Review: Lego Harry Potter

Lego Harry Potter is everything we have come to love about the Lego games, its humorous, it's pretty to look at as well as conveying the story in the way the Lego games pull off so well. The game covers the Harry's first 4 years at Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry. For those of you who have seen the movies or read the books then the story will be all too familiar.

The game play hasn't been tweaked much from the previous games, if it's not broken don't fix it, is a good way of looking at the Lego games. The controls are easy to get to grips with which makes this game great to be able to just pick up play by anyone. My girlfriend isn't a harry potter fan so this meant that I would be playing this one alone so I have no idea if the problems I talked about in my Lego Indiana Jones Review have been addressed. Also being a Lego Series game it more directed at Kids so while adults who are a fan of the series will enjoy the game they can be safe in the knowledge that their younger cousins/nephews/nieces etc will be able to play this a not come away scared like Mad Eye Moody, and yes that's a reference to a character.

The visuals of the game, just like the others in the Lego series, are easy on the eye, although if I had to make any criticisms on the visuals it would be that the blinking arrows showing where the various hidden items are can be a little misleading at times.

One element that has been added specifically to this game was the Hogwarts castle, a free roam area that acted as a go between for the different chapter parts. I felt that this added extra game play to the story, as it meant that you could make the story last longer while you were exploring the castle looking for students to help as well as finding secret areas and some of the hidden items I mentioned earlier.

Overall I found this game a lot of fun much like the rest of the Lego games, aside from Lego Indy. It's a lot of fun and I look forward to the next one when ever that will be. Probably not until after the last film has finished showing in cinemas I wouldn't have thought. So if you're a fan of the books, the movies or both or if you enjoyed the previous Lego games then you will enjoy this instalment.

General Update 07: Visitation Rights

So it's been a while since I've given an update on what I'm playing. In my last update I was working towards the Liberty City Minute achievement in GTA IV. This I am pleased to say I have now done, however the game then became a real grind for me to work on the other achievements. Liberty City (5) is makes me feel like I'm playing the Sims as I have to keep up appearances with the other characters. So the weekend before last I decided that I would try another one of the many games that I have laying about waiting for me to get around to them.

In this instance it was Darksiders. It's a good little game which I picked up at the same time as I got Dante's Inferno and I must say I much prefer Darksiders to Dante's. I managed to finish it just before last weekend as I was going to lend it to a friend however before starting this game I did look to see if there were any missable achievements. There were 4 and I'll admit that I did look up how to get them because as I keep saying my list of games still to play consists of;

• Dragon Age: Origins
• Left 4 Dead 2
• Red Faction: Guerrilla
• Ghostbusters

These are just the games that I have to finish for the first time, I also have a list of games that I need to go back and play again including;

• Alan Wake - Nightmare play through as well as the Signal DLC
• Mass Effect 2 - Insanity play through and additional DLC
• Monkey Island SE

Then there is my list of games that I still want to get;

• Dead Rising
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• Bayonetta
• Brutal Legend
• Gears of War 2
• Wolfenstein
• Metro 2033
• Final Fantasy XIII
• Neir
• Prototype
• Dark Void
• Iron Man 2
• Sacred 2

Don't even get me started on games I'm still waiting for. Maybe I should buy an old game with every new game I buy that should provide me with a decent spectrum of games. I've also borrowed Ninja Gaiden 2 from my friend in exchange for Darksiders, Singularity and Lego Harry Potter. Before I left for my mates at the weekend I was thinking about trying a couple of demo's from the games market place, but I was running late and didn't get around to it. But while I was at my mates he had a two of the games downloaded.

First up was the demo of a Kingdom for Keflings, a nice little base building game that from the demo seemed quite addictive. I downloaded the full game when I go home and I'm glad I did it's a fun game with it's heart in the right place, it's also a good choice as a game for young kids. The second was a game that he had downloaded the full game for when it was on offer and that is Shadow Complex. I only tried out the challenge rooms which were enough to make me want to get it but not enough for me to shell out the 1200 MSP for it.

The other thing I should mention that I tried at the weekend for the first time was the Zune Video Marketplace. I was very impressed with the service. I chose to download the movies rather than stream as I wasn't sure what my speed was going to be like and it took about an hour to an hour and half for half of the movie to download and then I was able to start watching it. The pricing was good as well at £3.28; converted from 380 MSP for an HD film it's slightly cheaper than some other rental places, so if you're stuck on a Friday night for a film then give it a go, i highly recommend it.

