Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix takes the Harry Potter video game series to a new level by using the movie set blueprint of Hogwarts. You can walk through the dining hall and grand staircase as Harry as you complete tasks, play mini-games and help your fellow students with their various problems.
The story of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is hard to follow unless you've read the book or have seen the movie. The game provides fragments of the story at a time, making it hard to piece together what is going on. The general premise is that Harry's warning about Voldemort is ignored by the ministry. Hogwarts has hired a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher — Mrs. Umbridge, a member of the ministry — to come up with a new curriculum that doesn't involve casting spells. With the help of Hermione and Ron, Harry gathers students to join what they call "Dumbledore's Army" so that Harry can teach the students defensive spells in the event of an attack.
The game begins with a brief tutorial by Sirius Black in which you learn such basic spells as reparo to fix objects, wingardium leviosa to levitate objects, depulso to push an object and accio to bring an object toward you. All these spells will help you do chores around the house and around Hogwarts. The interesting spells come later, once you've gathered your army. The spells are cast using the right stick on the controller. There is a spell list that you can always refer to in case you forget. There are only six non-combat spells and another six combat spells. You will come across Slytherin troublemakers, during which time, you can test out dueling spells, but these occurrences are rare. Timing your casting is tricky, and there is not much in terms of targeting when you're facing real opponents. When you're levitating objects, you can scroll through targets with the LT and RT buttons. Moving an object around while it's levitated can be tough, especially for tasks where it involves putting a painting back on the wall, because it doesn't seem to move in the direction it's supposed to.
You'll earn discovery points by doing such mundane tasks as repairing broken items throughout Hogwarts, putting up paintings to discover new house ghosts and coming across new animals. By doing these tasks, eventually it'll progress the storyline, but most of the time, it feels like you're just completing one task after another. Helping students is a chore, especially when they send you to the opposite end of the school.
Hogwarts is large, so luckily, you are armed with the Mauraders Map. You also have Hermione, who will constantly remind you of where you need to go, so you're not stuck mapping out the place on your own. You can select locations, as well as people, to find on the map, and footprints will pop up to guide you in the right direction. The footprints function as a great guide, except that they're hard to follow, and they disappear when the floor is dark. The footprints fade and appear as they lead you toward your destination, but it feels like you can outrun them at points, and you need to stop and wait to see them appear again. This isn't the end of the world, but an arrow would have been easier to follow. Talking to portraits also help you gain access to secret passages, which also helps.
Throughout Hogwarts, you'll come across various mini-games such as wizards chess, two versions of exploding snap and gobstones. Wizards chess doesn't come with a tutorial, so you'll have to know how to play chess to be able to take part in this mini-game.
Many of the actors' heads were scanned to make the game feel like you're in the movie. From a distance, the characters look great, but once the camera gets too close, the character movements are choppy and awkward. Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint also lend their voices so that even though you might not know what's going on in terms of the story, at least there is good voice-acting. Music from the movie is included as well, to make Hogwarts come to life. It's just too bad that this doesn't make up for the fact that you generally aren't doing much in the game except running around and gathering items or fixing things.
There is a Room of Rewards that Moaning Myrtle keeps track of when you discovery new things around Hogwarts. You'll find commentaries and actor interviews, as well as checklists of what you have left to discover.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix doesn't provide much in terms of excitement and adventure. It's quite an achievement to have recreated Hogwarts in such detail so that you can explore every nook and cranny from Hagrid's Hut to the Owlery. Due to the size of Hogwarts, unfortunately, there is too much walking, and it slows down the game. Fans of the series will like the fact that you can run around the school and explore, but that novelty doesn't last very long.
I am a Canadian living in California with my husband and my precious baby Bailey (95lbs of labrador fun). I work full time and go to school, so finding the time to play video games is tough. I still manage to sneak some time in, whether it's playing on my GBA while I wait in line or sitting in the back seat of my car so I can use our dvd player to play the Gamecube on long trips. I've always been fairly decent at playing games to give my younger brother some competition. I started at the early age of 6 when I inherited an Atari 2600. I played any computer game I could get my hands on during those Commodore 64 days. Now I'll play anything from RPGs to first person shooters, racing games or basically anything that's fun and allows me to play with at least 3 other people.
