Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone

Electronic Arts thankfully bestowed a lot of production value on this release rather than trying to cash in on a quick buck. Aside from the occasional pop-up problem that makes walls vanish quite unmagically, the graphics are beautiful and fun. Chocolate frogs (an appropriate health power-up) and other elements and characters from the book and film are wonderfully animated. The sound effects and, particularly, the voice acting are top-drawer, which helps suck the player into the Potter experience. Also, the gameplay is nicely varied throughout. Players go from learning a new spell in class to retrieving fire seeds for Hagrid to participating in magic fights against the Slytherin bully Draco Malfoy to riding the broom--which is especially fun. There's even a Quidditch level early on, but there's little to do and it's over very quickly.

On the downside, the game suffers from some really odd controls. Like many adventure games, jumping is really important, as many levels require you to clear obstacles or reach out-of-the-way items. But, unlike in nearly every other game in the genre, there's no jump button. Instead, players automatically jump from the edge of a platform from either a full stop or while running. It takes a lot of getting used to; if you're not at full run or full stop, it's easy to just walk right off the edge and fall. And, like too many other games, you can only save your progress at predetermined locations.

Another fault of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's S

Customer reviews:

Harry Potter entertains the college dorm room!, 2007-09-21
i was impressed with the speed in which i received this item. This was part of a group of Harry Potter gifts that i ordered for my son's birthday. He was so excited to get all of his Harry Potter gift's that he took them all to college with him and is the hit of his dorm. His room was designated "the room" to hang out in. when he and his friends are not in class maintaining their 4.0 GPA's, they are busy playing this new and magical game! Thank you for helping me make his birthday a magical experience,
Sincerely, K. Kurtz

NOT TERRIBLE, BUT NOT VERY GOOD, 2007-09-09
For one thing, I will say this game's not too awful but there are a number of problems that need to be addressed. For one, missions aren't very exciting, and they almost feel like fetch-quests like you see in RPGs. When it comes to broom riding the controls are awful, and I failed broom test flights numerous times because of the controls, and you have to repeat the course every time you fail. So, because of this I found myself yelling constant obscentities. The graphics are awful (Come on ! Consoles in this time period had better capabilities than this !), and the character voices sound terrible. This game feels like it tries to imitate RPGs too much, and falls flat on its face in the process. The game doesn't take much to complete either (I completed 29% of the game in just over an hour). With that said, this game doesn't suck, but it's not very deep or exciting either.