Not as rewarding as the book or the movie, but a solid first effort - for children.

User Rating: 5.5 | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone PC
Well, if you expect this game to be as good as the book, and even the movie, then you'll probably be disappointed. Its not as if the game lacks references to the book, but the production value of this game is far from the level you'd expect from EA (or KnowWonder, to be precise) - and unfortunately the experience feels more than a educational school game than a game based on one of the best fantasy books in modern time.

The game does have its charming qualities, though. As the spell learning classes, where you'll have to draw some spell symbols with the mouse. The platform elements works flawlessly (though the jumping puzzles are quite easy and best suited for the consoles IMO) - and the magic spells you'll have to cast throughout the game in order to advance, makes sense and the actual casting is intuitive. Press down the left mousebutton, and guide the spellmarker at the object you want to cast the spell on. The spell will automatically be chosen based on the context. This system will probably work perfectly on the Wii console, as the system is more or less perfect for that systems controller.

Granted, the game is from 2001, but the graphics are largely unimpressive, even for that time (min. requirements are a 4 MB GPU) ..it is clear that the game is based on the first unreal engine, and the textures (probably in order to fit in the 4MB GPU ram), are blurry - and the objects and 3D models are quite simple. The best model and animations belongs to mr. Potter himself, which has some nice animations especially when casting spells or collecting Wizard cards (an ongoing subquest of the game). Nothing spectacular, though, and especially the jumping and running animations are as stiff as they come.

The voice acting of the game is acceptable, but I don't think they've used the original actors voices - and the general feel of the sounds are quite flat.

The game is over rather quickly as well, as the difficulty level is rather low. A few of the jumping puzzles can be deadly, which will throw you back to the last autosave (it is not possible to quicksave) - but I think I died 3 or 4 times in the 4 to 5 hours, it took to finish the game.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the game is, that it fails to give a satisfying experience to both children and adults alike, which IMO is one of the many strong points of the book(s). KnowWonder has delivered a solid experience for children only, and the mature readers will probably only play through the games if they are big fans - in my case it was just about worth the 5 hours it took to finish it. But don't expect the game to be as rewarding as the movies, let alone the books.