Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

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I own the previous (6) Harry Potter games, all on PS2, and I really enjoyed them and I've played them quite a few times. I was very excited to receive Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (although I wasn't too thrilled that it wasn't being released on PS2 only because I didn't want to split up the games) and I pre-ordered it as soon as it became available. I received it on it's release day and started playing it right away. My very first impression was "I'm not going to really like this game" and boy was I right!

I knew that Harry would no longer be in Hogwarts and that he would be on the run and that this was his most challenging year yet, but what I didn't account for was the game being extremely challenging!

During the game you uncover around every corner death eaters, snatchers and dementors. Plus I've come across a couple other creatures so far such as spiders and doxies. It's not so bad to defeat the death eaters and snatchers when there's only a couple of them attacking you but when they start coming at you on all sides, it gets very difficult and not only that but when you defeat one, two more take it's place! The most frustrating part of the game, I think, is when you have to do these side missions where you have to save muggles and muggle born witches and wizards. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail just incase some of you decide to play this game (I know I hate spoilers). The game is a lot like a first person shooting game. You have your invisibility cloak and it becomes very clear that it's hard to not be discovered while wearing it; because not only do you got to make sure you don't bump into anyone you also need to always keep an eye on your stealth meter and make sure it doesn't go into the red zone otherwise you lose the cloak and you'll be discovered! During game play you can't ever let your guard down and this I don't like! There are items you can pick up to collect throughout the game (deathly hallows symbols, potterwatch programs, copies of the quibbler and the daily prophet) if you can find them but it makes it very difficult to even try to find these items when you have spells being thrown at you from every direction! There is one good thing about this game though...while there is no health meter, you do know when your health is diminishing because the colors on the screen will start to dim (when the colors turn to grey that's when you're about to die) and when that happens you need to run for cover till the colors on the screen are bright again. So this makes it easier not to die, but believe me you still can if you cannot find cover fast enough!

You have quite a few selections of spells and potions you can use to defend yourself. You only start off with one spell but throughout the game you get more of them the further you progress. The spells you get are:

stupefy

expelliarmus

petrificus totalus

confuno

confrigo

impedimenta

expulso

protego

expect patronum

wingardium leviosa which can also be used to levitate items in front of you to block attacks

You also receive a spell called "four-points" which is very helpful because it guides you where you need to go so you never get lost!

The potions you pick up that you can be thrown at enemies to defend yourself are:

garrotting gas

doxycide

peruvian instant darkness powder

exploding potion this potion I can't seem to ever throw at an enemy without it exploding on me!

You can also pick up these other potions that will restore your health, restore wounds, etc. Those potions are:

felix felicis

strengthening solution

murlap essence

fire-protection potion

blood replenishing potion

elixir of life

polyjuice potion

A lot of these spells and potions you have heard of in other Harry Potter games and movies but there are a few that's never been mentioned before. Some spells and potions work better on different enemies, so it's always good to experiment.

The graphics in this game are poor for it being a PS3 game! The characters all look dirty and foggy! The volume fluxiates a lot, so you have to keep turning it up and down. You have to keep turning the volume up to hear what the character's are saying and then having to turn it down again when an emeny attacks because it will scare the crap out of you!

I believe I'm only 1/2 way through the game so far. I've got to keep stopping game play because it get's too frustrating! I have to be in the right mood now to play this game so it will most likely be awhile before I complete it. I pray that part 2 will be a lot better than this game!

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Let me get straight to the point. This game blows and is in my estimation, an early candidate for worst game of the year. The history of Harry Potter hasn't always been a good one. They have ranged from fair to acceptable, but have never really reached the heights of imagination from the rich source material that they came from. However, you could not deny that they were each good, solid efforts with the next iteration improving from the one before it. Then comes Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1. Gone are the free roaming explorations of Hogwarts. This time Harry and friends are on the run. And with this one bold plot course in the book, goes any semblence of a decent Harry Potter game. What developer EA Bright Light did so well in the previous game in terms of sandbox gaming is now replaced by a clunky third person shooter. This gameplay change could have been a welcomed divergence to the previous games if only were the mechanics not so broken.

You start off playing as Harry with one main spell that eventually swells to half a dozen or so while progressing through the game. I'm okay with the variety, yet I never found myself using anything other than the stupify spell which seemed more effective against enemies. There is a cover mechanic yet good luck finding a barrier to hide behind that will stick and keep you from getting hit with spell projectiles. The lock on mechanic is slippery and you'll often find yourself casting spells at empty air when it was focused on an enemy a second ago. Even more odd is that in some parts of the game, the view will shift from a third person perspective to a first person perspective without any rhyme or reason other than the developers trying to shake up the dull gameplay. There was one instance in the game that literally had me tearing my hair out. Harry is hidden under his invisibility cloak and must sneak around to accomplish a mission without being discovered. Once the mission is over, Harry must then sneak back to the original point in which he started in order to trigger a cut scene. The difficulty level then spikes and all of a sudden you're being discovered without anyone near you. I must have tried this level a dozen or so times before I finally got past it, yet I have no idea if it was due to my skill or just chance.

The graphics are equally bad. Though Harry, Hermione and Ron look detailed enough, they inhabit a world of muddy textures and dull environments. The cut scenes seemed rushed and unfinished and failed to stitch together any semblence of a coherent plot. Harry is given a mission to find the remaining Horcruxes, yet he then must partake in side missions that involve him sneaking out of a dragon's lair (don't ask how he got there), rescuing muggles and freeing captured wizards. Weird.

