Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Gamecube)
This installment in EA's movie-based games follows the fourth Harry Potter movie, Goblet of Fire. Let's see how good of a spell this game casts on the player.
It starts out with Harry, Ron and Hermione escaping the Death Eater attack after the Quidditch World Cup match. After escaping, the game jumps ahead to the kids arriving at Hogwarts where Dumbledore makes the announcement of the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Mad Eye Moody, as well as the school's hosting of the TriWizard Tournament. After attending a class of Professor Moody's, the drawing of the names for the entrants to the tournament occurs where Harry's name comes out of the goblet, forcing him into a death-defying tournament he never tried to enter in the first place.
The button interface houses all of your spells. A holds your jinx's, this is your damage causing spell. It can either be tapped repeatedly for quick bursts, or held down for a couple of seconds for more powerful blasts. B is for your charms, which you have a handful of to use. The one you need is automatically selected depending on what you are looking at. If something can be lifted, pressing B will cast your levitation spell, or if you are facing a raging fire, it will cast a spout of water for you to douse the flame. The Y button casts Accio, drawing anything that is nearby to you, so any of the collectibles you come across or the Every Flavor Beans (explained later) will be magnetically drawn to as you hold down the Y button. The X button activates your Magicus Extremos, which essentially boosts the power of any spell you cast for a short period of time.
The only other button to see use in the game is the R button, only being used in the broom flying and swimming challenges of the tournament. Using this button will speed up your flying or swimming accordingly.
So a very basic controller setup, none of the buttons have a second use so as soon as you learn the things you can do, it's very easy to keep it all memorized. Let's see how it holds up with the game.
At the beginning of each level, you are given a choice to play as any of the three characters, Harry, Ron, or Hermione. (The game also supports up to three person multiplayer giving you the option of being able to control all three characters together with a couple friends, but for this review I played through in single player). From what I could tell, there were no differences whatsoever of using one character over another. But, if you are utilizing the multiplayer aspect, some spells can be combined to make them more powerful against enemies or more useful on larger objects, which saves you the trouble of dealing with the sometimes questionable AI of your partners, but I'll get more into that later.
In the levels you'll come across many different enemies from the magical world of Harry Potter. They start off with basic ones that are taken down with repeated jinx casts, and moving up to larger enemies that require more damage to be dealt to them, or a specific condition to defeat them, for example the blast-ended skrewt which can only be dealt damage to it's backside, or the fire salamanders which need to be extinguished before they can actually take any damage.
Each level offers a little variety of collectibles for you to get. The most common ones are the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Jelly Beans. You'll find these scattered randomly in the level, as well as dropped by just about every enemy you defeat. The red colored beans will replenish your health, the blue will fill up your magic meter (once it's filled, this is what powers the Magicus Extremos, but it can only be activated with a completely full bar), and the rest are just collected and are put towards the collectible cards you can unlock. These are broken down into three groups, but only one, the Creature Cards, can be equipped at the beginning of each level offering you different boosts depending on the type of creature you captured it from.
The next type of collectible is the chocolate frogs, these revive you if you take too much damage and are knocked out. From what I could tell, if the computer controlled characters are revived, it doesn't use one of the frogs, they're only used when any human controlled character needs reviving. Lastly, you have Mini TriWizard shields you can collect. Getting ten of these will equal one actual TriWizard Shield and be put towards unlocking another level.
In the game, there are ten main levels in total, all of these being broken down into mini-levels and phases (some will take you to an all new area completely, while others will plop you back down in a checkpoint area where you can go and find the next shield). All the levels follow key scenes from the movie, with four of these being the three tasks in the TriWizard Tournament and the final showdown with Voldemort (yup I said it).
The challenges stay the same, but the first challenge takes on a little change to make it more playable in a video game. It becomes a rail racer with Harry trying to stay ahead of the dragon and avoid taking damage from it spitting fire as it chases you through the level.
Overall, the game is a somewhat fun play, but let's take a look at the challenge level.
First the enemies. The only thing challenging about them is the numbers that they can sometimes swarm you in. This is easily handled, however, since you can hit them a number of times and stun them, and then turn towards a different enemy to stun that one, then rinse and repeat as necessary until they're all defeated.
The levels themselves don't offer much of a challenge as they are all very linear paths with no off-shoots for exploration, and every path eventually leads to a shield. Unlocking the levels isn't much of a challenge either, it's more repetitive and annoying than anything.
The levels dedicated to the tasks of the tournament is where the challenge lies, but even then it's not much as they, too, follow linear paths from start to finish.
