Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Author's Rating:

Pros: Flying Buckbeak, nice graphics, good voicework.

Cons: Clumsy character switching and magic, short, too easy, little progress from previous instalment.

The Bottom Line: 
Been there, done that - that's the general gist of the game. There are a few nifty elements, but the series appears to have taken a backstep with this.

Author's Review
When the Chamber of secrets came out fans of Harry Potter rejoiced. A free roaming Hogwarts with great magic, mini-games and a reasonably long game. I’m sure many avid fans will disagree, but to the average gamer, this unimpressive new instalment has little to offer.

The game places you in charge of all three main characters Harry, Ron and Hermione with a character switching system allowing you use each character's special abilities and spells. The problem with this is the fact that you might want to say, fly Buckbeak around Hogwarts and collect an important item. The problem being that once done so, you fly back to Hagrid’s hut to find the other characters have wandered off around the grounds having tried to keep up with Buckbeak. Why would they do this? It’s stupid and it takes yonks to get the three back together again. There’s also the obligatory stealth sections which apart from being rather dull, are often thwarted by your comrades stupidly walking into plain view – doubly frustrating as these problems could have been solved by a simple ‘stay here’ command.

Whereas the magic and targeting system in the first game was easy to use and looked good, the duelling has turned into a clumsy clash of flipendos flying here, there and everywhere – none of the spells look as graceful and well….as magical as they did – they sound and look artificial and clunky…and why can we only equip two spells at a time instead of three? Because the silly ‘switch character’ command takes up the circle button – it could have been one of the directional buttons which aren’t used for anything else. Apart from the changing of characters, a few new spells and the flying of Buckbeak instead of a broom, the game-play hasn’t essentially changed when it should have made some big improvements – that’s what sequels are all about - progress, and yet it’s evidently made none. The missions that you engage in are very similar to those you will have done if you played Chamber of Secrets and as a result they will get repetitive, as will the collecting of Famous Witches and Wizards cards which you just won’t be bothered with. There’s also one unforgivable fact that quidditch is none existent – you simply watch a few cut-scenes of the matches and never do you get to fly a broom even once, which for me was a huge letdown as I loved to play quidditch in the last game. Even with the side-quests the game is short - you could complete it in about 8 hours which is perhaps a mixed blessing as the mission formulas get repetitive rather quickly.

The game does have some positive features, such as Hogwarts which boasts the new setting of the film and it looks fantastic. The graphics overall are pretty good and the rendering of Hogwarts and its grounds gives that ‘wow this is big’ feeling. Voicing is spot on and although flying Buckbeak is hard at first to get grips with it is eventually a joy to do, it’s perhaps the game’s best feature. There is also an added bonus if you have an eye-toy as you can play some additional mini-games, though in truth these won’t keep you busy for long. So there is still much to explore of Hogwarts even if the game is short. All in all it’s quite a disappointment– those who played the first game won’t find much here that’s different except that some of the positive elements of the first game have been removed, but young kids will probably find this enjoyable and fittingly easy to breeze through. Apart from that, Potter fans only people.