Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

"Massively Underrated"

Ok, so the dialogue is weak and the game itself is a bit average and easy, but the freedom is amazing, flying around collecting things. Games are good when you can do whatever you want. If you want to play the game you can, if you want to fly around doing nothing you can, throw gnomes, race people, collect the wizard cards assault random students and laugh when they squeal. It's fun! It's noticeable as you go through the series, especially POA and GOF that you lose that sense of freedom and makes the games far less enjoyable.

The challenges are made more enjoyable by the fact that you aren't forced to do them, you can explore a bit and when your ready for the slog of a spell challenge just trot along and do it!

The dialogue is really poor, obviously the game is directed at a younger audience, so you do have to listen to the characters repeat easy instructions about four times which gets a bit annoying. Some voices are better than others, Dumbledore and Ron being the best, Hagrid and Hermione being the worst. That is the worst aspect of the game, it's not like EA are poor, they could have afforded to put a little bit of money into getting real actors to do the voice overs.

Playing quidditch, participating in the quidditch cup is great fun, always good to get one over on Draco and the quidditch format itself is good if a bit limited in scale.

Also, if your a Harry Potter fan, the game does stray from the books a little bit in terms of storyline but makes up for it with the masses of relevant information in the form of famous witch and wizard cards and all the information available in the library and harry's inventory.

Personal highlights are the secret passages, flying and collecting wizard cards, the game has massive longlife value. There are minor issues, but this game was made in 2002 and for its time it's actually very impressive.

Seriously I'm 19! Why would I lie about it being good, I'm not going to risk looking like a fool if it wasn't worth it! Games these days are so focused in complicated and detailed gameplay that we forget that it doesn't have to be that way, simplicity can make a game and in this case it certainly does.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/02/08

Game Release: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Platinum) (EU, 07/09/04)