Everybody loves Harry Potter, or so it seems. I didn't know much about it other than low-level hype previous to the Harry's first movie outing, but since my mother had religiously purchased and read the books to that point, I decided to borrow the first to read before seeing the movie. The book was OK, and the movie glossy and faithful, but neither inspired, so I simply let the property lie. It's not like Rowling needed my fistful of cash in order to get by, right?

Now, here we are with Order of the Phoenix, and a quick trip through the introductory segments of the Wii version of the game based on the movie based on the book by the same name shows that my Potternical knowledge is outdated as I didn't know who half of these characters were or why I should care that they wanted to talk to me. So let's start right there, with the facts that I am not even a garden variety Potter fan, and more to the point, I am no fan at all of video games based on popular licenses. You can take that as you like, but please keep it in mind.

Order of the Phoenix on the Wii looks about like you expect a game based on a big budget movie. It's rough around the edges, but it has detail out the wazoo — too much detail. Scanned faces of the actors pasted onto uniformed mannequins, spouting dialogue spoken, I believe, by the actors themselves (I know Alan Rickman, and I know what he sounds like, and I'm reasonably sure that was him, but seriously, I've only seen the one movie, and that was back when it was a new release on DVD). Lots of geometry in the architecture, covered by hundreds of often animated paintings, littered by tapestries, vases and statues (oh, my). Everything textured in generally muted, realistic tones, which, in a video game, has a tendency to just blur into mud (one of the many reasons I don't believe that live-action material should be converted quite so "faithfully").

While it's obvious that EA put some effort into the appearance of the game — not to mention leveraged the assets from the movie — as a game, it's a little too subtle, a little too blah. On the upside, I still can't get over the modern requirements for 480p and widescreen support on all titles and continue to be pleasantly surprised at the ease of use and generally fine appearance these requirements create which each new title I see.

Aurally, its more of the same. I've mentioned the actors' voices, but there's also the background hum of a living school. The sound of it is alive and vibrant, though it sounds like there are at least 10 times as many students around the grounds than you actually ever see. In the main building, you've got the perpetual grinding of the moving staircases. Most everything else is fairly standard and tame, effects to help you realize something is happening, like the fizzling puff of a failed spell casting (something I heard a lot of).

The game itself, like most movie-licensed material, attempts to follow, at least roughly, the story of said movie, though I could hardly judge that myself. And in truth, other than the basic plotline of Dumbledore being in some sort of trouble with either Umbridge or the people she works for — and given that Umbridge seems to have been charged with keeping Hogwart's attendees from learning or casting spells — Harry and friends are questing to get Dumbledore loyalists together to teach them how to cast and fight, a lot of what was going on just felt like filler material. I have no way of knowing if chasing down an impish owl who refuses to hand over Harry's apparent paramour's package (say that five times fast) or speaking to all the gargoyles and paintings in the place is part of the actual story, but most of these events resulted in far more busy work than I generally like in my games.

Here we get to the meat of the game itself. What Harry seems to be required to do is run, full out, for hours, fulfilling several laundry lists of tasks, such as tracking down the erstwhile members of Dumbledore's Army, summoning them to a meeting, all the while pausing at every painting, tapestry and statue in an attempt to "discover" these little glowing spheres that are apparently the mystic source of "discovery points." Discovery points are collected toward leveling Harry up, which generally just makes his spells louder and more colorful when cast. They also cause little extras in a certain secret room to be unlocked for your future perusal (nothing of interest to me, but a younger fan, especially of the movies might enjoy a tour through the place when completely unlocked).

So, Order of the Phoenix is basically a boring if faithful book-to-movie-to-game property, but here with the Wii version, we have a special bonus. I'll not say this is a saving grace, but it's the sort of thing that absolutely separates it from versions on other platforms and makes you wonder just how dreadful those versions would be to suffer through. The motion sensitivity of the Wii-mote and Nunchuck are put to use for the purposes of spell-casting. The Wii-mote is obviously like your wand, though not exactly as you'll be "aiming" by facing Harry appropriately with the thumb stick and pressing B. Once aimed correctly, you cast spells by certain motions of the Wii-mote, often assisted with motions performed by the Nunchuck.

The prime example of this is Wingardium Leviosa, the spell used for lifting and moving objects. A simple, quick upwards motion of both controls casts the spells, but then you've got an object floating in the air, so what do you do? Continue moving the controls, of course. It's pretty self-explanatory moving away, toward and laterally. Up and down are a little trickier and often dependent on exactly what you're doing. It's kinda like piloting a tugboat (which, having two independently steerable engines, are surprisingly agile) and requires a bit of getting used to. It's not perfectly implemented, but in a sloppily hacked together game like most movie licenses (EA produced or otherwise), this is a shining jewel in their game play mechanics. Unfortunately, levitating a large stone bench and tossing it through the air cannot be used as a weapon.

Which brings us to dueling — wizard dueling to be precise. Apparently, wizards aren't like normal people. They can't beat on each other with various objects to settle differences. They're only allowed to cast very difficult to aim spells at each other until, apparently, the CPU controlled character gives up and decides to just stay down. These spells seem fairly difficult to cast, not to mention aim properly, as their instigating effects are not invisible like levitation and require you to actually get Harry pointed in the right direction and set at the appropriate distance as the energy of the spell has to travel through space, and it rarely does so in a straight line. I could see a more "push button" spell-casting system that would be found on other platforms to be superior, at least in performance.

The high points here, if you want to call them that, are twofold. First, you learn to deflect offensive spells cast at you. The motion is a flick up with the Wii-mote and feels good when it works. I was rarely able to actually hit anything with the reflected spell as that seems to be very accurately calculated from the actual angles of the energy travel and Harry's facing, and with sloppy controls, that is impossible to actually get right on purpose. But it is nice to have an effective defense that actually plays to the strength of the genre and the controls. Secondly, there's really not that much dueling to be had, and a lot of it is just practice, so these issues rear their heads only infrequently.

So, all in all, this is what I would consider the best version of a lackluster, cross-platform game based on an overhyped license. If you're a Harry fan, maybe you should rent this game. If you're a Harry completionist, you should pick this game up in a few months, after a price drop or two. Only the elite echelons of Harry-stalkerdom need rush right out and buy their copies today.