Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

"Not bad, pretty addictive"

I have given this game a whirl. It is kind of fun, and very addictive. It is a bit easy though. If you aree rather fond of the Harry Potter trademark, this is probabaly the game for you.

Graphically, the game looks pretty good. You do get slightly polygonal faces, and some trees and bushes have that ''paper thin'' look. Hogwarts looks great. Spells, Hagrid's place, and enemies look great, and most other things are up there. (generaly good)

The game sounds great. Even though the actors do not do the voiceovers for the game, people sound like the actors, The voice-acting is very good, suprisingly, and also,sound effects are abundant and not repetitive. Some of the music is John Williams' doing, and rest still sounds good, but not great.

Gameplay- The gameplay is half-linnear half-exploration. You are essentialy led to your classes by a character, and then you learn a spell, and then you beat the ''spell challenge'' which is like a timed maze that lasts about five minutes. If a character does not lead you anywhere, you can explore until you find the area that triggers either the next class or your next story-advancing task. There are collectable items.
Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans- These are the currency of the game. You will find these laying everywhere. With them, you can upgrade quidditch gear, buy Wizard cards, or buy ingrediants for a health restoration potion.
Silver Wizard Cards- Collect 10 of these and you can unlock one of four doors leading to a bonus area.
Bronze wizard card- Unlocking 10 of these gives you an extra lightning bolt, which is like your health bar. 1 bolt holds about 4 hits.
When exploring, you can visit many places. There are many secret rooms in Hogwarts to find chests, containing items. It is fun to locate these rooms.
Also, when exploring, you can play 2 minigame-type things.

Dueling- very fun mode where you bet a certian amount of Beans (more Beans = harder diffuculty) and you fight another wizard or witch. you have 3 spells, one that reflects a spell and adds power to it, one that lowers opponet's accuracy, and one that does a lot of damage. this is one of the reasons to get the game as I find it very fun.

Quidditch- this mode is OK, but not great. it consists on ''following'' the snitch, while kicking away the enemy seeker. I will not go into detail, but it is luck with a button-mashing element. If you win at Quidditch a lot, you earn house points that can allow you to get into a timed ''bean bonus room'' if you have enough.

The control in harry potter is almost too easy. your mouse aims the spells, and right click fires them. You cannot cast a spell if there is nothing to cast it upon. That is why the game is so easy. If you stand still and click and hold the mouse, you will see a point of light. When you ''sweep'' the mouse, a symbol will appear on something if a spell will do something to it. it is too easy to find things. let go, instant magic. arrow keys are your drive. you have strafe, foward and reverse.

All in All, I think getting this game will give you anywhere from 18-40 hours playing time, depending on how much of a completist you are. It is pretty fun. If you can give it a try first, do so. If not, read some other reviews, look at some screenshots, it is your decision.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/26/03, Updated 02/26/03