Exploration is what it's all about
In this Harry Potter game there is nothing physical to collect, no wizard cards, chocolate frogs or jelly beans, but instead you'll be on the search for the aforementioned discovery points. Each time you speak to a painting, repair a statue, speak to students and teachers, examine items or cast spells, such as incendio to light torches, you'll receive points that add to your total allowing you to level-up making your spells more powerful. As you rise up the levels and complete certain tasks you unlock Potter related clips about the film and game which can then be viewed in the Room Of Rewards. It's a decent incentive to encourage you to explore as you can then get to hear the likes of Hermoine Granger and Draco Malfoy giving their unbiased (cough) opinions on the game as well as seeing how it was put together, including how character models and Hogwarts were designed and brought to life.On the surface the control system in Harry Potter: OOTP is as basic as you could imagine, with just the right thumb-stick being used to cast all of your attacking and defensive spells. For example: you can push forward twice to cast the depulso spell (pushing items backwards), pull it twice backwards to cast accio (pulling items toward you), rotate clockwise for repairo and a number of other spells require subtle variations on the use of the thumb-stick, such as wingardium leviosa, which you’ll use often to move objects in order to solve puzzles and use in lessons, such as Herbology where you have the re-pot the squealing Mandrakes. In fight sequences and duels the spells change to the likes of expelliarmus and stupefy allowing you to stun and injure your opponents. When used correctly the spells work well enough and look visually impressive, but it would have been nice if there was more opportunity to use them in more entertaining ways rather than spending a huge chunk of your time using wigardium leviosa to fix pictures back onto walls, sweeping courtyards and repairing broken statues. The Wii version differs from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions because the Wii-mote is used as your wand; it's actually easier and feels more natural to pull of these spells with this controller. Incidentally, although the graphics of the Wii version aren’t as good as the Xbox 360 or PS3 ones, Harry Potter: OOTP is one of the finest looking games on the console.
Click for larger imageDespite the graphics being fairly average on Xbox 360 and PS3 – in comparison to other next-gen games - the face mapping of the characters has been done fairly well and there is plenty of detail in the fairly huge gameworld that does manage to recreate the feeling of being in the Potter Universe; albeit without blowing you away.