From reader and Boards member "MichaelVash7886"


Yet another licensed game, but this one actually plays pretty well. I know it’s hard to believe but in short I found myself having fun playing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for the Wii. Harry Potter fans can probably stop reading now and go pick up the game, but for those of you that are curious let’s look at the game in more detail.

Graphically there isn’t anything jaw-dropping, but overall the visuals work very well. The character models look good, the in game cut scenes look good, maybe the only real gripe you can find is the facial animations aren’t that great, but not bad either. It may not be the most graphically impressive game on the Wii, but one thing to remember is you never see a loading screen at any point in the game. There’s some loading, but it’s hidden, sometimes the game will make you walk from place to place as it loads the next area, but that’s never a big deal. The opening scene after you select new game or a save file is simply used to load the world of Hogwarts, but it’s not just a screen saying “Loading.”

Now while the no loading thing is quite cool, the sheer amount of space you have to explore is amazing. In past Harry Potter games the load times got pretty bad. OotP (Order of the Phoenix) totally solved that problem. You’d really have to play the game yourself to see how big Hogwarts is. Let’s say I start off in Gryffindor Common Room, go down the grand stair case, take a secret passage to the dungeons, go over to the Herbology greenhouses, through a secret passage back to the grand stair case take another secret passage to the library, take the long way back to the grand staircase, take a secret passage out to the boat house, go through the grounds and back to the grand staircase, and go down to the bottom floor and take a secret passage to the seventh floor all without seeing a single load screen. (If that was confusing don’t worry I’ll explain what keeps you from getting lost in a little bit.)

Something that I usually don’t look at as much is presentation; however this OotP does this part quite well. From the opening title to the extras you unlock, everything feels very much like it should in the Harry Potter world. The title menu is a copy of the Daily Prophet and you select new game or continue. The music in the game works well, and they have the “Hedwig theme” in the game that so many associate with Harry Potter. All the voices I could find were done by their movie counterparts.

Full Review Here:
Link

Posted in: on Thursday, July 5, 2007 at at 1:49 PM