Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"Dedicated to all the Death Eaters at EA"

The Nintendo DS had been out for a year when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released on the GBA. It shows. Prisoner of Azkaban was an improvement over Chamber of Secrets, which was an improvement over Sorcerer's Stone. This one is a huge downgrade and clearly an afterthought to whatever EA did with the DS version. The game feels like it's held together with duct tape and that a slight gust of wind will cause the whole mess to topple over. Essentially Goblet of Fire is a poorly slapped together action-adventure about how wizards like to levitate 90 million different objects.

The adventure is broken up into eleven levels, with the majority of them being overhead or isometric-viewed. The three super friends – Harry, Ron and Hermione – are usually available to choose from. As is usual with these games, each has their own strength. Harry excels at attacking, while Hermione has high defense. This leaves Ron as the useless one (of course) with speed being his strength. No matter who is chosen, the other two will tag along as AI-controlled allies, and the game will feel pretty much the same: a mundane quest of floating stuff around.

Seriously, the levitate spell is used to an obscene degree. In a Legend of Zelda, Link just has to attack jars to grab rupees and hearts. In Goblet of Fire, Harry has to slowly point his wand at a rock, trunk, or giant pumpkin (!?) to leisurely lift it off the ground and then little by little move it (otherwise it falls back in place unharmed) before letting it plop down to reveal beans (the monetary unit) or chocolate frogs (health). Breaking things to find power ups is not something that should take so much time and effort. Of course, levitating is used in more stupid ways. In one stage, Harry and co will constantly need to magically pick up reeds, float them over to a burning fire, and then jet them back over to a group of bushes to burn. If Harry doesn't stand directly in the middle of the fire and the bushes, there's a good chance his levitate spell won't reach one of the two. So he has to stop, move, and try all over again. Why can't he just use his hands? Is their a wizard law against that?

And there's more idiotic levitating. Some of which involve killing enemies:

1) Levitating columns into holes to reach higher ledges.
2) Levitating giant slabs of ice into steam vents to walk over them.
3) Levitating fruit over boxes to catch Hagrid's newborn Blast-Ended Screwts.
4) Levitating Salamanders into water to kill them.
5) Levitating Grindylows onto dry land to kill them.
6) Levitating Vampyr Mosps into steam vents to kill them.
7) Levitating Red Caps into bubbling cauldrons to kill them (okay, that one was kinda cool).

There are other spells, but they all feel the same. The B button is context sensitive, so the game simply chooses the spell needed. Want to repair a broken dresser? Hold B. Freeze a water spout to walk on it? Hold B. Engulf a fully-grown Blast-Ended Screwt in flames? Hold B. There's no thought to any of the puzzles! It's all just holding down the B button! EA did have one interest idea. Some objects need the whole team to blast, freeze, flame, or float it. Hitting the L button calls the entire party to do just that, but the AI has other ideas. Sometimes they just stand there and other times they run around in circles. They can also help with combat, but usually they get stuck walking into walls and end up far behind the leader. That's some interesting teamwork there, guys.

After the second one, levels are sloppily extended to make the title last longer. Consider stage four, The First Task. Here Harry rides atop his broom – the Firebolt – while dodging the jowls and flaming breath of a dragon. It's cool at first, but it goes on, and on, and on for about ten screens longer than it should. Other levels (three of which last over an hour long) share similar pitfalls, as the development team keeps reusing the same scenery, enemies, and puzzles for new rooms with the only difference from the next one being more of everything. By the time the Prefect's Bathroom chapter is finished, the teen wizards will have levitated probably over 100 Vampyr Mosps into steam vents. It stops being fun after the first ten.

And then there's the fact the game runs so poorly that the cartridge feels like it'll explode. Usually when enemies appear on screen, the framerate dies and the action slows down to a crawl until whatever's there is pelted with enough hexes, initiated by the A button. Thing go back to normal once the enemies are dead or, more likely, ready to be levitated to their doom. I encountered glitches too, for example, one time Harry got stuck on an enemy and unable to move or take damage forcing a prompt reset. Another time, he jumped on a block of ice, and then inexplicably could not get off. The most common glitch occurs when trying to drop objects into shallow waters. Often the object simply will not move over water as if there was an invisible wall separating dry land and H2O.

And I could complain about more. Smack dab in the middle of the adventure is a terrible and mandatory PaRappa the Rapper-wannabe rhythm game for the Yule Ball scene (complete with pissy still shots of Ron). There's a side-scrolling swimming level that suffers from awful control and sluggish combat mechanics, and near the end there's a hedge maze. The last kick in the pants comes from the epic final clash. Here the rhythm games reappears only instead of watching Hermione flail around like a fish out of water, there's Harry and Lord Voldemort shooting pulsating beams from their wands in a strictly heterosexual manner. Since I don't think I've said a single positive thing so far, here is what allows this game to get a 2 instead of a 1:

1) It's Harry Potter.
2) The graphics and animation look nice when the framerate isn't on its deathbed.
3) It's actually possible to finish.
4) Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape never show up; therefore, they never insult Harry or Hermione (no one really likes Ron).
5) It doesn't suck as much as Home Improvement for the SNES.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 08/28/07