PSone - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Format
PSone
Publisher
EA
Developer
EA
Country of origin
US
Genre
Puzzle

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

By David Rasmussen
2nd Dec 04

Studio - EAGames
Age - E for Everybody
Genre - Platform/Puzzle

So then... where to begin...
Loosely based on the movie which, in turn, is loosely based on the novel, it is for the most part the first book... for the most part.

As the games have progressed it seems that the games become less and less like the movie as the movie becomes less and less like the books... which means if we get around to reviewing the third game you'll see that there's a wide gap in difference between the game to the movie as there is between the movie and the novel it is based on.

For now, however, we're at the start of the cycle so it's not so harsh... yet.
We start with The Boy Who Lived, Harry Potter, and begin the game retelling the beginning of the movie up to the point when he receives his Hogwarts letter... after a long bout of Man Vs. Delivery Owl... and Harry heading to Hogwarts and being sorted into Gryffindor.

That's when you take over and start the gameplay, as it were.
First duty is just to... eh... the Headmaster looks like a yeti... scary.
He (the head yeti... I mean headmaster) compels you to search the castle... except the third story floor which, you know, is where they keep the writers for the next six movies... uh, I mean the dog guarding the trapdoor that leads to the path that goes to where the Sorcerer's Stone (The Philosopher's Stone in UK release of the movie/game) hidden.

You start out knowing nothing and having nothing, but that will change as you progress through the game. There are 17 wizard cards to get, about 300 every flavor beans... who cares about the flavor, you just have to use them to... ahem... "bribe" Ron's brothers for passwords to certain portraits where stuff is hidden.
Sheesh. Con artists! Go find your own beans you crooks, you!
The stuff? There's the Nimbus 2000 (good for Quidditch games), a Famous Witches/Wizard card (good for your collection), and Quidditch Armor... again good for Quidditch.
The fourth thing I'll leave for you to discover.

Oh, and then there are the "house points" which increases as you play, ultimately (hopefully) being enough so your house is tops at the end of the year. If not? Well I guess it won't be the end of the world if your house doesn't win but still... and in comparison to the second game it's not going to be easy to stay ahead of the competition (especially Slytherin which seems to just catch up and take the lead out of nowhere halfway through the game no matter how well you play the game).

One good way to get house points is to actually go to class.
Yeah, figures that if your going to a school of witchcraft and wizardry at some point there would be actual classes that you'd need to go to. And it's just like going to school in real life!
Yup... I always had to run a short obstacle course to get to class, followed by a short boring lesson where I push buttons to learn something... at least there's a practical lesson at the end to actually teach you how to use your magic (which gets more complex with each year).

The little things don't mean much this time out.
Collecting Famous Witches/Wizard cards won't really mean anything until the next game (and you'll have to look for all the mini-games if you want to stand a chance of getting them all), ditto with the bean thing which is only good for those passwords (and since there are sometimes more beans than needed for your total to be found you shouldn't have a too difficult time reaching the numbers you need).

Keeping track of your stats is simplistic. There's one page for all your stats (spells, etc) and one easy to read life meter in the form of a thunderbolt (left side of screen). Basically it's all easy to manage... which again won't be the case as you progress through game after game.
Short on life? Find a chocolate frog or a potion to restore it... stop burping! It's only chocolate!

Hidden places shouldn't be too hard to find. In fact they stand out.
Bookcases that you can't climb on (set tight into the wall), walls that obviously have door shapes in them, and so forth. All you have to do is just walk up and click them to enter, not too hard.
I didn't have a hard time finding secret paths for the most part, but again this is a kid's game so I'm supposing they didn't make it to hard for the little ones to find those secret areas.

In fact you should have zero problem with this game since EVERYONE is going to take time out of their day to tell you everything... can't walk about without getting free advice from whoever.
And you can't walk about without being shanghai'd into doing things for other people, or being drafted into doing mini-games for Witches/Wizard cards. Damn. Everyone is so darn nosey!

Okay. Going into the meat and potatoes of the gameplay now...
Since your basically following the plot of the movie there isn't much room for exploration past wandering around on your own and digging into hidden rooms. Past that the plot is basically linear and unstoppable. There is some things though. Fight Malfoy here and there (since he's a git and everyone should enjoy beating on him), go find Fire Seeds for Hagrid (which won't really be of a use to you until Year 3), find a lost kitten while trying to get out of an underground maze, etc. etc. etc.

