Who doesn't like the LEGO games? With their cute, brightly coloured brick-y characters, LEGO games and film tie-ins go together like tea and biscuits or garlic and bread, promising co-operative platforming fun and slapstick humour, whether you've seen the films or not. LEGO Harry Potter mixes the traditional LEGO game magic with, er, magic, to make a LEGO game that seems more varied than the likes of LEGO Indiana Jones.
Fetching comedy earmuffs? check.
First things first, I have never seen a Harry Potter film, bar about ten minutes of the first film, although the number of times I read the earlier books is probably into double figures. Therefore, I knew what was coming and what to do in places - but if you haven't seen the films or read the books, you might struggle a bit in places, seeing as, for example, you might not realise you're supposed to be retrieving Neville's Remembrall from Malfoy, and you'll just end up flying round aimlessly.
LEGO Harry Potter takes place in the much more open-plan world of Hogwarts castle, and you'll find you need to do more wondering around to get from level to level - but you don't need to worry about getting lost, as Nearly Headless Nick (Harry, Ron and Hermione's house ghost) is always floating towards where you need to go, leaving a trail of 'ghost studs' for you to follow. The levels themselves are more varied too, as -much like in the books/films - you'll need to go to lessons to learn spells, as well as the more traditional LEGO get-from-one-end-to-the-other-whilst-collecting-stuff-and-beating-up-bad-guys story levels, which are based on key moments from the books/films, such as the fight with the mountain troll in the girls toilets to entering the Chamber of Secrets through Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, to locating Harry in the Forbidden Forest.
Lessons basically involve having to repeat the same spell a set number of times, before you've 'learnt' it, and a little icon appears on the spell selection wheel (accessed by pressing and holding the c button). These include using the levitation spell, Wingardium Leviosa, to rescue various students hanging from chandeliers, to releasing Ron from a plant's clutches in Herbology, to rounding up ingredients to put in a strength potion in Snape's class - these spells you learn in these lessons are then put to use in the story levels, and in and around the Hogwarts castle.
Dispensing with Deoxys in Lockheart's class - just one of the lessons you'll be attending.
After a brief holiday in LEGO Indiana Jones 2, the collectibles make a triumphant return - each level has 4 Hogwarts house crests, as well as Red Bricks and characters, and 'Student's in Peril', who needs your help - finding and completing any of these objectives award you with a Gold Brick at the end of the level - there's a total of 200 to find over the course of the game. If you collect enough LEGO studs (the game's currency) over the course of the level, you reach 'True Wizard' status, which presents you with another Gold Brick.
Each of the character's have different abilities - Harry is awesome at flying broomsticks, and can talk to snakes, Hagrid is as strong as they come and can pull the chain/switch things without the need for a strength potion, and Hermione has the brains to work the bookshelves and open secret passages - and her cat Crookshanks can dig stuff up. And Ron... tends to mess up in lessons - and that's about it. Even his pet rat of the first three years, Scabbers, can't do anything phenomenally unique - he can travel through little tubes and operate switches - which Crookshanks can also do. These unique abilities mean you'll be replaying the various levels as different characters to try to reach areas which were previously inaccessible, in the hope of finding new collectables - meaning you'll get a hell of a lot of replay value out of the game.
Assemble the tetris-like pieces to make a staircase to get to higher places in the level.
Controls are quite simple - the Control Stick moves your character, the A button jumps, the B button casts spells (when held, you can point the Wii Remote at the screen to select objects to cast on), and the c and Z buttons control your spell wheel - holding c brings it up, and pressing Z casts the selected spell. The only part of the controls that might give you a bit of a problem is the spell selection wheel - once you start getting spells that occupy the same slot (we don't really get why they do either), you start having to press the cast button at the exact right moment - which can be quite hard, resulting in you turning your co-op partner into a frog, rather than just replacing their hair with flowers, like you intended.
Sirius thinks you should buy this game. Or else. And you wouldn't want to mess with someone who was seen murdering 12 muggles, would you?
If you've played the previous LEGO games, are a Harry Potter fan, or if you just like light-hearted co-op adventures, you're sure to like LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4. And as it's packed full of collectables and replay value, it'll likely keep you going for a long, long time - or at least until the next LEGO game, anyway. In our opinion, it's one of the best LEGO games to date (LEGO Batman is a close second) - so it's well worth checking out.
Format Reviewed: Nintendo Wii
