• Summary

• Reviews

• News
• Images
• Videos
• Downloads
• Hints & Cheats

Genre: Third-Person Adventure Publisher: Microsoft Developer: TellTale Games Players: 1-2

By Keith B (16th Jul 2010)

As a big fan of the LEGO titles and someone who has played all the previous instalments, I was well aware of the declining quality and simmering unpopularity that blighted recent releases. [1]LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4[/i] was always going to have a battle on its hands to win back the respect its earliest predecessors had achieved, but Traveller's Tales seem to have weaved some magic of their own and ensured that Harry and friends have come out fighting.

Anyone with any knowledge of the other LEGO titles will be intimately familiar with the type of gameplay on offer here. You will take control of the main characters from the first four Harry Potter movies and using various magical shenanigans, smash your way through the levels while playing out the story and collecting studs in order to buy other characters for the freeplay mode. To proceed, items will need to be built and others destroyed while occasional boss battles will test your mettle. It’s nothing new, of course, but the people at Traveller's Tales, obviously learning from past mistakes, have made some necessary tweaks to the formula and in doing so they have raised the bar.

For starters, I have come to the conclusion that the LEGO titles are character driven, meaning that the more interesting the main character the better the game on offer. If this means that a bunch of brats attending an ancient school for witches are better than Batman or Indiana Jones then so be it. The characters in Lego Harry Potter have a huge advantage over all others in the shape of the foot-long magic wand that each of them carries. This enables them to perform multiple spells on anything in their way which puts Indy’s bullwhip and Batman’s different suits to shame. Basically, wielding the wand turns each character into a mini MacGyver with magic ranging from levitating spells to freezing spells. Different magic has to be used in different situations, like defeating a plant creature or hoofing open a locked door. Various concoctions can also be brewed if you find and mix the right ingredients in the cauldron provided.

The gameplay puts Harry and his buddies on an equal footing with the Jedi from the Star Wars titles. It may sound like heresy to some, but I have to be sincere about it. Their wizardry not only matches the Force but surpasses it in many ways, and brandishing a wand can be infinitely more entertaining than sparking up a Lightsaber.



The spells don’t come all at once and have to be learned over a period of time. This is no problem simply because like any other student you have to attend lessons to learn new skills. This happens at various points throughout and also highlights one of the other improvements in the environment in the form of the school itself.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry provides the setting for most of the gameplay and you could not ask for a more attractive or seamless environment. The school itself is a vibrant, functioning place that keeps ticking away as you play. Students strut around to and from classes, the dining halls have people eating in them and various goblins and imps are constantly wandering around, some just begging to be shot. It’s almost an open-world setting as you don’t just play a section of the school and move on, you have to move around the massive grounds playing each room time and again. There are doors, puzzles and chests in different rooms that can only be completed or opened with a certain spell. Once you learn it you have to backtrack through the school grounds to get to a new area or solve a previously perplexing conundrum. It’s very different to the other LEGO titles but thanks to wonderful surroundings and a genuinely interesting story mission, it all works very well.



The story mission itself remains true to the movies. If you’ve watched any of them then much of Hogwarts and what you do there will be very recognisable to you. Between each level you will find yourself in the Leaky Cauldron, which acts as the core level, to either replay a mission or move on to the next. From here you can also access Dragon Alley which is a shopping district for wizards to spend hard earned studs in.

Visually LHP is one of more exceptional looking titles of the LEGO series. The grounds of Hogwarts and Dragon Alley look real enough to touch and the interiors are straight from the movies themselves. As you move through the halls the pictures in the background come alive and the stairways move around to reach previously inaccessible doorways. While the whole thing is still obviously constructed from the same Lego pieces that made the rest, this setting has a great realism to it that almost rivals the settings on the big screen.



The Trademark LEGO humour also surfaces time and again to pretty much take the piss out of Hogwarts and everybody in it. Naturally it’s all very good natured and done in an almost childlike way. Particularly witty is one spell called Riddikulus which affects each character's worst fears, usually with ridiculous results. The characters all speak in the same universal language of grunts and sighs that seems to be oddly understandable and sounds strangely like their movie counterparts. You could recognise Dobby the little troll and Hagrid the giant even with your eyes closed.

It’s not all faultless however. Some depth-perception problems still persist and at times you will find yourself madly hopping like an asylum inmate just trying to leap onto a particular platform. It’s an old flaw that sadly still has not been completely eradicated. The level creator option is also back from Lego Indy 2 allowing you to design your own playable level. Inexplicably you still cannot place this online for others to indulge in, and visa versa.



LHP seems to indicate that the franchise has got its Mojo back, but whether it keeps it or not is another matter. Still, for the time being, Potter’s superiority should ensure that old fans will be cheered up and new devotees welcomed into the fold. There is not much here that can be called fresh and inventive but enough minor adjustments have been made to the formula to revive the waning gameplay and provide a decent story and a welcoming return for the classic Lego game.

Share On: