Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Rating:
Summary: Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone: The Game
Review: 1. Graphics

This game has the most beautiful graphics I have ver seen in a game, besides realMyst, that is. Unfourtunately, it plays choppily if you set the graphics too high.

2. Characters

They are true to the movie and are fun to meet. They don't move their mouths, but they have a wide variety of hand motions. You even meet minor characters like Crabbe and Goyle, Neville, Madam Hooch, Flitwick, Filch, Nearly Headless Nick, The Bloody Baron, and Peeves.

3. Magic

You learn five spells, each one having a slightly smaller variety of uses then the last one.

First, you learn Flipendo, which knocks things over and harms opponents. It has a wide variety of uses, like flipping switches and retreiving beans.
Next, you learn Alohomora, which is useful, because it unlocks secret areas and doors. It isn't quite as useful as Flipendo.
Then, you learn Wingardium Leviosa, which is beleive it or not is ONLY used for floating blocks on top of pressure pads. That's it. The only time it is slightly more interesting is when you have to ove a block on top of a fountain. And yes, blocks are the only thing you levitate.
Shortly after you learn Incendio. This spell is even more rediculous then Wingardium Leviosa usefulness-wise, because it only works on carniverous plants. This is probably because they want those things to be invincible to Flipendo before you learn Incendio. I think you should be ble to learn Petrificus Totalus in its place. I mean, come on, you only use it when the nearby bush turns out to be evil and starts shooting thorns at you. It's called a self-solving dellima. You only learn it to deal with dangers that only come up once you learn it.
The last spell you learn near the end of the game, Lumos. i know what you are thinking, and i tell you, never have i seen a weirder system. I don't hate it as much as Incendio, though, because it is interesting, even if it is not very useful. You cast it on Stone Gargoyles. They come to life and light up an area, at which point a cluster of magical lights will apear somewhere over a chasm or maybe a whole pack of them in a room. Then, you can jump on them like platforms, accessing new areas.

4. Story

The story is true to the books, and you do mot of the things in the movie. Most of the early levels are where you learn a spell and then go through a training area to practice it. Flipendo and Lumos have particularly deadly challenge areas, probably because Quirrel is trying to kill you.

Some levels are added to make the story more playable. to fill in gaps, you often do things like extra quidditch matches and collecting fireseeds for Hagrid.

All in all, a good game. Buy it and feel yourself sucked into it. I mean, can you beleive how many parents like it?

The only gripe I have with it is the spells. Trust me, you'll agree that while Incendio is understandable because it is there to make the game harder, Lumos is downright weird.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Graphics aside this is just plain neat!!
Review: I love the game. I bought before it came out. I love Harry Potter and the characters come to life. I've played some RPG games before so had a little clue as to get to different things. It took me forever to figure out the stupid flying and yes Malfoy and the rememberall. You have to use the direction keys on keyboard then when you sort of get close enough that you sort of hook onto him and his power is down half way, then use your mouse right click and you bump his rear off his broomstick. (NOTHING FEELS BETTER AFTER BEING STUCK THERE.) :) Later on when you have to run from the troll, run fast, keep running and eventually you'll get past him. I don't have the hand-eye cordination I once had, so it's harder for me. Oh and when you get to troll fighting get behind him and then cast the spells. (...)

Rating:
Summary: Stinks!
Review: It dosen't have the right,... well, you know what,... technology. And it dosen't have the right,... ya know... flying lessons. It's just too hard to go through the rings and they shoudn't of added the red rings because they go up and down and it's just too hard! It stinks! Oh yeah, it sure does!

Rating:
Summary: Fun, but with disappointing aspects
Review: I just finished playing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the PC -- The game starts off with a sort of a slide show of still drawings that run you through a hurried plot exposition up until you arrive at hogwarts. On some points they linger on one image and rush through an unrelated scene, like showing a picture of harry and then the narrator also mentions the trip to gringotts and hagrid's package in a tack on sentence. After arriving at hogwarts you do get some explaination on gameplay from the Weasly twins but it would have been so much better to have learned the gameplay through a mini challenge in getting to platform 9 3/4 and then exploring diagon alley. A majority of the book happens before you even arrive at Hogwarts! It could have been a lot more fun. Also, it proves that this game is not for someone who hasn't read the books or seen the movie -- they leave a lot unexplained. At any rate, gameplay is fairly intuitive, casting spells, jumping over things, going to class, etc. Quidditch is very fun and the game lets you practice outside of the storyline by playing in the quidditch leagues. If you win the leagues (8 matches) it just returns you to the main screen which was a big letdown after all that gameplay. Speaking of letdowns, the game is much too short. Poor Harry, they barely give him a chance to rest! The game doesn't really capture a year at hogwarts even though the school is well laid out and very fun to explore, using spells to find secret rooms behind pictures or find every flavour beans behind statues. I could have handled the slide show in the beginning but after defeating the dark lord I had hoped for a grand finale. Suddenly Harry faints and you're back at the slide show (even with some images re-used from the beginning) and only Harry is awarded house points for the win of the House Cup. After all that it switches to a mini movie of the Fred and George using the beans they've collected from you throughout the game. The game should have been longer and really let the player experience what its like to be at Hogwarts. Halfway through the game I would have given it 5 stars before realizing that what I thought was halfway was the eve of the final battle! I'm sure this game is great for younger players, but if they've had a lot of experience with this type of game it might not be much of a challenge. It really is well done aside from the hurried aspects and you really do get a feel for how annoying Peeves the poltergeist is. Certainly not for someone with no interest in the books or the movie, but for those of us that love Harry Potter the details are fun and the wizard cards (even though they don't move) are well drawn. Scene transitions were slow on my sister's 700mhz computer running WinMe, but on my 1.4 Ghz pc with Win2k it ran smoothly. Oh, and it does have some replay value because some of the secrets are rather hard to find so you may want to go back and play again to unlock the secret 25th wizard card. Overall, the game is okay for children (aside from the final battle which may be a bit scary with Lord Vol-, I mean you know who being rather dark looking, but its not too violent. Very fun, if you love Harry Potter buy this game.

Rating:
Summary: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (PC)
Review: Overall, I thought this game was very well done. It is definatly worth buying. There were a few problems, however. In this game, there are very limited times in which you can save. Therefore, if you're "stamina" (like health or energy) runs out, you must go all the way to the last time the game let you save. Like many other reviews, I must write that I wish this game was more of a Role Playing Game. There isn't really any time for you to wander freely around the well-designed castle. On the plus-side, this game has excellent graphics. It is computer animated, which makes the game so realistic at points that it is almost scary. This game is also well designed to the plot of the book, which makes the game neat in the fact that you can re-live the book. I would reccommend getting this game, but only rated four stars for the reasons listed above. Hope this review helped!

Rating:
Summary: I beat it in less than a week.
Review: I don't know why everyone is complaining that this game is so hard. I beat it in less than a week. It IS a challenge, I'll admit, and I spent a lot more time playing it that week than most people would have. The "challenges" are less challenging than they sound because all you do is cast the spells, but there are various plants, creatures, people, and jumps that make it plenty difficult. It can get a bit repititious sometimes, but overall it is a lot of fun and very true to the book. I discovered Harry Potter only last month. Yeah, last month. Everybody had read all 4 books already and were telling me forever how great HP is. FINALLY I gave up my stubborn attitude and read them. Now my whole family loves HP in all its many forms-movie, books, game. So anyway, this game is quite good. The characters look and sound OK. They don't actually "talk" (that is to say, there are no moving mouths), but the words come onscreen so you know what they're saying all the time. The Quidditch games are a lot of fun, but again, hard. The only really stupid thing about this game is Fred and George Weaseley. Harry just shows up on his first day of school and they start bossing him around: "We need 25 beans, Harry. Did you get the beans for us?" They always stop you and take every flavor beans from you like Harry's their slave child! He's got more important things to do! Why don't they collect beans themselves? They keep saying it's for "some experiments." Then they say it's for "a trick on Slytherin." Actually, it's niether. All they do at the end of the game (and don't read on if you haven't won it yet) is flood Snape's office with hundreds of Bertie Bott's beans. My brothers and I can't get over how pointless it is. Not much of a trick anyway, it wasn't played on Slytherin. It was more like an experiment to see what the least constructive and most useless thing they could possibly do with a bunch of jelly beans was. Guess they had nothing better to do. Aside from that, this is a game worth playing.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone is one of those games that is good but not great. Basically, you are Harry Potter (can't be personalized) and you go around Hogwarts Castle completing various tasks, learning spells and collecting Bertie Botts Every Flavored Beans and Wizard Cards.

This game is perfect for the Harry Potter fan who just wants to visualize what life at Hogwarts is life. The game is pretty much based on the movie, not the book. The actors who did the voices for the game obviously tried to emulate the voices of the actor's from the movie.

While this game is fun to play, it falls into a strange category. It is too difficult for anyone younger then 10, but it is too easy for anyone over the age of 14. A good gamer could easily sit down and beat the game in one night. Quidditch is fun, but it gets repetitive after awhile and the commentary is horrendous.

