of free roaming gameplay to search Hogwarts for allies. This, by the way, is not as easy as it sounds.

Though for a bit of fresh air in the games you’ll find that you have traded in house points and beans (two of the main staples of past Harry Potter games) for influence points. Influence must be peddled to get people to sign up for the army (which assembles in The Room of Requirement as you gather your forces), and to do this you’ll have to do several things to gather said army (as well as raise that all important influence to get people to sign up for your army).

1-Destroy all copies of the “Daily Prophet” scattered about the school.
The more you destroy the more your influence score with the three major houses (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw) go up. Of course you can’t get a full influence score this way, but every little point goes a long way.

2-Help the students of Hogwarts. Some jobs are easy (save them from roaming Slytherin, who are not exactly roaming as they are stationary when you find them bullying a student or students), retrieve a lost item that is near them (usually put high up out of their reach requiring you to perform some platform skills to retrieve said item), and so forth. Some jobs are hard (find wizard cards, or the location of talking gargoyles). Other tasks may seem easy, but need specific spells to accomplish (retrieving certain items or chasing off certain Slytherin from harassing students require a specific spell to accomplish the task as the person you save will be quite angry if you just attack the Slytherin instead of scare them off with some “unique“ thinking).

3-Find all the passwords to painting secret passages (the more you find the quicker you’ll be able to traverse the school, and later on the game will actually lead you to portraits for shortcuts to far off destinations).

4-Sometimes you’ll find that you have to take out members of Slytherin who are harassing the students (as I said above a few times). This brings you into a duel. Once the Slytherin draw down on you and start spelling you have to jump in and return fire, hammering away at them until you beat them. It’s not as quick or fast paced movement wise as Chamber of Secret’ duels (because Harry moves abit slow in this game) but once you get it down you’ll be knocking back Slytherin in no time (if, however, the Slytherin do NOT react to you drawing down on them it means the game requires you to be more inventive in the means by which you scare them away -- so look about and see what you can influence with magic to get the job done -- don‘t do this and you‘ll find the same Slytherin popping up harassing the same person over and over, which won‘t be resolved until you save the person the way the game wants you to save the person).

Once you gather the army the game moves along (yet you still are helping students, this time as you resist the perverted power of Umbridge). Then the game moves to the Ministry of Magic (after all this) and the final battle with Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

Overall I have to say that this game is a welcome relief after the blandness of the run and spell shooting of Goblet of Fire, but it is still not perfect. For every improvement there is something that needs to be fixed in turn. For example…

1-The game has useage of the Marauder’s Map, however the map could have been more detailed (right down to the location of students and certain locations of interests besides the rather vague “tasks” location markers used). Also the only way to tag your map is by scrolling through the list of locations, so while you can scan through the map freestyle you can’t mark locations the same way.

2-Dueling is back, and several spells are used specifically for dueling, but unless you’re playing multiplayer mode then you’ll find yourself sticking to a set pattern while dueling (not much reason to mix it up in terms of magic unless you’re facing the slightly more challenging AI on offline multiplayer or human opponents on AdHoc mode).

3-Ron and Hermione join you in your game (with the notable exception of the few times you have to go it alone) but without the ability to swap characters and play as all three of the main characters you’ll find them to be (at times) more hinderances than help.

For instance while it’s good that you don’t need to swap characters for specific spells (Harry now knows all spells once divided up amongst the three of them, with the exception of certain spells like the freezing spell from Prisoner), it’s bad that the AI on Ron and Hermione seems to be set on Helicopter Friend (in that they hover close too much, even if it means they’re blocking your way when your trying to accomplish certain tasks). Often times when your trying to levitate things, for instance, the two will often find a way to get into the path of the levitated object, seemingly hellbent on surrounding the object and stopping you from doing whatever it is your doing.

Other times they only go so far to help (they won’t climb things, and their advice goes only so far to the point of them often time telling you the obvious… if they are giving you any advice at all which is spotty at times).

4-The new way you teach magic is interesting. Groups of students (or D.A. members) will ask you to help them with magic, so you’ll have to cast a group of spells in a row (or a single spell over and over) in order to teach your “students” how to cast the spell. Nice, except for the times you have to go back to the Room of Requirement to learn a new spell (because there’s a spell in the chain that you have to learn before you can teach it).

5-The worst tasks is the ones that have you scurrying throughout Hogwarts to complete (and no clues as to how to find the Wizard cards or talking Gargoyles at all which makes the searching harder than it should be). This doesn’t mean I’m down with free roaming, it’s just that these two tasks should have been given more “hints” to help you out on them (the rest of the help side missions work just fine with me).

6-The game has multiplayer, though (as I suspected) it having WiFi capacity and me getting that capacity to work is two entirely different things. On the plus side the game does have a good offline capacity, with adjustable AI opponents for all the modes of play that you can do with real people (if you can find people to play against).

7-At long last, after so many games, the first of the trio of stars of the movie have broken ranks and joined the VO cast. If you are a fan of Ron, then rejoyce as Rupert Grinch (Ron) has joined the game VO cast! Along with several other cast members from the movie, he is the first of the big three stars to join up doing VO work on the video game version of a Harry Potter trilogy game.

Sorry, if you are a fan of either Harry (aka Daniel (Dances With Horses) Radcliffe or Emma (She Must EXPAND Her Horizons) Watson then regret, they didn’t take the time to join the VO cast yet.

However I hope Mr. Ron Weasley DOES return later this year with the cast to work on Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince’s game’s VO work. I, for one, am a fully appreciative critic that you sir (Rupert) have finally taken the plunge into video game voice over work (especially on the Harry Potter games)! To you I wish many happy returns… which should be two returns as there are only two movies/games remaining.

Did I mention SquareEnix could always use a good talent with an impressive resume to highlight one of their many RPG games in the VO dept.? Branch out, young Rupert! There are many a genre looking for talented vocal talents to star in!

8-At last, an unlockable game extra that is actually worth unlocking.
After several movie based games that pretty much ignored the movies they were based on, at last we have Order of the Phoenix with unlockable montages of movie stills (which you earn by gathering Daily Prophet “posters” hidden about the school). The more you find, the more you unlock. Nice, eh?

9-I miss the mini game laden content of Chamber of Secrets, but I guess since that was the 2nd year game (and the movies were still whimsical) I can see why it was there. This game, at least, has the whole side missions, dueling, multiplayer content and teaching of spells to create an “army” (which leads to a final battle) to make up for that.

10-Did I mentioned I enjoyed seeing the return of free roaming gameplay? I hope to see that again in this year’s release of Half Blood Prince (Holiday 2008).

Overall the game has it’s hits, and it’s misses, and while I guess I could say it is average (since both hits and misses equal out) I have to go one higher and say Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was an enjoyable movie to game translation… a rarity since most of the movie to game translations I played this year were either average or below average.

So hip-hip-hooray, Harry Potter! It took nearly forever but once again your video game has scored a coveted 4 hot makeout scenes with Cho Chang (never happens sadly) out of 5! And bless you, Rupert Grinch! You yourself get 5 House Cups out of 5 for finally doing what none of the other major cast would (and signing up for a “Tour of Duty” in the sound studios of the Harry Potter video game VO staff!)
Hope to see you later this year when Half Blood Prince releases! And, for once, am actually pumped up about reviewing a Harry Potter game later this year! Imagine that!
Tune in then for the big review!

-- David Rasmussen 27th Jan 08

PSP Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Images