Not to mention there are mini-games to play for Famous Witches/Wizard cards... though one in particular (at Gringotts) is a manditory pass. You have to play it, and you have to beat it three times in order to progress through the game... yuck. Banking is such a bother in this world!

Overall while it seems that you are diverting from the set plot of the movie from time to time, you'll be dragged back to said plot in no time... which is kind of boring if you think about it since there isn't much in the way of surprises past the occasional "diversion" here and there.

And even then, even if it looks like the game is diverting from the movie it'll eventually be dragged back to the plot and you'll be back to following the storyline soon enough. Not to mention the "spontaneous" side trips just are not very interesting.

Is the game challenging? Not really. Mind you it's a game for kids so this isn't a deep game.
It has some challenge, but once you master it you'll breeze through it easy enough.

One thing I don't like is the few manditory challenges which seem to have been made rather difficult on purpose! Good examples of that in action is the whole Quidditch training thing which is just a pain, the minecart driving thing to pick up your money from Gringotts (though the vehicle you ride in is rather unique looking if I do say so myself), or the jumping from floating cauldron to cauldron thing to escape the dungeons and get back to Potions class. Frustrating.

Acting? If you're expecting a Lord of the Rings style tour de force of voice acting then you are going to be one sorry gamer. Unlike the Lord of the Rings games (which had the cast of the movie doing the voices for all the games including the recently released "Third Age" RPG game), this one has either very little or zero of the cast doing any of the voices as far as I can see.

I don't know, maybe one or two of the people actually snuck in (I didn't read the credits in depth and this is a cheap game bought from Blockbusters so no instruction booklet with credits listing here) but considering the effort New Line Cinemas put in their game I would have... oh, wait, given the WB's track record I guess I would have been asking too much for them to have put some deep effort into their game.

It's not a deep game, nor will it be a place to find your favorite cast from the movie if that was what you were hoping for (which is not to say they didn't try their best and are at least more enthusiastic than David Duchovny in the voice acting dept.... which isn't saying much since any and everyone is more enthusiastic than David Duchovny in the voice acting dept.). Still it's not horrible, and you won't need a wizardy license in order to defeat this one.

Probably if you had a free weekend, were bored out of your mind, and could find it for dirt cheap (which I did over at Blockbusters) then you might want to consider giving this game a spin.
Of course you'll probably beat it during said weekend which leaves you with the problem of what to do with it after you beat it... it's not so challenging once you beat it, and there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust difficulty settings on this game to make it harder. So once you beat it you'll probably not play it again for a long while... probably means it won't get a spot in your permanent collection anytime soon.

Okay! Let's break it down already!

Harry Potter Breakdown the 1st
What's Hot? - It's not evil, and it's kind of fun... but once you beat it there's nothing else to do but get the second game and beat that one as well. There's not much in the way of replay value here (except if you are a die hard Harry Potter fan and can forgive the game's divergences from the book (which is probably more closely based on the movie than the book, though I haven't read the first book so I wouldn't know)).

What's Not? - Like I said above, it doesn't seem to have much in the way of replay value.
Once you beat it that's it. You'd have to be a genuine die hard fan of the series AND quite forgiving of how the movies/games turned out in comparison to the novels to even consider playing it again.

That and it's way too easy to begin with. Most serious gamers will breeze through this one.

Moments to Remember?
Yes. Sadly the only truly memorable things about this game is things that only Harry Potter fans (die hard ones at that) will be interested in. For the casual gamer this game is rather un-rememberable... even if you remembered to get your rememberall for the game.

What to Ignore?
Hmmm... sheesh... where to begin...
Let's see... everyone is animated badly (which will improve over time).
The headmaster looks like a yeti, Hagrid looks like a bigfoot, everyone has oddly shaped heads and looks weird... well this game makes most N-Gage games look pretty by comparison... heck it makes ALL N-Gage games look pretty by comparison. What's the N-Gage? Don't ask.
(It's not something anyone wants to play since nobody is going out of their way to submit N-Gage reviews.)

Past the bad animation? Hmm... ignore the fact that your school experience seems to be (at times) one long Rube Goldberg experience... (in other words sometimes you just seem to do the most complex things to accomplish the simple tasks... which will only get worse as the years progress).
But I shouldn't complain since this is a cakewalk compared to future games.

