Harry Potter Gets Azkaban Game, Stone Brickbats

Thanks to TotalVideoGames for its article revealing EA's announcement of the Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban game adaptation, due some time in 2004 and giving fans "the first chance to play as friends Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, along with Harry Potter, switching between characters and utilising their key attributes and skills to resolve challenges." An interview with the game's producer over at IGN Cube further reveals players "will also get the opportunity to control Hedwig and to fly Buckbeak, the Hippogriff", and this internally-developed EA title will hopefully work better than the recent Warthog-developed Sorceror's Stone adaptation, of which 1UP commented it was "a mystery why anyone would want such an imaginative world filtered through trappings as bad as these", and IGN PS2 lamented was "strangely nowhere as compelling or refined as Chamber of Secrets."

Comments

Movie ports...

[indros13]

...always bring up the following question for me:

Are there any good ones, for PC or otherwise?

In my, admittedly limited, experience with games based on movies, they all too often really suck. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we're paying money to simply interact with on-screen characters as opposed to having a creative and innovative plot and interface. The Star Wars franchise, for example, seems to be so focused on porting every movie and book story to video game that they don't bother with the kind of inventiveness and follow-through that mark pure video games, such as Wolfenstein, Warcraft, or Simcity.

Anyone else have similar experiences with movie ports? Were either of the first two Harry Potter games any good?

Um...

[Decaffeinated Jedi]

"the first chance to play as friends Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, along with Harry Potter, switching between characters and utilising their key attributes and skills to resolve challenges."

So, uh, what are Ron's special skills again? ;)