Traveler’s Tales and LEGO have joined forces once again to bring the masses their latest creation. Lego Harry Potter pays a great deal of fan service to both genres, that being both LEGO and the Harry Potter series. Cramming in literally four years of books/movies with both good and bad results.
I really don’t see there being any need to hash out the story here. I am pretty sure that most of the country now is more than familiar with Harry Potter and his nemesis Lord Voldemort. What I will say is this: the game sticks as close as you could possibly want to both the movies and the books without weighing you down. Considering there is absolutely NO spoken dialog in the game (or any LEGO game for that matter) it portrays the emotions of the story arc pretty well. That said, if you are playing this game to get a better feeling for the characters or story development, without knowing what is going on prior, you will be lost.
The controls are simple enough to grasp after a few minutes with the game. After all, this is a “Family” game and meant for all ages. As the game plays out you go to different classes to learn new spells. These spells are then unlocked for you to use to accomplish different tasks throughout the game. Certain types of magic are used to trigger unique events in the game. Reconstructing a statue may use one spell while clearing out a room full of dangerous plants uses another. It’s easy enough to get the hang of what spell you will need to use in what situation.
What this game lacks in originality (I guess) it more than makes up for in content. Once you have finished the story mode of each level, you then unlock “Free Play” mode. This is where you can go back with seven or eight unlocked characters and pick apart the level for every last bit of collectible goodness. There are over 180 characters to find and unlock. Not to mention that there are red bricks, gold bricks, students in peril and house crests to find as well. Needless to say, but you will be working on this game for a while to unlock everything. I was able to finish the game in just over 20 hours. That’s with collecting EVERYTHING and getting 100%.
The massiveness of the collectibles is a double edge sword of sorts, however. Once I got to the point where I had finished off the story modes, I had only finished about 65% of the game. It was a long hard grind to find everything else. Several times I found myself walking away from the game because I just didn’t know if I could take it anymore. There is a certain point where fun turns into work and though in the end, I was having a lot of fun with the game, I will probably never play it again.
Playing LEGO Harry Potter with your kids will probably be a lot of fun. The kid in all of us will enjoy the subtle nods to adult humor, and the adult in us will love the child-like innocence of the game. Just make sure that if you want to continue to have fun with the game you take it slow and don’t overdo it.
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