“Two more my little ponies. Just two more to go. The Harry Potter saga comes close to the end now with the seventh and last book, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. Now, everypony knows how this book was so big, and so epic that it was mentally impossible to put everything into one movie, so they made the right decision to split it into two, and they naturally did the same thing with the games, but let’s see if that was necessary as well. Let’s move into the next generation of consoles with ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1’ for the PlayStation 3.
Now my first experience for this game was when I had travelled to the human world to purchase the game, I stumbled upon a review of the game on a website called ‘IGN’. I looked at it and… I was shocked. The game only got 2 out of 10? That can’t be right. I mean, you all know of my hatred for ‘Goblet of Fire’, you saw me rip into that well, but I would have given that a 3, or a 2.5 at least if I was being generous, so the thought of a ‘Harry Potter’ game worse than that was just ludicrous. So I decided to play the game for myself, clearly this needs a royal approval; I mean it really can’t be that bad, right?
Well… yes. Yes it is. This game is an absolute atrocity. It feels like it’s a combination of everything that I felt was wrong with the last three games. Just to list it off: repetitive, minimal storytelling, no exploration, stuck in only one area, bad graphics. Put those things together and you’ve got a game that will certainly piss you off!
First of all, they’ve done the same thing as they did with ‘Goblet of Fire’ and changed the whole layout of the game. That’s a good sign. In this game, it’s a third person cover shooter; I mean everything’s a third person cover shooter these days. Now that is not the problem, I mean this book has more action in it than the previous instalments, the problem is, is that it is probably one of the worst third person shooters I have ever played! The first problem is the controls. The controls feel so stiff when it comes to turning to face your opponents and casting your spells, that even on the highest sensitivity setting, it won’t make much of a difference. The cover in this third person cover shooter, I’ll be surprised if you can actually cover behind these things, because for most of the time, Harry will not duck for cover, and when you’re under heavy fire from enemies, that really is something you may need to do in this type of game! And when you do finally duck for cover, you will become extremely frustrated when you have difficulty targeting, due to poor camera control. Also to the fact there in the majority of the levels, you will rarely find any cover at all, so you’re stuck out in the open while you’re rummaging through your spells to get the appropriate one. I’ll talk about the selecting spells in a minute.
The graphics have again gone downhill. It’s like the designers know the games are shit so they don’t try to put any effort into them anymore. The faces, for the most part have no features to them, and again, it’s like they’ve been replaced by goldfish! And the presentation of this game is just shoddy. Take for example, London; there is a shop here called… ‘The Shop’. Oh, and a club called… ‘The Club’. The colour in this game is just depressing to look at, everything looks like it’s been washed out so you’re left with a lot of greys.
The stealth sections are back in this one, and it really doesn’t work. You get to use your Invisibility Cloak for these, finally, where was that cloak when I needed to get past the prefects in ‘Chamber of Secrets? The problem is that when under the cloak, you enter a first person view and you cannot touch anyone as you move along otherwise you get caught. Not that doesn’t sound too bad, except for the fact that YOU’RE IN FIRST PERSON!! Your vision is limited to what’s around you, and you can’t see anything behind you, which is what will cause you to get caught the majority of the time!
Selecting spells is just awkward in this game. To get to the right spell, you have to press and hold down the R1 button, and cycle through the wheel of spells Harry has, and when you select the spell you want, you release R1. This really slows down the gameplay as you are constantly having to do this all the bloody time! And casting as well, is a mess, to aim properly, you have to move the left analog stick in your opponent’s direction, while you are still moving, hold down L2 to aim and hold down the R2 button to charge your spell, and then release it to cast, but because you are in such a hurry to get past the level, you’re not going to be doing any of that, you’ll just end up smashing the R2 button repeatedly and hoping your spells hit something that looks like a threat. And when you’re in a position where you have to deal with both Death Eaters and Dementors, you're going to be fucked. I would not bother and just stick with using Stupefy, that’s the best option.
There’s an extra spell called the Four-Point spell, and like everything else in this game, it’s rubbish. The spell is supposed to help Harry find the correct direction in order to go in the current objective, but the spell rarely works when you need it to, so you are going to end up running around in circles for most of the time. There are even potions in this game to collect as well, now what would you expect to do with a potion? Do you drink it? Of course not, what a stupid suggestion. No, you throw at your enemies as they explode LIKE FUCKING GRENADES!!
But in the end, there is no point for any of these things in the game when you think about. In the Ministry of Magic level, Hermione cries out something like how we can’t beat them, I took that to heart and just ran through the whole level without firing any spells… and it worked. I lost a bit of health, but that doesn’t matter, because the bloody thing replenishes itself! It’s like the game is saying ‘We know you won’t die in this game, so we’re not going to give you the chance to die’. But I may need to replenish my health when I am in a situation, where I’m SURROUNDED BY FUCKING ENEMIES AND IT DOESN’T GIVE ME THE FUCKING CHANCE TO GET THE FUCKING HEALTH BACK UP AGAIN IN ORDER TO FIGHT!!”
AAAGGHHHHH!! This game is giving me a headache, my horn’s starting to ache constantly using my magic to hit the fucking buttons… bet you didn’t know our horns could do that, did you. So in conclusion, is this game worse than ‘Goblet of Fire’? Do I need to explain myself anymore, OF COURSE IT IS!! There was absolutely no effort put into this, just to try and compete with other shooter games. The gameplay is just repetitive, boring and really short; I swear, I completed this game in a lesser time than what I had in ‘Half-Blood Prince’. The graphics are laughably bad, the stealth sections are annoying. It’s just a terrible game altogether I wouldn’t even be sure to recommend it to the most die-hard ‘Potter’ fan, but I have bought it, and I’ve now suffered for my actions.
Alright, one more, just one more game! And since it is based on the same engine as this one, I have a serious doubt the ‘Harry Potter’ game series will end glouriously.