Harry Potter's Zelda-Influenced Philosophy

Thanks to C+VG for their interview discussing the newly announced Harry Potter And The Sorceror's Stone with an EA producer, after this heavily rumored PS2/Xbox/GameCube update of the first book was officially announced last week. The game is summarized as having "..some stealth sections, some flying modes, but probably 80 percent of the time there's this sort of arcade adventure, it's almost Zelda-esque. We're not afraid to admit our influences." So unafraid, in fact, that they mention the Zelda series at least 5 times during the interview. There's already been a glut of Harry Potter games, most of which have been significantly different from one another - which ones have you actually enjoyed?

Comments

Hooray for clones!

[neostorm]

Wait! Next will be the Harry potter RTS!

Oh well, at least they're cloning something *fun*. Hopefully they do it well...

MMORPG??

[edwilli]

How about spending a year at Hogwarts yourself. Is the "Potterverse" too small? Just a thought.

Re:MMORPG??

[Greventls]

Ha, make a SimHogwarts similar to either the Sims or one of the Tycoon games. You are either a kid in the place or you are managing the school.

Harry Potter

[13Echo]

My fiance isn't much of a gamer, but she's a big fan of the Harry Potter series. I purchased the Gamecube "Chamber of Secrets" for her, and though it didn't follow the book's storyline to a T, it wasn't a bad game.

She had a bit of trouble with many boss fights and puzzles. The camera was a bit awkward for her. But I've been playing games for 18 years now, so I thought that the game was a bit too easy for me. Regardless, it was still quite fun (even if it can be finished in two or three days of extended play.)

I think that gamers that like 3D platform titles would like it, even if they aren't fans of the series. But the game might be a bit too tough for people that don't normally play games. It could have used a bit more balance, and a bit more work on making the game a bit longer and more in-depth. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Eurocom will be doing this new game. They had a fabulous multi-platform game engine. Maybe Warthog will get the opportunity to improve upon this engine, assuming that it belongs to EA now.

Re:Harry Potter

[Piquan]

Ugh. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't believe that Rawlings would have signed off on it, had she actually played the game.

The camera controls were terrible, and a number of areas were only difficult because of that-- you couldn't line up right for a jump! The levels themselves had nothing to do with Harry Potter, and could have been prepared for any game beforehand; I suspect they were.

The overland area was okay, but walking into a dozen identical classrooms and checking a dozen identical desks each is not my idea of a goodtime.

The graphics were terrible. Characters made as if the game designers were each paying a knut per poly used per frame. Even the cutscenes were rendered realtime with the same crap models. That's fine when your graphics are good, but when they suck, render them with good models ahead of time and store it as a movie. Or just use better models; the GC supports it! Look at the graphics on other adventure games like Zelda or Starfox Adventures, and then at Harry Potter, and wonder what happened.

The only redeeming aspect of the game is that flying around campus tagging rings can be kinda relaxing. But even there, the campus map is uninspired, hardly the jaw-dropping awe-inducing wonder that I think of when I think Hogwart's.

Didn't follow the storyline to a T? It had almost nothing to do with the story! It was amazingly generic, and had the final level that was reminescient of the book (but different enough that if you only saw the movie, you might not recognize it) and a few cutscenes thrown in at the end of production to remind the player that there is a book by the same name.

The levels were astoundingly dull. I'd play it in Picture-in-Picture while watching TV just to see if it ever got better, but it couldn't hold my attention enough to play it on its own. Walk a bit, cast expelliramus, walk a bit, cast expelliramus, sidle along a wall, cast expelliramus, walk a bit. Never encounter anything interesting or exciting.

It doesn't take 18 years of playing games to make the game too easy. Who were they targeting? This game would be too easy for almost anybody aged seven to eighteen years. Remember, kids these days-- particularly the ones who own GameCubes-- are good at video games. They have fast reflexes and precision hand-eye coordination. (You don't need problem-solving skills in this game.) The only thing that the modern child is lacking is the patience needed to search a gross schooldesks for an item. But that doesn't make it challenging; that makes it dull.

There was absolutely nothing about this game that did not make me feel it was a big waste of money. I recieved it as a gift (by somebody who doesn't read /., of course). Now, every time I see it sitting with my other GC games, I feel bad for the giver, who wasted good money-- $50 was the going price, IIRC-- to buy me this crappy game. She thought she was getting me something I would enjoy, that would bring me hours of fun. Boy, she got ripped.

From the best

[Gr33nNight]

Well, if your going to copy someone, it might as well be from the best. I also give them props to admitting to it as well.

Chamber of Secrets for GC was fun...

[RevAaron]

I'm fairly new to gaming. A bunchamonths back, my roomate- who is a big fan of the Harry Potter junk- rented the GCN version of the Chamber of Secrets. I ended up playing the whole game in a weekend- it was a lot of fun.

This was before I ever played Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When we got an n64 a couple months after that, as well as Ocarina, I realized how much the HPCoS game was like Zelda, which is a lot! The game was still fun, but used "plot" devices that were kind of lame at times. It'd sure be nice to be able to go back to play Quiddich and Wizzard Dueling after you'd beat the game, though.

They need to make Wizzard Chess!!

[syzygy_001]

I would love to see them come out with a HP Wizzard Chess Game, it would be a 2003 revamp of the classic battle chess that I remember playing on my Amiga 500. I loved battle chess and would really love to see it come back with updated graphic's and newer fight animations.