General Update 03: Liberty City Bound

Howdy Gamer-folk,

It would appear that I've been slacking off on my blogger duties but don't worry I'm not dead, I have actually been quite busy. Last Friday I picked up Singularity, I was really enjoying it until I got stuck but then I did jump straight in on Hard. It is my theory that if you start on a harder difficulty then your learning curve will be much steeper but I also think that if you don't try this then any strategies that you have used for medium might not be applicable when playing on the harder setting. So I set a challenge for you dear reader next game you pick with a game with variable difficulty why not try going for a difficulty one up from what you're used to?

On Saturday I picked up another new release Lego Harry Potter. I really enjoyed this game as well, it's exactly what you would expect from a Lego game. With previous knowledge of all the Lego games I found I was able to breeze through it rather quickly. So I've now completed both Singularity as well as Lego Harry Potter, reviews to be posted soon, I promise.

So what else have I been up to as it has been a couple of weeks since my last post. Well a two weeks back the Crackdown 2 demo was released. I've not played on it much but I have enjoyed what I've played. The first time I loaded up the demo I was rushing around like a headless chicken trying to pick up a many orbs as I could. This soon stopped when I realised they weren't permanent. however there are 10 achievements that you can earn in the demo that will unlock when you play the full game.

Crackdown 2 is released at the end of the week and I have all of the Solo play achievements for Singularity so I've managed to borrow GTA IV off of a friend and have been running around Liberty City, it's not holding my attention as much as I would like and I'm still not seeing what the hype was all about. In fact I was hoping it would be a lot like Red Dead Redemptionbut it's not.

I have been working on trying to add another page to go along with my Review Leader Board. While I am still trying to work out how to display it, it will be my hall of Fame/Shame it will show all the game that I have gotten the full 1000G, 'Hall of Fame', as well as all those games where I'm lagging behind, 'Hall of Shame'. I will post an update when it is available.

Yet Another Bank Holiday 'Round up'

Yes we have had another bank holiday weekend and this meant more gaming for me and I really do need more time for gaming, in fact I should probably be playing right now but then how would you know how I was getting on? 

So what was I playing? Well seeing as I had finished Alan Wake I thought I would try something a bit different. I ordered Red Dead Redemption early last week and it turned up on Thursday so I've been playing that but I saw that Doom 2 was released on XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade). So on Friday I downloaded the demo as well as the one for Doom. It was fantastic, and seeing as the original had dropped in price to 400MSP (Microsoft points) I bit the bullet and bought it.

I also saw on my Twitter feed, Gamerpraggers if you want to follow me, that the Ninety-Nine Nights 2 demo was released, however when I went to look for it however I was Schtupped, as it looks like it was only released in the States. I have sent a message to SUAM (Sent you a Message) to see if it's going to be coming out over here, so who knows I might get a mention on Saturday. Although now I think of it I didn't put my gamertag on the message so it might not be me getting the mention! Damn it!

So apart from riding my way across the wild plains for southern America and Mexico, and shooting demon spawn from hell on Mars' moon Phobos I also broke the 40K barrier. I've also been thinking about possibly setting myself a challenge but I'm not sure yet what to set, it might be to do with raising my percentages as at the moment, according to xbox360Achievements.com, my achievements Percentage is 59% and my points percentage is 58%. So my challenge could be to raise one or both to over a certain percentage but that's not very original so I think more thought will be needed before I decide on something. 

So things will probably be a bit quiet for the next couple of weeks and then it will get quite hectic as we have E3, which will be huge as well as interesting as we'll finally get to see what's been done with natal as well as find out it's real name, as well Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, and Singularity released on the same day then I have a week before Crackdown 2. I think I'm going to need a plan. . . but you can count on me, to at least try, to blog about what comes out of E3.

Review: Lego Indiana Jones

Lego Indy is in much the same vein as the Lego Star Wars games, in that it follows the story of the 3 films. I got this game after playing Lego Star Wars which I thoroughly enjoyed despite not been that big a fan of the films. I was hoping the same would apply to Lego Indy. I was wrong. Although enjoyable to start with the novelty soon wore off. I started playing the game with my Girlfriend however after we had gone through all the levels the first time it was getting difficult to persuade her to play, not because she’s not a gamer, she is, but because she was bored of it.

I know what she meant because it was, it didn’t have that something that Lego Star Wars or Lego Batman had. Maybe it’s because I’m not that big an Indy fan or maybe it’s because the game is lacking, I don’t know for certain but I did manage to stick through it and get all 1000g. I am a Gamerscore whore after all. The achievements being a Lego game are easy enough to  get some are a little time consuming especially the using of abilities achievements.

Overall I would say if you’re a fan of the films or if you really need a Lego game fix until Lego Harry Potter years 1-4 is released then I do think you should pick it up, otherwise I’d probably say leave it, there are more enjoyable games out there to play. So to sum up this is the weakest Lego game at the moment but not a completely horrible game.