Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

"Dedicated to all the Parselmouths at EA"

I hate Draco Malfoy. Never before have I wanted to spit in the face of a literary character as much as I'd like to do to Harry Potter's Slytherin arch nemesis. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling spares not a single word in forcing you to champion Harry, Ron, Hermione or the rest of House Gryffindor and detest rotten jerks like the Draco and Serveus Snape. I think you know where I'm going with this. EA's GBA version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets sucks the emotion right out you to the point where you couldn't care less if Draco is a huge ass.

Partially this is due to the inferior storytelling compared to the source material. While Chamber of Secrets is a huge step up from its GBA predecessor by including most of the important plot points and pasting in dialogue from the book verbatim, much of the minor witty and charming moments have been completely axed. For example, bungling Defense against the Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart appears only twice and never really does anything. But hey, you were probably expecting as much, and at least everyone from Ron Weasley to Nearly-Headless Nick feels like themselves.

Less expected is the fact Chamber of Secrets isn't a carbon copy of Sorcerer's Stone. The game is now an isometric-viewed adventure, with heapings of Metroid and The Legend of Zelda style. Although Harry is still slow on his feet, many glaring design flaws from the original have been fixed. Combat, for example, isn't a complete mess. Harry's casting animation is now short and practical, allowing him to actually hit foes with the attack spell Flipendo – a red burst of magical energy – 99% of the time. And what about bottomless pits and resetting puzzles? Long gone. The number of pitfalls can be counted on one hand, and now checkpoints prevent excessive backtracking.

The exploration elements have thankfully been fixed up too. Now when an area of Hogwarts is opened, Harry can *GASP* venture back to it at any time. And doing so is a good idea, as the school halls hide piles of goodies to aid Harry. Collecting Wizard Cards unlocks extras such as door-and-chest-unlocking spell Alohomora (Harry apparently forgot it over the summer), while gathering Chocolate Frogs will increase his maximum health.

The dungeons are longer, but they're still as linear and easy as ever. Many of the same spells return to solve rehashed puzzles. The only new ones are Incendio – magic fire to burn spider webs and light “wizard torches” (don't ask me how they differ from ordinary ones) – and Skurge – a green ball that destroys barriers of ectoplasm and disintegrates ghosts posing as statues. The puzzles never get harder, so EA just keeps throwing in more of the same. For example, instead of using Wingardium Leviosa to levitate one block onto a pressure plate, Harry later has to levitate TWO blocks. The game's only attempt at boosting the difficulty is adding more hazards, such as pillars of flame and falling stalactites, and more enemies.

Combat is ridiculously easy too. Most of the enemies (80% of which are walking suits of armor) die after a single fully-charged blast of Flipendo. It doesn't take much more to defeat the four bosses either. And it doesn't help that Harry constantly finds free healing potions. There's also the annoyance over switching spells. In Sorcerer's Stone, spells were quickly cycled through with the right shoulder button, but it now requires a trip to the submenu to do so. Keep in mind Harry has to switch spells often just to go from attacking with Flipendo to puzzle solving with the rest.

The biggest problem is the constantly shifting screen. Harry is always on the edge of the screen so the game can show what's in front of him. This means just turning will cause the screen to sharply move around. I don't usually get motion sickness from video games, but after finishing the first dungeon at Gringotts Bank, I had lay down to avoid puking. My eyes only got used to the constant movement after an hour of gameplay.

The memory game to learn spells is thankfully gone, but Quidditch is back and far more entertaining. Now in a pseudo-3D view, it's a full out race for the Golden Snitch against the nefarious Draco Malfoy. Harry has to fly through rings to gain boost power if he wants to overtake Draco's Nimbus 2001 broom, all while dodging Bludgers. Unfortunately the game follows the book's cancellation of Quidditch after the one match.

Stealth sections also return and make you realize they don't belong in adventure games. These segments boil down to hiding behind curtains and waiting for Prefects or Snape (PROTIP: Snape is a dick) to sloooooooowly move out of sight. The stealth mechanics are terribly inconsistent. Sometimes Harry can run right behind a Prefect and they won't notice, while other times moving when they're barely on screen tips them off. Holding B allows Harry to sneak, but he moves so slow that he'll never get anywhere safe before a patrolling Prefect turns around and spots him. There are also a bunch of items to buy from the mischievous Weasley twins, Fred and George, to divert the Prefects' attention, but they rarely work.

Chamber of Secrets is by all means a better, slightly longer adventure than Sorcerer's Stone, and its apparent effort to work out the original's flaws is appreciated. Unfortunately it's still pathetically easy, and it suffers from enough new annoyances that it's difficult to recommend to anyone other than the hardest of the hardcore Potter fans and people that enjoy bad games (like me).

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/28/07