Girl Gamer

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for the Xbox 360 is quite possibly the best break from gaming I have ever experienced. I am a fan of the books and the movies do them a great deal of justice, so what do the video games do? They allow you to enter the world of Hogwarts and get a taste of dueling, spell making and quidditch playing. Ah, yes, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is by far the best Harry Potter game to date.

I’m not saying this game is going to change the face of gaming. It’s by no means another Golden Eye, but it is innovative, capturing and well, just plain fun. The game starts you out at the Burrow with Ginny, Ron and Hermione and they teach you some very basic spells. You learn Wingardium Leviosa and a few dueling spells such as Stupefy and Expelliarmus. Take a few go-rounds flying around the make shift quidditch field in the Weasley’s back yard and you are ready for your sixth year at Hogwarts.

Loony Lovegood is back in a very small role as is Seamus. Malfoy and his goons are still giving Harry a hard time, but you can show them you mean business by wielding some pretty heavy spells at them every time they stop you mid quest. (And they will. A lot.) Have fun with the mini quests that weave themselves in and out of the main story. Rescue Ron from Lavender and help a few of your classmates recover their belongings. Play as Ron drunk as a skunk on Love Potion or take a spin as Ginny as Gryffindor’s new Seeker.

Another fun aspect of the game is now you’re a year older and capable of learning bigger and more effective spells. Join the dueling club and blast your way through your fellow Gryffindors (and a few Slytherins, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs along the way) to reign supreme. These new spells come in handy when it’s time to take on those pesky Death Eaters, a few Slytherins and a two-time encounter with Bellatrix herself.. Arm tired from all that wand waving? Try your luck in Herbology where you can join the Potion Making Club and learn how to brew some of the magic world’s finest. Take a crack at the quidditch team and help your teammates take home the House Cup. Along the way join Harry and Co. to learn more of Tom Riddle, the shifty Professor Snape and what it is exactly that Dumbledore has been up to lately. Meet (yet another) new professor as well as interact with your favorites such as Professor McGonagall. Prepare yourself for some spoilers if you’re playing the game before seeing the movie or having read the book, because this game is in perfect sync with the text as well as the feature film.

It’s a nice vacation from my more serious side of gaming and it was fun to put my clans on the back burner to experience life as Harry Potter (and Ron and Ginny!) Drink some luck potion and run around in first person with everything in your favor! Collect shields and mini shields to unlock different modes of the game. With the press of a button summon Nearly Headless Nick to help you find your way around Hogwarts because unlike Order of the Phoenix, you no loner have a Marauder’s Map. It’s still apart of the game but it’s no longer interactive.

As far as game schematics, the controls were by far the best yet. My only complaint is when trying to deal out spells it would confuse the movement of my analog sticks and send out something I wasn’t trying to do. You can self-control your camera as an option and it comes in handy trying to hunt down all those pesky shields. It’s a lot of fun learning the commands to mix spells and it’s pretty interactive for not being a motion based game. Running is a pain, but if you time it right going around corners is a breeze after some practice. The only quirkiness was with the mini-shields. If you didn’t expel them at the right angle the scenery would absorb them and you have to come back later to find more. It got extremely tiresome when it happened in a location that was out of the way. Put in some custom Hogwart’s teleports or allow me to apparate and it might not be so bad, but perhaps that’s going to be in the next game. The graphics are sub par (it’s predecessor’s were a lot better), but I wasn’t expecting anything over the top because I wasn’t expecting an outstanding game. I must say I was humbly surprised.