I never expected a great Harry Potter game, but I could always expect a competent one that offered me a couple hours of fun as a fan of the series. Deathly Hallows completely flipped the formula and instead offered a game so ugly and crippled by its gameplay mechanics that it's a shame that the best book in the series could not serve as inspiration for a good game. There is a couple of months for the developer to correct their mistakes before the second part of this game is released in July of 2011 but I'm not holding my breath.

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This game was quite exciting for me to play, especially considering I got it almost a week in advance from Amazon from pre ordering it.

When I started it up, I wasn't too impressed with the graphics. Even with my PS3 connected with an HDMI cable to my TV, the quality is not as clear as I would have hoped (like in games such as Uncharted). It does get a little pixelated in some places.

Gameplay in this game has become more Call of Duty-esque (or basically a first person shooter type thing), where you are basically fighting hundreds (literally) of Snatchers and Death Eaters. And this gets extremely tedious when every level basically has you fighting off Snatchers, Dementors or Death Eaters where it wouldn't even make sense (since they aren't really supposed to know Harry's there). Yes, COD is full of enemies to fight off like this as well, but that makes it more interesting and believable. Here, you would think you would be fighting off at most 5 people in one area but each time you beat them, more come along.

Also, there were some missions that didn't make much sense on what to do, so you just have to interpret what the mission is and do it somehow. The dragging storyline and additions of some missions seem to be there just to make the game longer because of the movie's cut. Maybe the games should have been independent from the movies (like in the first three). They reveal the scenes that are going to be in the movie and try to follow it too much, so splitting the game does not make as much sense as splitting the movie into two parts.

Unfortunately, the repetitive gameplay makes this a little boring and just fun for the little Harry Potter-ness and the cutscenes.

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I've only played this game for an hour and I'm already tired of it.

For starters, the cutscenes are incredibly rushed. I wasn't expecting some huge, theatrical production that takes you through every single page of the book but you are hurried through almost each and every scene. As a result, the story feels disjointed. Just when you think you're going to wander around a certain area a little while, you are pushed into the next. It's all very forgettable. I can't stress just how horribly done the story is except to leave you with this example after leaving Bill and Fleur's wedding (which you never really attend at all), you are directed to a cafe after a boring and ridiculous "mission" that wasn't in either the book or the movie and is completely unnecessary. As soon as you enter the cafe, the drama starts and then you're back out of the cafe. You only ever utilize the back 1/4 of the cafe, it's an entirely wasted "area". The whole thing takes maybe like 4 minutes and that's only because the battle itself takes 3 minutes.

This leads me to the battles themselves. You spend the vast majority of your time fighting the aim function and the rest of your time spamming R2 until your finger cramps up. On more than one occasion, I wound up missing my targets completely even though my wand was pointed directly at their chest and they were taking up almost half of my screen. I also agree with the others who mentioned the arsenal of spells and potions you are given I have no idea what works on what the best so I stick with whatever the heck is already selected because selecting anything else is a pain. At least the spell wheel (your menu of spells) stops the battle so you can look but it's clunky. I thought I had changed spells during one battle only to realize I hadn't because you have to press the directional key towards the spell you want and then close the wheel before letting go of the directional key or the spell deselects. Selecting potions doesn't seem to stop the battle so you have to cycle through them while trying not to die and on that note I see no health bar! The only indication you are given of losing health is the screen turning black and white and too late because by that time, you may as well kiss your butt goodbye, you're already nearly dead. I don't see any indication of my level or how I leveled either. It's meaningless and linear; you level when you are programmed to level, not once you've acquired a certain amount of experience. I imagine they only added in levels to make it seem like you are accomplishing something when, in reality, they are useless.

That's just the *mechanics* of the fights but almost as bad is the repetition. You fight one wave of whatever (Death Eaters, Snatchers, etc.) and then another comes. And then another followed by one more for good measure... It's boring and you find yourself wondering when it'll all end so you can move on already (and so you can give your poor index finger a rest!).

Currently, I'm parked at some "mini missions" that, yet again, make no sense. Hermione and Ron are off doing their thing while I'm helping Muggle-borns and, no, the "mini missions" are no better than the rest of the game. Once again, you are left to figure things out on your own. The one I chose to start with (you must do 3) has you battling a bunch of Snatchers to save the Muggle-borns from being taken captive. You basically get 5 "lives" if 5 Muggle-borns are taken, it's game over but do they tell you anything else? Nope. Actually, they don't even start by telling you that you can't let 5 get taken, you figure that out once the first is captured and you're told as much on screen. Otherwise, you have no clue what's going on. Is it a timed event where you have X minutes to kill Y Snatchers? Or is it a defensive sort of mission where you have to defend the Muggle-borns for X minutes? Or are there certain Muggleborns that need saved while the others help you fight? I still don't know and I barely finished it with 4/5 Muggle-borns captured. And now that I think on it more I realize I don't even know if I could have died during that mission because, as I already mentioned, you aren't shown any kind of health bar...

Now I'm just sitting here wondering if I can turn the game off without losing any progress because I can't remember if the game saved recently or not. I'm also wondering if I even care...

TL;DR the story is rushed and disjointed; parts are added that are unnecessary and stupid; the controls are clunky and the battles are too long; your arsenal of spells and potions go almost entirely unused; the player is left to figure entirely too much out on their own; no health bar indicating remaining health; "leveling up" is meaningless, especially since you don't even acquire experience or any real stat upgrades besides being told that "your spells are stronger now"

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I was so excited, and I got it, put it on easy, and it's still too hard to be any fun whatsoever. I'm so let down. First person sucks!