This game is interesting and competitive. You have to be quick witted and cunning to avoid attacks against enemies .
by Staci Krause
November 26, 2002
Harry Potter started out as a book and grew into a phenomenon that includes several books, two movies, merchandise and now, video games. Electronic Arts recently released Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a game based upon the movie of the same title. It takes place in a world where magic is real. This is an action/adventure game that not only looks really good, but the story is well developed as well. It has a lot of different games and challenges that veer from the fairly linear plot, making the game somewhat freeform. Overall, Harry Potter fans will love this game and anyone hankering for a decent action/adventure that we haven't seen since American McGee's Alice may just find this will hold them over until Mr. McGee's next big release.
As the game begins, Harry Potter gets a warning not to return to Hogwarts School of Wizardry for his second year. Of course he ignores this warning and, after a few initial problems in getting there, starts the new school year. Harry is a member of the Gryffindor House and his house will compete throughout the year with three other houses. His main rival is the Slytherin's Draco Malfoy, who constantly makes barbed comments towards Harry and his friends. As the game progresses, Harry will be faced with many challenges and will ultimately have to save his friends from the evil that has taken root at Hogwart's. At first, the game plays like a movie with a lot of cut scenes and very little gaming. The cut scenes are necessary, especially for anyone who isn't familiar with the Harry Potter universe, to get a good feel for what is about to happen.
Throughout the game, Harry will encounter several new spells. First, he has to learn the spell, which is simple. The mouse pointer will pass across different arrows and the player only has to hit the right key at the right time (reminiscent of Dance, Dance Revolution). There are three levels to this learning process and then Harry will go through a timed spell challenge that will often utilize the newly learned spell. Throughout the challenge, he can collect stars that will add time to the clock and unlock secrets that will yield Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans or collectable Magi Cards. The faster he completes the challenge, the more house points he'll be awarded.
House points are valuable because, four times during the course of the game, the house with the most points will get an opportunity to visit the bonus bean room. In addition to completing the timed challenges as fast as possible, House points can be earned on the Quidditch field. Quidditch is a game of catch the Golden Snitch while chasing it on your flying broomstick. Harry is the seeker, the person who must try to catch the snitch and prevent the opposing team's seeker from getting it. One thing that is frustrating is how Harry's team never scores too many points (points are scored on the field while Harry's chasing the snitch). Since they never score points, Gryffindor House never really earns a large amount of house points in Quidditch matches. He'll get 150 points for catching the snitch, but the opposing team usually scores about 100-130 points more than his team during the time he is chasing it.
Another fun side-task is dueling. Dueling is a great way to get beans pretty quickly. After advancing through the ranks, Harry will duel the first-ranked person (or second after you become first). He can duel this person repeatedly and it can be worth quite a lot of beans for every victory. There are three different spells that can be used in dueling, an offensive spell, a defensive spell (which sends any spells the opponent casts back to them) and a stun spell. Dueling is not complicated at all, as it is very easy to avoid offensive attacks and really not hard to hit the opponent with your own attacks, though it sometimes requires patience. Dueling is pretty fun, but it is disappointing that there is no big victory brouhaha after becoming the highest-ranked dueler.
One of the more interesting things about Harry Potter is the collectible Magi cards. Bronze cards will help Harry increase his stamina; every 10 bronze cards collected equals another lightning bolt of stamina. There are 50 bronze cards scattered throughout the game, usually found in the secret locations. 40 silver cards are also scattered. If Harry collects all 40 of these, he will gain access to a special room. This room lets him collect the prized Gold Cards. Silver cards can also be traded for with Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Beans can be found almost everywhere in the game, in addition to being won in a dueling contest. Beans can be used to trade for valuable items, like the Silver Magi cards or special Quidditch Armor. Beans can also be used to obtain components for the Wiggenweld Potion, will restore Harry's stamina. Stamina can be restored during spell challenges or levels by chocolate frogs, which can be found in various locations.
Control can sometimes be a problem. Movement is made with the keyboard and camera control is with the mouse (also known as mouselook). To cast spells or throw objects, using the mouse is simplest since aim can be only done with the mouse, but the spells themselves can be cast with the keyboard. During some events, when aim isn't relevant, this is very useful (like dueling). Jumps are made with the keyboard, although there is an option to auto-jump at ledges that can cut down on some of the difficulty of the controls. At times, the auto-jump could be annoying though, because it jumps at all ledge points, not just the ones that need to be jumped at.