Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"This game is faster than Harry on his Firebolt!"

This game is really fun, see I was one of them people who didn't rent it but just bought straight off. And on the way home I got really scared that they wouldn't have lived up to my standards and that I just wasted fifty bucks. But I soon found out that I made one of the best decisions in buying a game. I have all of the other Harry Potter games except for the fourth one, and they are all on Play station 2, and it was a complete turnaround with this game since you don't have to load after walking through a doorway. I remember getting frustrated at the other games when I went through a door I didn't mean to and would sit there for five minutes thinking that they better change this in the later games, and I don't know about the Play station version, but they sure did fix it on this game.

Graphics- 8/10- This game has alright graphics, they could be better, but they are better than the other games by far, you know the crappy fuzzy pictures. They still did a better job on them than I thought they would. They did do a good job on the movement of their clothes when your character runs. They also do good job on the movement of the items that you levitate, by the way when ever you levitate desks in the library, you can whack people in the with it; it's hilarious!

Music-9/10- They did a really good job on the music, it's very crisp and clear, and it just sounds good with the part of the game it plays at. I usually don't do a thing on music but I thought I should for this game since it was so good.

Game play- 10/10- This game's game play is up in my top five, although you cannot change between Ron, Hermione, and Harry at free will, they do have parts where you get to play as Sirius Black, Dumbeldore, and Fred or George, I couldn't tell which one. In the battle in the Black Curtain Room, you play as Sirius, and at the final battle with Dumbledore and Voldemort, three guesses who you play as, just in case you don't know, you play as Dumbledore. And when Fred and George wreck havoc with the fireworks you play as one of the destructive duo and fly on a broom and have to set fire to the cases of fireworks up and down the Great Staircase, also in the Great Hall. And also the side games are really fun, they have gob stones, wizard chess, and some sort of card game. My personal favorite is Gob stones which is pretty much like marbles.

Controls- 7/10- Now it might just be me, but the controls get kind of confusing, I had to keep pausing the game during battles and look at my spell list, which I am very happy for, it lists all the spells and how to conjure them. Each spell has a separate movement of the Wii remote and/or the nun chuck. It was fun at first but at the end battles it was hard since I kept getting one spell mistaken for another. Although they have really cool spells and you can actually connect the movements of the controllers with the spells. Such as, if you wanted to use Wingardium Levi-osa, the levitating spell, you would bring the nun chuck and remote in the upright position. I might just need to get used to them some more but they are still pretty cool.

Overall score- 9/10- This is by far one of my favorite Wii games and I would encourage you to at least rent it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/23/07