Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

THE BAD:
Fails miserably to be funny. Too much aimless wandering around. Hardly stays faithful to the books. Broomstick flying completely pointless.

SUMMARY:
Everyone can have their own opinion. But I have to say this - Hell is going to freeze over before a gaming expert classes this as an adventure, and the Loch Ness Monster is going to ring my doorbell in before any intellegent games reviewer classes this as an RPG.

Why am I making these stupid comparisons? Easy, because the game is basically a bad repetative puzzle game. Let me explain.

The first thing you HAVE to do in the game is do some long classroom challenge, involving constant swith flicking. Then as soon as that's over you have to go into a similar challenge and do the same amount of pointless activities. After that, you go into a nice garden, and do exactly the same. That's done? Ok, no time for rest, its straight to the greenhouse to do a similar pointless chanenge. Ok, now a bit of originality. I'm chasing somebody on a ridiculasly hard to control broomstick. Oh no, I've got completely lost. Doesn't matter, the person trying to get away from me has nicely stopped so I can chase him again. That's done? Great, now its time for more of the same - Walking around looking for random switches. Once you've done that... I think I've made my point.

There is no freedom in this game. Its just one place to another. The classes? You seem to be the only student, and the 'classroom' is a completely stupid maze. this game is the most repetetive game since pong, which was, incidently, the first ever vidio game.

You learn about five or six spells in the game, each one is quite fun in its own way, but the novelty wears off in a few minutes. You never even die. The only places where you do 'die' are the same pointless challenges that I mentioned earlier, and when you appear to lose your life by walking into a mushroom, you just begin the tedium all over again. Health comes from earwax-flavoured jellybeans and chocolate flavour frogs. The last boss is pointlessly easy. This game has no meaning.

I've never marked a game nearly so low as this. Try not to blame me, Harry Potter fans. But if you want a decent RPG, get Golden Sun, a Decent Adventure, get Castlevania, a decent puzzler, get kurukurukururin. If you want a decent game, don't get this.

That said, the controls are easy to use and it has a fantastically good interface.

Fans of the books and the film will get some enjoyment from this. Other's will just find boredom.

This game looked promising, but in practise it isn't. And that's a great pity.

Sorry, Harry Potter fans.