Lastly, the AI for your teammates is very unbalanced. They are either perfect in their choices, helping you cast spells in the right places or attacking the right enemies so you don't get bogged down. Or, they're embarassingly dumb, hanging out oblivious to the things you're trying to do. In one of the levels in Moody's classroom, you are learning to cast your spell to douse the fires, and some of these require all three characters to be casting on the same fire to be able to put it out. While I was focused on one, Harry was on the opposite side putting out his own fire, while Hermione was on the complete opposite end of the classroom just standing still like there was nothing to do.
So, Goblet of Fire is an extremely easy play too. Let's look at the good and bad sides of the game.
- The spells are too simplistic. Locking each one down to a button and not even having to differentiate for yourself which one to use makes it feel a little too easy. There's three buttons on the controller that don't even get touched, there could have been different combinations of holding B and one or more of these buttons to call up different spells. But in a game that doesn't offer much of a challenge, having too simple of a spell-casting system is a bit of a let down.
Make sure to come back next week. I have one more console to review, the Wii, and the votes are in and Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings has won. So come back here and see what I think of it. I'll also be making live a Facebook page to make this site more accessible, as well as try and promote more input from anyone who is following this along. And for those who have been following, thank you very much and I hope you've at least enjoyed reading my reviews whether or not I've helped you find additions to your collection!
The Story
Being based on the movie, the game roughly follows the same path, and therefore the story from the book too. So if you've read or seen either one, you already know the story of the game (which since it's Harry Potter, chances are you have).It starts out with Harry, Ron and Hermione escaping the Death Eater attack after the Quidditch World Cup match. After escaping, the game jumps ahead to the kids arriving at Hogwarts where Dumbledore makes the announcement of the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Mad Eye Moody, as well as the school's hosting of the TriWizard Tournament. After attending a class of Professor Moody's, the drawing of the names for the entrants to the tournament occurs where Harry's name comes out of the goblet, forcing him into a death-defying tournament he never tried to enter in the first place.
The Controls
Goblet of Fire has a very, very simple control scheme. Your movement is controlled just by the joystick, while the C-stick controls the camera. But, as the game is played with a fixed camera angle instead of over the shoulder, utilizing the C-stick doesn't rotate the view like it traditionally would, it instead sort of nudges the camera in whichever direction you push.The button interface houses all of your spells. A holds your jinx's, this is your damage causing spell. It can either be tapped repeatedly for quick bursts, or held down for a couple of seconds for more powerful blasts. B is for your charms, which you have a handful of to use. The one you need is automatically selected depending on what you are looking at. If something can be lifted, pressing B will cast your levitation spell, or if you are facing a raging fire, it will cast a spout of water for you to douse the flame. The Y button casts Accio, drawing anything that is nearby to you, so any of the collectibles you come across or the Every Flavor Beans (explained later) will be magnetically drawn to as you hold down the Y button. The X button activates your Magicus Extremos, which essentially boosts the power of any spell you cast for a short period of time.
The only other button to see use in the game is the R button, only being used in the broom flying and swimming challenges of the tournament. Using this button will speed up your flying or swimming accordingly.
So a very basic controller setup, none of the buttons have a second use so as soon as you learn the things you can do, it's very easy to keep it all memorized. Let's see how it holds up with the game.
The Gameplay
The game is delivered in a non-linear level setup. You automatically begin with the Death Eater escape, and after completing it you're brought to the main part of the game. The first level is a lesson with Moody in his classroom, at the end of which you find a TriWizard Shield and learn that this is what you need to unlock the successive levels. Each level has multiple shields in it for you to obtain, and all are needed to progress through the game in it's entirety. Every time you get a shield, you are transported out of the level and can either re-enter it to find another, or move on to the next level if you've unlocked it.At the beginning of each level, you are given a choice to play as any of the three characters, Harry, Ron, or Hermione. (The game also supports up to three person multiplayer giving you the option of being able to control all three characters together with a couple friends, but for this review I played through in single player). From what I could tell, there were no differences whatsoever of using one character over another. But, if you are utilizing the multiplayer aspect, some spells can be combined to make them more powerful against enemies or more useful on larger objects, which saves you the trouble of dealing with the sometimes questionable AI of your partners, but I'll get more into that later.
In the levels you'll come across many different enemies from the magical world of Harry Potter. They start off with basic ones that are taken down with repeated jinx casts, and moving up to larger enemies that require more damage to be dealt to them, or a specific condition to defeat them, for example the blast-ended skrewt which can only be dealt damage to it's backside, or the fire salamanders which need to be extinguished before they can actually take any damage.
