Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix
Jun 22, 2007
Another summer, another Harry Potter movie. This year, JK Rowlings' Order of the Phoenix is getting the big-screen treatment, and it'll be hitting move theaters nationwide in a matter of weeks. As EA prepares to release its game adaptation of Order of the Phoenix, we took a run through the first few hours of the PlayStation 3 version, and it's shaping up well.
It's been a while since we read The Order of the Phoenix. Fortunately for us, we had forgotten what a whiney brat Potter is in this book. It's not the game's fault, but we still found ourselves gritting our teeth a couple of times during the game's first few missions at his petulant outbursts. Sadly, despite the game's nifty physics system, you can't drop a few hefty items of furniture on him to teach him a lesson. Shame.
Our gripes about the irritating book aside, Potter's visuals are shaping up impressively. All the early game takes place in the halls of the movie's school, Hogwarts, and the team has the look down perfectly. The school's main staircase looks just like its movie representation, rotating staircases and all. As you hustle from floor to floor, you're harangued by moving paintings, passing ghosts, other students: it's packed with atmosphere.
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And it's a big place. So big, in fact, that you'll need some help to find your way from one place to another. In true Potter style, Harry carries the Marauder's Map - a singularly cunning device that not only shows you the layout of Hogwarts', but can also highlight the location of anybody in the building. Once you drop back to the game, you'll see a little line of footstep symbols that point the way toward the target you selected.
Very little gets in between the player and the world, too. Besides the footsteps, there's no HUD - no on-screen interface of any kind, save a quick animation of the right controller motion when learning a new spell. That means no health bars, no mana, no minimap, no nothing: you and your wand are on your own.
Order of the Phoenix's atmosphere is helped enormously by the character models. So often, movie-licensed games take the cheap option, don't license the appearance of their stars, and make do with characters with generic faces that don't resemble their on-screen counterparts. Not here. Harry and his chums (and his enemies, for that matter) are immediately recognizable, and look great. Purely looking at how the game captures the look of the movie, EA has a winner here.
As you play, you'll discover some of Hogwarts' secrets: broken suits of armor, pictures in disarray on the floor, and wrinkled rugs all hide blue orbs, and collecting enough of them unlocks rewards held in a hidden room. The first of these is a well-produced video short featuring a few of the actors talking about their roles and the game: unusually for this sort of extra content, it's actually interesting, even if you're not necessarily potty about Potter. Oh, and unlocking them handily increases the power of your spells.
Matching the stripped-down HUD interface, the controls are easy to use. All the magic spells are mapped to the right stick, with different gestures casting different magic almost like a fighting game's moves. Two anticlockwise circles casts the repair spell, for example, while a quick up-down shuffle will pick up an object. Targeting is automatic, and you can switch between all possible objects or opponents with the shoulder buttons.
You can also use the PS3's motion control system to mimic the movements of the stick, although we found ourselves going back to the more traditional control system quickly, an experience we've often had with PS3 motion control. The precision of the joypad seems less frustrating at first, although perhaps it'll improve with practice. After all, who could resist the prospect of casting a spell with a mere gesture?
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Order of the Phoenix also includes a handful of minigames that you play against other Hogwarts students. We only had the chance to try out the first of these, a simple "snap" game with (you guessed it) exploding cards, but more are in store later in the game. Beat all the players of a certain game, and you'll earn more of those blue bonus spheres.
On first impressions, Order of the Phoenix is shaping up to be one of the rare movie-to-game transitions that actually capture something of the atmosphere of the flick. Can the gameplay keep up with the presentation? Check back next week and find out in our full review.