Re:They need to make Wizzard Chess!!

[wickedj]

Making Wizard Chess seems like it would be overkill. First of all, not many people are going to out of their way to pick it up as it is just chess with animations. If anything, it should become a minigame in the HP game.

Re:Who the heck IS Harry Potter?

[johannesg]

Harry Potter is the star of an utterly overhyped fantasy series aimed at children. He is an orphan magician who goes to a magical school somewhere in the UK, and gets into all sorts of magical adventures with a couple of friends. So far, five volumes have been released, each covering one year of Harry's life. The books are not extremely bad or something, but certainly not worth the incredible hype surrounding them.

Congrats on missing them, you'd better keep your location secret so it cannot be traced by the Potter-mafia... Posting as AC makes for a good start ;-)

If you are simply looking for good fantasy, I'd recommend "The View from the Mirror" by Ian Irvine, or the "Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" by Stephen Donaldson, or "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George Martin, or "The Initiate Brother" by Sean Russell, or "The Sarantine Mosaic" by Guy Gavriel Kay. I found myself immensely enjoying all of these, as well as other books by those same authors. Having said that, these are all aimed at a more mature audience.

Re:Who the heck IS Harry Potter?

[aplank]

You obviously arent a kid but you seem to think that you know exactly what kids think about this book series. You can't talk about the whole population's perception of a book. I liked the books even though im not a child. The series isnt overhyped. Well.... I geuss it is but the books are very good for all ages. (there is even an adult edition here in Britain.)

Re:Jordan? Try Goodkind

[Upaut]

I am one who is very addicted to Goodkinds work, but I sm starting to loose faith, I mean really, an entire book just to introduce a charactar? And the next book sounds increadably cliche. (Oh no... the main character/hero is poisoned.)

As someone who's also played games for multiple

[Inoshiro]

decades, I found that HP: COS was unevenly hard, because the game would very sharply punish you if you went off of the path. It'd also limit you in many ways.

Not really.

[Inoshiro]

This is like saying that GI Joe for the NES and SMB for the NES are a lot alike because they are both 2D platformers. 3D puzzle/adventure games which have action combat tend to have the same exact control scheme (including the L or Z targetting lock on), because it's a tried and true control method.

Not because EA was ripping off Zelda.

Re:Not really.

[RevAaron]

First, the two games had a lot more similarities beyond being games where you control a person in the third person in a world, doing stuff. Two, I never said that HPCoS was a rip off of Zelda. HPCoS is very much influenced by Zelda, implementing the same kind of game enjoyable for the same sort of reasons, played in the same way. In a lot of ways, HPCoS is a lot like Zelda. But, HPCoS it was fun, even as a person who isn't a big Harry Potter fan (never read any of the books).

Did anyone notice

[Fareq]

Did anyone else notice that this game, which will take place at a school called "Hogwarts" is being developed by...

Warthog?

On a more serious note, I think that making a better game out of the license is a good idea. The Harry Potter fan base is huge. The segment of the population who dislike it are vocal, but they won't likely stop fans from buying or stores from selling.

And... the PC game, at least, was extremely lacking. Great waste of $19.99 in my opinion. Perhaps the 8-year-olds liked it, I don't know. It used the UT engine, so it looked pretty good, but gameplay was pretty terrible, and boring too...

As for interacting with Rowling? She has lots of power now, doesn't she. She has approval rights on everything. Except merchandising, I believe, since she keeps saying how much she hates the Potter toys.

Re:The fifth book

[Idlechat]

I didn't exactly understand your last section template (the long one that begins with the word "stick"), but basically I agree with you. The division-by-year might make HP worthless.. or something. I'm so disappointed at Jo Rolling (and I also envy her bf.. I wanted to be with her instead.. ;)

And I think that book 4 sucked. I liked the first 3 books the most.. especially the 2nd, where people were frozen all the time - I could feel the panic pretty well.. book 3 was nice too - maybe because it didn't involve Voldemort?

PS: I can't believe they moded me OFFTOPIC. It's at least 50% on topic!

Re:The fifth book

[Lord Bitman]

well that part begining with "stick" was the entire point of the post.. do you not notice it? Did you not read the end of book three or four?
and you're a twit, book three kicked the ass of two

Re:The fifth book

[Idlechat]

First of all, book 3 was less of a thriller than book 2. Although I liked the ending of it a lot - it was also interesting that we didn't see Voldemort at the end of it.

Now, about the "stick":
[nice build] [enjoyable scene] [good build] [great build] [climax] [stick a huge 7-page block of one person talking to explain everything else because the book is already twice as long as the last book and hasnt yet bothered with those "nice build"s for 90% of the story]

What did you mean in "bothered with those nice build"? The part that confuses me is that you write earlier that all the book is about builds, so what did you mean about the book hasn't bothered with them?

Re:The fifth book

[Lord Bitman]

Ah, what you have is a confusion between "story" and "book"
90% of the book is nice builds about 10% of the story, the rest is a hasty explanation thrown in at the end. Read the 2nd [or 3rd.. not sure..] to last chapter in book 4, it's nothing but one long block of somebody talking under influence of truth-serum for fuck's sake -- it would be cliche if it wasnt so fucking stupid that nobody else has bothered with it.