Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 Review (1/10)

Make no mistake, this review is most definitely of the video game tie-in to last year's sensational movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (5/5) and not of the film itself. Within seconds of loading the disc, you should easily be able to tell the difference- one is a brilliant piece that despite its length shines in bringing us intense character drama and intimate yet thrilling setpieces; the other is a shoddy third-person shooter laden with difficulty spikes, bored voice actors and atrocious graphics. The Part 1 game captures the darker tone of the flick, and does give the sense that Harry and pals are on the run from a seemingly invulnerable enemy, but that's about the only credit I can hand it. If Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint actually lent their voices to their characters here (I sincerely doubt it), they must have been having an off day as these are by far the worst characterisations of the main wizarding trio I have seen in a video game. That could be forgiven if the gameplay was decent, but it gets repetitive midway through the first level, and from there on out it's a jumbled mess of back tracking and weird mini-games that never add anything to the already below-average experience of a cover shooter where you're simply pressing the right trigger or R2 until the targeted Death Eater (that's if you can target one of course, as Harry might as well have had a few drinks judging by the system developer Snowblind used to highlight enemies) apparates away. You do realise how few major setpieces the film contained when there is so much filler here, in the form of 'Encounters', where Harry is left to tackle missions such as escaping a Dragon's cave- no reason given why he was there in the first place, why would there be?- and surviving a Snatcher ambush before returning to a story event, at which point said missions are not even referenced and might as well not have happened. Heck, I wish they really hadn't happened! Seriously, I would have preferred to have just a two to four hour campaign focused totally on the film's events with more cutscenes than the sheer drivel that has been used as such tedious filler. This isn't helped at all by the fact that the difficulty level is woefully unpredictable: in one of the encounters, I entered a room to find Death Eaters on all sides of the room, and was dead within seconds- thanks a lot Snowblind for not bringing along Harry's friends for no apparent reason! To be honest with you, dear reader, at this point I gave up and watched the remainder of the game on YouTube, skipping past much of the gameplay to the next cutscene, and that time honestly felt better spent watching someone else play it rather than playing it myself. I'm a huge Potter fan- in fact, Part 2 is my most anticipated film of 2011- but this is such a hard game to stomach, I wouldn't recommend it to even the most hardcore follower of Rowling's works if it was being handed out for free. It doesn't get a 0 as it retains the themes and tones of the series and Part 1 well, and there is a chance you can enjoy the Kinect challenges with a friend...for a few seconds, before your arm starts feeling as if it might break from repeatedly thrusting it forward in a wand motion, often to no avail, but overall this is the worst game adaptation of a film yet, a disgrace to fans of the franchise and a tragic way to (nearly) end the Potter games. My hopes aren't high for Part 2...