XB Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire review:4 stars (Goblet of Fire for XBox) - With stunning graphics and creative challenges and environments, Goblet of Fire captures attention right from the start. Taking advantage of the multiplayer format, you can play with up to two of your friends. So much more than experiencing the excitement of the game together, EA has made a truly cooperative experience, with the ability to combine your magics for new and more interesting effects! Some excellent AI keeps a single-player from losing the rest of the trio, without having to mind them at every turn (though they do the occasional annoying or harmful thing).
A change in format from the previous games, almost all "levels" (such as Hogwart's grounds, or one of the Triwizard tasks) are accessable from the main screen (a Pensive), to which you return after every sucessful venture. While, in my opinion, this takes away from the Role-Playing aspect of the game, it enhances gameplay in other ways. One can, just as easily, play through the game quickly as spend hours upon hours discovering every little nuance. In this, as in many other similar things, EA did an excellent job of recognizing their teen and young adult (and not-so-young adult) audience, and trying to balance that with the expectation that Harry Potter is for children.
That said, however, there are a few things I dislike about the game. The "camera angle" in many parts of the game is annoying, if not downright frustrating. As I mentioned previously, the "feel" of the game is a lot farther from Role-Playing that what I've come to expect from the Harry Potter series (you can't endlessly play in Hogwart's castle, as you could before). While involving less fuss than before, I disliked the "intuitive" spell-casting (the spell used is determined by what you're casting at), and the less-clearly defined meaning of how to cast a spell "perfectly" (which gains the player rewards). I'd also like to register my complaint that none of our young wizards-and-witches-in-training wore robes; where's the fun in that?
In all honesty, I think it's about time that someone got around to making a Harry Potter Online Role-Playing Game. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of text-only Harry Potter RPG's out there, and an enormous fan-base that would play such a game, a high percentage of which are an untapped market in the world of MMORPG's. And there are so very many neat ways it could be done...
|
