Don't forget to be on the look-out for talking gargoyles....
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Electronic Arts
PlayStation 3
Hayden Meikle
3 stars (out of 5)
Don't forget to be on the look-out for talking gargoyles.
Don't forget to be on the look-out for talking gargoyles.
Don't for . . . aaaaarrrrgggh.
Imagine that sentence being said in a high-pitched English girl's voice.
Now imagine it being mimicked by a 6-year-old New Zealand girl with a higher-pitched voice.
Now imagine it being repeated over, and over, and over.
That was my only previous experience of a Harry Potter video game.
The Order of the Phoenix was a fine accompaniment to the book and the movie - the fifth in the epic J. K. Rowling series - but yes, it could get quite annoying.
Pottermania is back with the recent release of The Half-Blood Prince, the sixth movie and yet another game tie-in.
There's no need to give away too many of the plot details.
Suffice to say you play Harry, a wizard with spectacles in his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft.
As with the previous game, the feature of the Half-Blood Prince is the faithful recreation of the extraordinary school that serves as the primary setting.
All the moving staircases and talking portraits and cubbyholes and professors and great halls are there, and that will be enough to keep younger gamers entertained.
The older set need something more.
The game covers much of the plot development of the book but obviously can't fit everything in, so the progression can seem a little disjointed.
Mini-games are included to break up the action.
The three options are duelling (intriguing at first but too complicated), Quidditch (great idea but all you do is move through glowing rings to catch the Snitch) and potions (following recipes and mixing up the various ingredients - very good fun).
On your travels, you get a personal GPS system in the form of Gryffindor's resident ghost, Nearly Headless Nick.
Various collectables are around to maintain the interest for longer.
There's nothing much wrong with the look of the game or its evocative music score, which comes straight from the movies.
But it's not challenging enough for most gamers and at times it feels a bit, I don't know, hollow compared with the books.
Perhaps that's understandable.
Rowling created a remarkable series full of great characters, and it was always going to be tough for a game to capture the magic.