Overall?
Way too easy, badly animated, and not exactly what I call a "keeper" by any stretch of the term.
Play it for a weekend and then revisit it every so often whenever the next movie comes out... or just to avoid going to see the next movie when it comes out... but a game like this will most certainly not be hosting any spot on your permanent collection. Even a die hard fan of the series will have to admit that it's over too quickly, and doesn't hold enough challenge to keep it as a permanent part of your gaming collection. If you can get it dirt cheap, like I did, then buy it. It's mildly amusing but not worth spending big bucks on to get.

That's that...and now that you made it this far you get your reward!

YOSHINOYA for the PS2
Available in Japan only

Why a bonus review with this one?
1-See the notation above? This game is only available in Japan. Meaning I have NOT played it, and most likely you haven't played it either. So I can't tell you much past what I heard about it.
2-Good luck finding images for this game! I couldn't! That and I didn't want to unnecessarily stress out Huxley so I attached it to a review of which images would be easy to find, hence why the main "leftovers" review is for Harry Potter... those seem to be easy images to locate.
3-Oh, and it's a food themed game and since this whole week is about "leftover" reviews that seems to fit in the food inspired week of reviews doesn't it?

Okay. So, the game, the Official Yoshinoya game. What is it?
Besides of course being the officially sanctioned game for the Yoshinoya food chain, of course.
First off we have to answer the musical question "What is Yoshinoya?"
No, no, it's not a franchise related to Yoshi (Nintendo), nor is it a Yoshi's Island spin-off.
Yoshinoya is a fast food chain in Japan that's supposed to be (from what I heard when I heard about this game on... yes... X-Play) the equivelant of McDonald's. However, instead of burgers which is the mainstay of places like McDonald's, their name to fame is beef bowls.... Mmm, beef bowls.

Now if I ever saw McDonalds or Burger King dish out a game like this? Well that'd be something to talk about... mostly how they're trying to drive people insane. And that is exactly what the Yoshinoya (beef bowl) game will do to you, drive you insane.

The Yoshinoya game takes place in the Yoshinoya restaurants as you have a job to do, and that job is to dish out beef bowls to the busier than usual crowds that rush through the doors and right to the counter.
Succeed and they glow/spin around in happiness (leaving to allow even more people to come in to order).
Fail and their heads explode... sorta like Fist of the North Star, only due to impatience rather than martial arts violence.

Gameplay is straightforward, even boring if you think about it.
Get your character to the customer at the counter and press a button corresponding to their "order" which shows as you get to them. X, O, triangle or square. Easy enough.
And that's it. Basically you just run about and continously press buttons in sequence as you dish out bowl, after bowl, after bowl, after bowl... endlessly... as if you worked in the Yoshinoya from heck.
The easiest set-up is the straight counter (one row of customers to wait on), with the hardest probably being the U shaped counters which means more movements handing out beef bowls... that or a O shaped circular
Oh, and that is how it drives you crazy... if you've seen the footage of this game from X-Play then you'd know what I'm talking about.

Oh, how do you know your doing a good job?
You know you're doing a good job if somebody challenges you during gameplay.
Once you satisfy enough people a guy in his pajama fighting robes shows up and demands the ultimate beef bowl (which makes sense since he's some sort of ultimate beef bowl fan or something like that).
From what I've seen it looks like he has some sort of health bar... hunger meter perhaps? Anyway I'm figuring you'll either have to fill the meter up, or deplete it down to wear him out... something like that.
For the most part he'll just sit there and eat until you satisfy him. Sheesh. Bottomless pit of a stomach eh?

From what I heard in this review it's so straightforward and easy that it's abit of a bore to play.
However, looking on the ever present bright side of things? Several hours worth of exposure to this game will either drive you crazy, or get you in touch with your inner fast food restaurant worker and put you on the path to getting a job with Yoshinoya's.
After memorizing the endlessly repetitive dialogue you should have the spiel down pat in a few hours to work there, if only enough so you can hand out beef bowls endlessly.
One or the other since, well, this game will either drive people insane, or bore them to tears.

Basically raking up points by moving and dishing out food? Boring.
And if McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell or any other company follows Yoshinoya and makes a game like this? Then they need therapy to even consider such a thing.
Then again I'm surprised they haven't considered it. It might actually be a big seller.

It is, however, a rather interesting concept in my opinion if I do say so myself.
Still this is something I'd rather play on my GameBoy Advance (or the upcoming PSP) than on my PS2... It just seems like something to kill time while on the road than something to play at home.

That's it. Bonus is done. Bye.

-- David Rasmussen 2nd Dec 04

PSone Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Images