LEGO Creator Harry Potter

LEGO Creator Harry Potter is atypical of children's programs that usually run players through a fixed set of activities or educational challenges. Instead, the designers have made a serious effort to leave things wide open and flexible, sticking close to the reason why kids enjoy LEGO in the first place. Players can place LEGO units--animals, characters, blocks, doors, chests--around the landscape of Hogwarts. But this is no mere simulation of a real-life play experience--this LEGO world is animated! With a single mouse click, players bring their creations to life. Place a LEGO snake on-screen in this game and it will promptly slither for cover. Likewise, the Harry Potter characters--who are incredibly charming when rendered as standard LEGO people--will move around the environment created for them, even interacting when they come together.

While the complexity of this package makes it tougher to master than many games, a series of tutorials disguised as challenges can smooth out the learning curve. Users explore the school, build LEGO trains, find lost animals and as they do, they learn the lay of the land. The challenges have another motivator built in--without them, you cannot cast all the magical spells otherwise available to Harry and the others.

LEGO Creator Harry Potter frees you to build a stage and place upon it the well-known characters from the JK Rowling novels. What happens next is limited only by your imagination. --Alyx Dellamonica

Customer reviews:

Why the trashing? This game rocks!, 2007-12-15
I do NOT understand why everybody is trashing it.
If you can't use the swivel ball correctly, it's something to do with your mouse. Mine works flawlessly!

Haven't you ever wanted to be a lego person interacting with things you built?
Haven't you ever wanted an infinite supply of lego bricks you can't get on Lego Digital Designer?
Haven't you ever wanted to cast spells on people that you can either control or let themselves control themselves?

Think of it as a MMORPG! You can interact with minifigs and duel with them, not to mention unlock hidden places and fly on a broomstick! There's a variety of spells you can cast, a variety of bricks to build with, and a variety of Harry Potter characters (and you can even interact or control YOUR OWN CUSTOM MADE MINIFIG)!

Do NOT delay! Get this game TODAY!

LEGO Creator (NOT) Harry Potter, 2002-04-11
I got this game for my daughter who is an avid Harry Potter fan and enjoys games on PC and Gameboy. But what a let down this was. She attempted to play this on the PC twice and then gave up. I, and others, have tried to do it and it is so bad!
Attempting to turn the 'swivel ball' with any degree of accuracy is impossible. The instructions both in the booklet and on-screen are virtually useless and that wizard with his inane chatter is enough to make anyone do serious damage to their PC.
I felt we were back in the early days of computer games, it seems so archaic. If it was cheap I could understand but I paid a lot for this game and expected a much higher quality for the price...
If anyone were to ask me whether to buy this game I would say 'Don't and don't even accept it as a gift! It's not worth the computer storage it's put on!'