//------------------------------//
// Philosopher's Stone 
// Story: Luna Reviews the 'Harry Potter' Video Game Series 
// by BronyDan 
//------------------------------//

“Greetings, subjects! Thy princess of the Night has decided to set herself a challenge tonight. Now I am not sure of how many of you are aware of the human fantasy series, ‘Harry Potter’, so let me fill you in. The ‘Harry Potter’ series chronicles the adventures of a young wizard boy, (the human equivalent of a colt), called… Harry Potter, as he attends the magical school of Hogwarts to learn the secrets of magic, while also fighting against the dark forces of the evil sorcerer Lord Voldemort, who plans to conquer the world. So it’s a very basic plot, and your princess is never one to call herself a fan, she has only seen the movies… and read all the books… and may or may not have used the mirror in the Crystal Empire to travel to the human dimension to go to the theme park at the attraction centre called ‘Universal Studios’… OK FINE, I BUCKING LOVE THE SERIES!!

Now with such a popular series, it also had its fair share of games, including the Lego series, ‘Quidditch World Cup’, based on the popular sport in the books and films, ‘The Book of Spells’ and the upcoming ‘Book of Potions’, but tonight, we shall be looking at the movie tie-in games for the Play Station consoles, starting with ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ for the Play Station 1.

Now the game was released in 2001, the same year as the movie of the same name, and it was published by Electronic Arts. We start the game up and… we get a story time. Ok, don’t have us actually start at the beginning of the story, just have Stephen Fry explain everything that has happened before we actually get to Hogwarts. Ok, that is a nitpick, I have heard that Stephen Fry is one of the greatest examples of the human species, and he was doing the audio books at the time, so it would make sense that he would do this.

So we finally get to play this game… and the graphics are not great. Remember, this was 2001, so the Play Station was on its’ last legs by this point, but you can clearly see how far we’ve come in terms of design. The facial expressions are quite poor as the character’s mouths are not synched up to what they’re saying and in some places, the backgrounds look like they’re just flat services. But let’s not dwell on this for too long, let’s see what the actual gameplay is like. The gameplay is set out as a third person shooter game with some platforming and puzzle elements in there as well, you can free roam Hogwarts Castle, at least you can with the doors that are not locked and there are plenty of collectibles, such as Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans and Famous Witches and Wizards Cards. The beans come in four different colours, providing where you are in the game, yellow in the main castle section, blue for the grounds, green for the dungeons and red for the Upper Castle. When you have enough for each colour, you will need to give these to Fred and George Weasley, who will then give you a password for a portrait where you will find a bonus item that can help you later. Chocolate frogs replenish your health, but getting a Wiggenweld potion will give you full health, and be prepared to make your own potion, because finding the bottle on its own is a rare thing.

So our first task of the game is to save your owl Hedwig from Draco Malfoy. Don’t remember that from the book. It’s here that we also learn our first spell; the Flipendo Knockback Jinx. How is it that a spell that was made purely for the game, suddenly becomes the most iconic spell in the entire franchise? Learning spells in this game is fairly simple, you have to follow the spark in the centre and you have to press the symbol button it reaches as it goes around the circle, and there are four spells you learn aside from Flipendo, and if you see something with a coloured sparkle over it, press the X button to perform that spell.

I wouldn’t say the game is entirely faithful to the movie and the book; it follows the basic plot of the story, it’s just the way of getting through it is different. I already said that the first task is never in the movie, but there are plenty of tasks like that as well, there’s one task where you need to get Fire Seeds for Hagrid, another where you need to get a Sloth Brain for Snape, going around the dungeons looking for curses you need to dispel before leaving, and the weirdest one is when Norbert the Dragon gets sick and you need to go Diagon Alley to get the ingredients to make Dragon Tonic for him. If you want a section that included Diagon Alley, then why didn’t we have it at the BEGINNING OF THE GAME LIKE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE?! Also, isn’t anyone wondering where Harry is at this point, I mean he’s gone all the way from Scotland to London in the middle of term, wouldn’t they be a little suspicious if he’s not in the castle? And the moments that are from the movie and placed in rather odd moments, like after you’ve chased Malfoy on your broom to get an item, McGonagall just shows up out of nowhere and says, “Well done, you’re our new seeker, now get down to the pitch, the game starts in two minutes.”, and the battle with the troll in the girls’ bathroom, that’s now near the end of the game!

Now, don’t think that this game is bad, because it really isn’t. The controls work well, especially when you’ve got the controller with the analog stick, and some areas are quite unnerving, like the Forbidden Corridor and the Forbidden Forest sections. The dungeons still make me feel uncomfortable, even to this day, and that was pretty much because of Peeves. When he first popped up in this game, I almost shut the system off, he was scarier than any creature I have ever seen, and considering how long I’ve been your princess, that’s saying a lot. The mini-games and Quidditch sections are fun to play, the Wizard Crackers one was my personal favourite and the ending section pays closer to the book than the movie both with its content and dialogue, which is a nice change, like how you use the flute to send Fluffy to sleep and the troll and potions parts that weren’t included in the movie. In fact the troll section is expanded here. Remember in the book how you just walk past it while it's unconscious? In this game, you need to charm objects out of it's way as it stumbles groggily down the corridor, and the sound of those stomping footprints behind you as you try and levitate these objects as quietly as you can, is still a creepy level.

So now we’ve reached the final boss, and it’s Professor Quirrell, and there are three sections on defeating him, first you need to cause these pillars to fall on him when he’s under them, than you need to be facing behind the Mirror of Erised and cast Flipendo at it until it fires this white magic at him, and then you need to press the Square button while he strangles you, and then press X to hurt him. Do this four times until he dies and then you pass out. Get another story book, explaining that you’ve won the house cup, the book closes and the game is over.

So that’s ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ for the PS1, and in your princess’s own personal opinion, I think it’s a really good start. It’s not really a classic, but for the most part, it’s still an enjoyable past time, if you can look past the graphics and the unusual placing of certain plot details. The story is still fun to go through, the collectables can prove to be challenging at points, but not really to the point where you want to throw the console out the window, it’s a matter of looking in the right places, and the spells are probably the simplest in any of the games. So if you haven’t played this yet, and you’re a ‘Harry Potter’ fan, then thy princess commands you to go and find it if you can, disappointment will not be given. Next time, we look at the next generation of consoles, with ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’ on the Play Station 2.