Review: LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 - Xbox 360

by Steven Williamson on 1 July 2010, 11:11 4.2

Tags: Lego Harry Potter Xbox 360, Warner Bros. (NYSE:TWX), Action/Adventure

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Potion-making, spellcasting, puzzle-solving,

There’s Polyjuice Potion Cauldrons dotted around where you can apply a range of potions when you need them, such as a burst of strength. There’s the invisibility cloak that you can use to sneak past prefects to secreat areas, and a variety of lessons that teach you spells that have different effects on objects - Lumos, for example, allows you to burn away vines so that you can access new areas or unlock a collectible.

There’s broomstick flying and duelling, plus every iconic environment that you'd hope to explore. The world of Harry Potter has been created magnificently from Diagon Alley to Hogsmeade to Hogwarts itself, and there’s plenty of opportunity to explore and plenty of magical things to discover and collect. As well as being to free roam to collect studs, the main mission also involves an element of puzzle solving. Perhaps building bricks on top of each other in a certain way to reach platforms, or switching in between characters and using their various skills to help students who are stuck dangling from chandeliers.

There's some impressively creative puzzles that fit well into the world of Harry Potter, such as having to rescue "Students In Peril," or having to find a wig so that you can access the girl's bathroom without anyone raising an eyebrow. The set-pieces in particular are also brilliantly produced. Visually, the screen is a busy explosion of colour as studs spray from almost any object that you cast a spell on and they can be spent on upgrades and character unlocks. Indeed, there's a ludicrous amount of things to collect. You can collect parts of Hogwart’s crests, or gold bricks that can be used in the brilliant LEGO builder -where you can build your own creations- or red bricks that can be used to unlock extras, or even character tokens that allow you to switch and customise characters at Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions in Diagon Alley.



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