Each level offers a little variety of collectibles for you to get. The most common ones are the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Jelly Beans. You'll find these scattered randomly in the level, as well as dropped by just about every enemy you defeat. The red colored beans will replenish your health, the blue will fill up your magic meter (once it's filled, this is what powers the Magicus Extremos, but it can only be activated with a completely full bar), and the rest are just collected and are put towards the collectible cards you can unlock. These are broken down into three groups, but only one, the Creature Cards, can be equipped at the beginning of each level offering you different boosts depending on the type of creature you captured it from.
The next type of collectible is the chocolate frogs, these revive you if you take too much damage and are knocked out. From what I could tell, if the computer controlled characters are revived, it doesn't use one of the frogs, they're only used when any human controlled character needs reviving. Lastly, you have Mini TriWizard shields you can collect. Getting ten of these will equal one actual TriWizard Shield and be put towards unlocking another level.
In the game, there are ten main levels in total, all of these being broken down into mini-levels and phases (some will take you to an all new area completely, while others will plop you back down in a checkpoint area where you can go and find the next shield). All the levels follow key scenes from the movie, with four of these being the three tasks in the TriWizard Tournament and the final showdown with Voldemort (yup I said it).
The challenges stay the same, but the first challenge takes on a little change to make it more playable in a video game. It becomes a rail racer with Harry trying to stay ahead of the dragon and avoid taking damage from it spitting fire as it chases you through the level.
Overall, the game is a somewhat fun play, but let's take a look at the challenge level.
The Challenge (or lack thereof?)
This game comes through as a very easy play, and there aren't any variable difficulty levels for you to try and put a challenge into it.First the enemies. The only thing challenging about them is the numbers that they can sometimes swarm you in. This is easily handled, however, since you can hit them a number of times and stun them, and then turn towards a different enemy to stun that one, then rinse and repeat as necessary until they're all defeated.
The levels themselves don't offer much of a challenge as they are all very linear paths with no off-shoots for exploration, and every path eventually leads to a shield. Unlocking the levels isn't much of a challenge either, it's more repetitive and annoying than anything.
The levels dedicated to the tasks of the tournament is where the challenge lies, but even then it's not much as they, too, follow linear paths from start to finish.
Lastly, the AI for your teammates is very unbalanced. They are either perfect in their choices, helping you cast spells in the right places or attacking the right enemies so you don't get bogged down. Or, they're embarassingly dumb, hanging out oblivious to the things you're trying to do. In one of the levels in Moody's classroom, you are learning to cast your spell to douse the fires, and some of these require all three characters to be casting on the same fire to be able to put it out. While I was focused on one, Harry was on the opposite side putting out his own fire, while Hermione was on the complete opposite end of the classroom just standing still like there was nothing to do.
So, Goblet of Fire is an extremely easy play too. Let's look at the good and bad sides of the game.
PROS
- The game stays true to the movie, and therefore the book. A lot of times when things get adapted from one medium to another, a lot of things are either drastically changed or just left out completely. But that's not the case here as it follows the movie exactly. It even features the main cast from the movies coming in to voice their respective charactersCONS
- It's repetitive beyond belief. This game would have been a lot better if you could just progress through the levels sequentially, but instead you're forced to unlock each and every single one by finding shields hidden in previous levels. And to make it worse, you're forced to leave the level each time you find a shield, even if you haven't gotten enough to unlock the next level. If they had made it optional to leave the level, something along the lines of a little save feature popping up and notifying you that you've collected enough shields to unlock the next level, and asking if you would like to leave or remain in the level, would have been a massive improvement.- The spells are too simplistic. Locking each one down to a button and not even having to differentiate for yourself which one to use makes it feel a little too easy. There's three buttons on the controller that don't even get touched, there could have been different combinations of holding B and one or more of these buttons to call up different spells. But in a game that doesn't offer much of a challenge, having too simple of a spell-casting system is a bit of a let down.
Final Verdict
In the end, I'd have to say that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire isn't really worth it. Die hard Potter fans might find it enjoyable, but, while the game does start off pretty fun, once it starts hitting the repetitiveness, the fun gets sucked right out. So if you come across this game and find yourself wondering how it is, you have your answer right here before you.Make sure to come back next week. I have one more console to review, the Wii, and the votes are in and Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings has won. So come back here and see what I think of it. I'll also be making live a Facebook page to make this site more accessible, as well as try and promote more input from anyone who is following this along. And for those who have been following, thank you very much and I hope you've at least enjoyed reading my reviews whether or not I've helped you find additions to your collection!
