The New Features are Nice but Not Enough
The gameplay for Half-Blood Prince still revolves around the open-world gameplay. They've added some new features, which include Quidditch, Dueling and Potion Making.
While these new features are nice, the games replay value is still very low. The main story mode of the game only last a good 2-3 hours. I'm a little disappointed with the fact that the game doesn't allow you to go to many other places that the story takes you too. I feel that would have made the game a lot more fun.
Quidditch is kind of a letdown, mainly because you aren't really playing the game, all you really doing is trying to catch the snitch and can't play any other position. You go through rings to extend your time as you get closer to catching it. It's fun the first few times but ends up getting repetitive and boring as time goes on. Potion making falls into the same category, it's repetitive but at least there is some variety in it, and it does offer a little bit of challenge with the time limit.
Dueling is really the only replay value that this game has. It allows multiplayer, which is actually pretty cool. I think the only problem with the dueling is that it really is the perfect match for online but this game unfortunately doesn't have that.
The Xbox 360 version is pretty good when it comes to the visual style of the game. Hogwarts looks awesome, and the many fire and lighting effects are pretty cool too. The only real problem i have with this games graphics is the character models, they look a little more robotic then they look in the Order of the Phoenix and the faces are just plain terrible. The 360 version also runs a lot better then the PS3 version. The PS3 version looks the same graphically but it suffers from number framerate issues and tends to slowdown during big dueling scenes.
Overall, i like the improvements made in this game but it's not enough to make this game worth playing after the story is over.