Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game ~ review

It is widely known that films based on video games are hardly successful at the box-office. The only one that is successful that I could think of is the Resident Evil film series which has now span 5 (soon to be 6) films. Even that series haven't been truly faithful to their source materials. But what about video games based on movies? I rarely played them and I hardly read anything about them but if this video game (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that is) is any indicator, then I would say that their fate is somewhat the same; not successful.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the video game, was released back in 2009 to coincide with the release of the movie. It was released on multiple platforms; PC, Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, XBox 360 and mobile. The version I played and review here would be the PS2 version.

In short, the storyline followed much from the movie. It follows Harry and his friends in their sixth year in Hogwarts, and shows how Dumbledore prepares Harry to fight with Voldemort and how they work together to find the key in breaking Voldemort's defences. I noticed there are some things in the storyline doesn't really match from the movie but I'm not sure whether they are plot points from the novel that were left out from the movie or they are just things made up for the video games. But of course there are some plots that are made up for the video games but since I didn't read the book I can't point out which one. To be honest, plot is one of the thing that is not important in this game as I feel the whole point in it is to let gamers feel like they are truly attending school at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The gameplay consists of several mini games involving magic spells like to levitate objects and move them, to set things on fire and to mend broken objects. There are also Quidditch games, duelling (fight against another wizard using magic spells) and potion making. Players will play all these mini games as they progress through the story. Although they are fun at first, after awhile they get repetitive and players will get bored of them, well at least I got bored of them. Even my favourite section, potion making, gets tiring after about 4 times playing them. I read the game uses the Wii Remote function for the gameplay so maybe it will be quite fun to play it on Wii, but I bet after awhile players would still get bored of it. But if you do like to play them, you're lucky because you can still do duelling, potion mixing and all the mini games after you finish the main storyline.

Visual-wise, the video game has quite a decent graphics, nothing spectacular but not too bad either. But I don't quite like the colour pattern they used here which is quite the same with the movie. It may have work for the film but I don't think it is fitting for a video game. Comparing it with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (the other Harry Potter video game that I had ever played) which looks bright and colourful, this one looks rather dull. But then again, maybe it's because of the story that has darker tone hence the more darker and look of the visuals. Furthermore, the characters look a bit stiff but the voice-acting helps to bring the characters alive, although that part was also decent and nothing to brag about.

Overall, the video game was fun at first but repetitive gameplay makes it tiring for players to go through the same mini games over and over and over again. Strictly for hardcore Harry Potter fans only. Or those who wants to feel how it's like to be a student at Hogwarts.

Images from Wikipedia and IGN.