The main thing that irked me about this game was the graphics. The textures and environment are wonderful, but the faces look fake. Also, Harry's has one jump and one climb move for every situation, so even when he is climbing over a small step, he jumps and makes it look like the 2 foot step is 5 feet tall.

All in all, I would avoid this game and instead check out [...].

Rating:
Summary: Very Enjoyable :)
Review: I'm an avid fan of the Harry Potter books, so when I recieved the game for Christmas I was really thrilled! The graphics in the game were amazing, and the characters looks and voices were true to the film. Flying on a broomstick and playing Quiddich was a lot of fun and also not too difficult to manage. The different levels were varied and excellent, I got to learn spells, save Hermione from a troll and knock Draco Malfoy off his broomstick (which I must say, was quite an enjoyable thing to do!) The whole game was a lot of fun! The things I didnt like about the game were the fact that the characters mouths didnt move when they spoke, they just tended to flail their arms about when talking. I also found both the beginning and end of the game dissapointing. The start of the game was rushed into, and I was expecting an amazing ending (which I didnt get). Despite that, I still enjoyed the game and would recommend any Harry Potter fan to buy it :)

Rating:
Summary: Fun use of downtime
Review: I'm not really a video game connoisseur, but I like Harry Potter so I tried this one. I liked the graphics though sometimes Harry did seem to walk right inside the wall, and the background music adds nicely to the atmosphere. The computer I run this on is relatively old with Windows 98 and loading the different scenes and walking through the save game books takes a bit of time, and if I play for too long, everything begins to slow down.

I enjoy wondering around the castle and the grounds finding secret passages and looking for things and collecting beans and wizard cards. I like the parts of the game that involve solving puzzles rather than beating someone up (like Malfoy or Peeves). The end sequence I thought was a little easy or pointless. You just have to move back and forth playing a flute (to put Fluffy's three heads to sleep) or casting insendio to make the Devils snare let your friends go.

There are some parts that I am just terrible at. Mostly these involve anything with flying a broomstick. Either I'm an inept flyer or my computer is too slow either way, the flying parts really aren't that much fun anyway, so I just skip them. Overall verdict: playing in the castle, grounds and caves is fun, playing Quidditch is not.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Game Adaptation I've Ever Played!
Review: Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, is out everywhere! It started off as J.K Rowling's bestseller, now a fantastic movie and a computer game! Fans of Harry Potter who are itching to play Quittich should not give Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone (PC)
a miss as it will satisfy them throughly. People who don't usually read the books would also, most likely enjoy this game too.

This game has the basic storyline which follows to the storyline to that of the book. Not much is revealed during the gameplay which is fantastic as people are planning to read the book after playing this game will not encounter any spoilers.

You can run the game in hardware or software mode. Hardware mode means that the graphics of the game are much better off than that of the software mode, which offers choppy graphic. I suppose that this option is there to allow players without a good graphics to enjoy the game too.

As this game was designed for children, the contols are relatively simple to use. The game is played in a third person view, something like Tomb Raider. Players will be controlling the famous Mr. Potter himself. The one of the clever things about this game was that at the very beginning, the tutorial of how to play the game is in the form of exploring the castle with Fred and George Weasely, two characters in Harry Potter. You will learn how to jump and climb, and how to move around.

As the game proceeds, players can collect trading cards and jelly beans for fun. Players will encounter various challenges along the way and in these challenges, players must try to win points for their house, Gyriffndor. Players while exploring Hogwarts will encounter vaiuous characters that they can interact with, giving clues to guide players along.

No Harry Potter game is complete without learning magic spells! Parents, do not worry here! Your child will not be learning actual witchcraft but instead they will learn how to be precise, accurate and focus. To learn a spell, the teachers of Hogwarts will first draw a symbol across the screen at which players, with the help of the mouse, mmust try to draw as accurately as possible ( within the symbol drawn by the teachers ) the exact same symbol in a given time frame. It is quite a challenge but quite fun! If the players does it well, points will be awarded to the house.

Another good thing about the game is that the graphics is drop dead gogerous! Hogwarts looks magnificent, so did the weird plants of herbology class and the best part of this game? QUIDDITCH!

Alas this is a short game, which explains the four stars that I've given instead of the five. Unlike most games based from movies like Pearl Harbour and The Planet Of The Apes, which were total flops, Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone (PC) proves that games based on movies may not always be a total flop.

A great game to buy for the holidays as present and honestly, it is very fun to play. Hardcore gamers ( gamers of first person shooters, action etc.etc. ) may not enjoy this game unless they want something refreshing to play with.

Look no further game buyers, with Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone (PC), Harry Potter will once again put some magic into your lives.