Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"Get it if you're obsessed"

Okay, when I first started up this game I thought, ''Brilliant!'' The colours were totally awesome, not washed out like most gameboy games, and when a charater talked there would be this little textured mapped image in the corner of the box (never saw that on a handheld before). Then I got into the game, and realised that it was *very* far from perfect. So anyway here's my review, and hopefully by the end of it you'll understand why I gave it 7/10 when I actually quite like Harry Potter.

Graphics: 9/10 I already said this before, but the graphics are great. They're quite detailed and make good use of the gameboy advance's large colour palette. Lost a mark because in some places (like the stairway to the common room) the background is a hand-drawn (well it looks hand-drawn), static picture. It's interesting, but it doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the graphics. But the rest is superb, especially the camera angle (it was nice to find after years of Pokemon and Zelda that you got to see more of Harry than his head with a pair of feet under it).

Sound: 8/10 Nothing special here. The music's okay but you don't really notice it. Harry only calls out the name of the spell he's using once after you switch to it, which is nice - with all the spell casting in the game, I can imagine how annoying it would be to hear it over and over again.

Gameplay: 4/10 Here's where the game goes oof. It's dull, repetitive, and the only reason I kept playing the game was 1: the great graphics, and 2: I'd read the book so I had a rough idea of where I was along the line. Otherwise I would have shut myself up in my room to mourn the loss of a perfectly good $50.00. And one of the main reasons I got the game - to see what quidditch would be like - left me kinda disappointed. You don't actually catch the snitch, you fly around after it trying to fly through the hoops (which look more like lines from your overhead point of view) and the more hoops you fly through, the faster you go (and the easier it is to lose control). When you fly through enough hoops, you can catch the snitch by pressing the A or B button. If you miss, you get dumped back to the beginning (an experience you'll be very familiar with by the end of the game) and you have to start all over. It's a lot less interesting than I make it sound, frustrating's a more appropriate word for it. And it's totally pointless, too - when you win a game, all you get are house points, but at the end of the game (to tie the plot to the book I suppose) Gryffindor always wins. As for the rest of the game, they all consist of mini-quests where you have to collect six *insert item here*. It's fine at first but then you realise how repetitive everything is. And you'll probably have to attempt a level like three times before you actually pass, because if you run out of health you get dumped back to the beginning (the VERY beginning, with all your collected stuff gone) of the level. And in the later levels (the really really huuuuge ones) unless you have unlimited patience you'll probably be tempted to smash your GBA against a wall when you're 90% finished then you fall down a hole or something. Not only that, the puzzles are ''unresettable'' as in if you screw up somewhere then sometimes you have to deliberately walk off a cliff so you can restart...not a nice experience at all. And the gameplay is kinda uneven in the difficulty section. In the last part, where you battle Professor Quirrel, given how you can save your game before you take him on and how short it is, I'd say it's considerably easier than most of the mini-quests.

Control: 8/10 It's not brilliant, but it's simple. A 5-year-old could use them. A looks at stuff, B casts spells. The left shoulder button uses the flute (used in one level only) and the right shoulder button switches spells. No feeling like an extra thumb would come in handy or anything like that. But still...they're just controls. 8/10 (it's a pretty good score, if you're wondering. I never give higher than 8 for controls for some reason).

Replay: 2/10 Please, lets not discuss that. Despite being tempted once in a while to go back and find all the chocolate frogs, all I have to do is remember the forbidden forest to blast that thought into oblivion. There are certain parts of the game (all the mini-quests after the first two and all 3 quidditch games, as well as the part where you have to catch the flying key which is just a modified version of quidditch) that are just too painful to go through again. The first time is fine, but the second is a chore. *shudders*

Overall: 7/10 That's a pretty high score, for some reason. Must have been because of the pretty graphics. Despite the score, I would only recommend it to those who are obsessed with Harry and just can't get enough of him *notices how bad that sounds* But anyway, I've heard (even though I haven't played it) that the GBC version is better, but without the quidditch. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. If you've been put off the game by my review, you might want to get that instead (it's cheaper too!). Anyway I'm off to weep for my 50 bucks now. G'bye.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/07/02, Updated 01/07/02