Ok, I really hate Harry Potter. It's really overblown when at the end of the day it's just a children's book that hit a lot of people at a young enough age to give them the nostalgia factor. A lot of things don't hold up under those circumstances when viewed by fresh eyes. Harry Potter is a fantastic example of that, the same can be said of a certain other franchise that Lego has also taken on (not Star Wars obviously). If one thing can be said of this, it is that I was able to play through this whole game, so Lego and Traveller's Tales were at least able to keep it from being as lame as the movies were.
Years back on the PS2 I tried out Lego Batman. If you know me, you know I love Batman, but I didn't love or even like Lego Batman. It is essentially, too much of the same thing over and over again. Jump, walk, regular attack, special attack and that is it, over and over again. These games were something I decided I wouldn't bother with because they were for beginners of the gaming front, and not to sound like a snob, I need a little bit more from my games. However, when my girlfriend mentioned that she would like to try it out, I saw the opportunity to get her playing video games with me. Since we started playing this, I've been jokingly saying that her and I support game marriage. Which is great, because I'm a huge gamelord and this proved to be a successful mission. She enjoyed herself to play other video games with me and because of that, I enjoyed it too, to an extent.
Something occurred to me while playing this. This game is made for young children to play, and yet to my surprise, this game is a glitchy mess. It was honestly offensive. To make a game that suddenly kicks us out to the PS3 main menu while we were in the middle of play, is something I honestly hadn't seen anywhere else. It wasn't uncommon to get stuck in textures and to have the game freeze up. The game was pretty short, and we could only stand to play it for a few hours before stopping. Because of this, for every 1-3 hour play time, we usually had 1-2 freezes or glitches that would make us have to play through a level again or something like that. If you've read my Dark Void review, you'll understand that I am a pretty forgiving person to glitches, because with games as advanced as they are today, it's bound to happen, but for a game that is essentially a PS2 game with barely HD graphics to have even more bugs than normal, it spoke volumes to me about Traveller's Tales just not giving a shit. They made this game for stupid kids who like Harry Potter, "cause they won't know better". That's bullshit, and this is not ok. If this is how they handle their games, I'm sorry I ever bought one, and won't be buying anymore (except for Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, which I have already purchased with this game). On principle, I am not ok with pumping out bullshit for kids, but then again I suppose that is the standard for Harry Potter, isn't it? Harry Potter has more than proven that any story to a kid can be interesting or exciting, and nostalgia can be forever.
A fun experiment for me was that Indiana Jones was a series I somehow never saw as a kid. So when I finally went to watch them for the first time a few years ago, with no nostalgia at all, I thought Raiders of the Lost Ark was amazing! I then watched Temple of Doom, and thought it was amazingly bad. Then The Last Crusade which I thought was, not too bad, but nothing to write home about. I won't even go into my opinions of the newest one that nuked the fridge. The result of the no nostalgia factor has lead me to thinking that there is one good Indiana Jones movie, and the rest I could do without. Star Wars has never seemed to have that problem. To be good despite nostalgia is a sign of greatness (and no one needs to explain to me that Power Rangers is not a great show as I am aware that it's total nostalgia for me, but I'm not so jaded that I think it's the best thing ever).
I keep getting side tracked on this, but couldn't be happier that HP is done, and hopefully won't be having any more milking done with it anytime soon. If it does find a way to return, I wouldn't be surprised if the hardcore nostalgic fans of HP don't like it at all, because the nostalgia won't be there. As for this game, it blows, it's not worth the glitches as the gameplay isn't good and the storyline only excels when it's making fun of the source material (which it seems to be doing often). It has inspired me to play better coop games with my friend. We love sitting around playing with our joysticks like the gamelords that we are!
If you disagree with what I've said, tell me I'm wrong. I want to know other people's thoughts. I'm aware that my opinions aren't popular, but if Michael Bay's Transformer movies keep being "popular", then that's the last thing I want to be.
Amen Reverend!
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