Lego Harry Potter: Years 1 - 4

Review from Matt - Wednesday, 28 July 2010 @ 3:28am

It shouldn't be necessary to really say what the Lego games are by now, they've been a staple of the current generation of games, especially for anyone with children. But in the interests of quality gaming journalism, let's give it a go, shall we?

In the beginning there was Lego Star Wars, and it was a stupid idea. The concept that two good things go together to make something great is the sort of thing all children realise isn't necessarily true when they try putting strawberry milk on a sausage roll. Yet somehow it worked.

AND MY AXE!

The Lego games, starting from Lego Star Wars: Episodes 1 - 3 are about the recreation of the basic narrative of beloved franchises in the format of Star Wars. Their success rests on a careful balance of gentle parody with an obvious affection for the source. The basic gameplay hasn't changed significantly from game to game. You run around with one of the characters and smash anything that will break, and assemble anything that will go together. At some point in doing this the puzzles will resolve themselves and you can continue on to more puzzles or platforming or combat. More or less everything you do gives you little Lego coins of various values, and the coins are also scattered around. Certain characters have different abilities, necessitating extra play-throughs to get to everything, which is generally only possible after playing through it with the "correct" characters in story mode first.

Lego Harry Potter doesn't really deviate from this tried and true formula, but to be honest it probably never really had to. It always worked, and it worked damn well. The series hasn't evolved a lot since the early days, but the last two games (this and Lego Indiana Jones 2) have had a nice new feature. This feature is the ability for the two players to separate and get a dynamic and intuitive split screen. The screen splits in such a way that you can always tell where the other player is and find your way back to them, but if you're both close it just stays together in one image. It's a stunningly simple and intuitive way to handle split screen gameplay and it's one of those things that you wonder why people weren't always doing it that way, the sign of a true innovation.

Oooooh! DIAGONALLY! I get it now!

The fact is things have gone downhill since Lego Star Wars, and the reason is very clear. Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Lego Indiana Jones: The Crystal Skulls. All of these have been polished and well executed, but they had one thing missing. Star Wars has an ensemble cast, a range of characters that are all freaking awesome. Han Solo, Leia, Luke, Obi-Wan, Lando, Chewbacca, R2-D2, Darth Maul, Vader... All amazing characters, and a joy to play as one.

But if you ain't Indy you ain't shit. What are you going to be, Short Round? Some woman who'll be replaced next episode? If you're not Batman you're Robin. Seriously, Robin.

This new episode of the Lego franchise finally has a decent group to play. Harry Potter isn't the only likeable character in the HP series and probably not even the best one. Playing one of the others isn't a crap experience, it's a fun alternative.

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

One thing that differs LHP from earlier Lego titles is that it de-emphasises combat in favour of puzzle solving. This makes a lot of sense, to be honest. Combat was never the Lego way, and the games were always a bit clunky at it. By contrast the puzzles were often clever and imaginative.

Another nifty addition is the spells. Previous Lego adventures had you switching between characters with diverse skills to get through it or unlock everything, but HP’s approach differs. Most actions are done through spells, and most spells are available to most characters. There are a few that are more limited, but in general the switching between characters is replaced with switching between spells, which works more intuitively.

It's not a flawless adventure. There are occasional bugs that come up and block your progress until you reset. The split screen works well up to this frustrating point marginally before it actually forms one screen again where you actually can’t see properly. The main issue I have, though, is that you really don’t have a damned clue what you’re supposed to be doing most of the time. Your two main spells are “wingardium leviosa” and just shooting stuff with a wand. Wingardium susceptible items get a blue glow around them, but things that you’re expected to shoot just sit there. When things do happen the “oh it’s magic” nature of the game means any old shit can happen for any or no reason, there’s no logic to much of the puzzle solving, just blast everything you see and wait for a giant snake or flying fish or book with teeth or some random crap to fix it.

These things are niggles, though. Lego Harry Potter is a loving tribute to the movies (NOT the books) and unless you’re really fussy about accuracy it’s an enjoyable romp through that well romped story.

I cannot think of a single dirty caption for this image.

I know I’ve said most of this in my previous review of Lego Indy, but I love this series. I have a 10 year old son, and it’s so damnably rare to find games that both he and I can play together. Games that are still fun for me, without being impossible and frustrating for him. Games that I can pop in and out of to help him and play along and games that he can play by himself and enjoy recreating the world of the books he’s seen and read.

Pros

Harry Potter is awesome. Solid cast. Spell mechanism works well. Split screen is excellent. Same gameplay we know and love. Some really fun magic events.

Cons

Random events occur from spells, occasionally obtuse puzzles, camera annoyances and a few bugs.