Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for the PC PS3 Wii DS AND Microsoft XBox 360 online walkthrough strategy guides are right here!
Half-Blood Prince does of course continue where the previous game/book/movie had left off. The Order of the Phoenix video game was underappreciated albeit the developers did their best to give a worthy time of gameplay. Nonetheless, the game brought a lot less to the gross intake than expected. They did provide a descent display of the Hogwarts location, but the simplicity of the actual game script without any real forward drive or reason to get to the ending destroyed the entire reason for wanting to play the game in the first place. However, for those ecstatic fans of the novel series, there is still a worthwhile amount of enjoyment that can be derived from any of the titles in the series at least in my opinion. Now introducing the Half-Blood Prince (along with the full game walkthrough here at GameGuideDog.com) this title like the movie is like half of the final story, and I personally believe that is the intention to get the final draw of the series itself, both from the box-office as well as the bookstore and video game shelves.
Trying to remember where the previous story left off can be a bit of a bother, but there are some minor mentions of the titular Half-Blood Prince whose notes dot Harry's potions book, a trip or two through Dumbledore's memory to see the young Tom Riddle, and a quick peek at Harry's ever-growing suspicion of Draco Malfoy. But you'll have to fit these pieces together yourself because the game doesn't spend any time filling in the details. However, you are going to have a time of it trying to put these long ago memories together to recall with the given very short clips/cutscenes in the game anyway. The recording talent used on the latest Half-Blood game release saved their money (or their scheduling conflicts with the original talent) and utilized barely digestible voice alikes. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Walkthrough Game Guide
Okay, so the graphics, the models themselves are similar enough to their counterparts just like in the other earlier game releases. However, it's obvious the corners on animation were severely cut to save time for things like Hermoine's hair doesn't hardly move, Professor McGonagall is cast in perpetual shadow, and Ron is cursed with a laughably small head. Furthermore, the game's plot takes poetic licenses in completely ridiculous ways that have absolutely nothing to do with any of the books at all.
Now in Order of the Phoenix, the title gave us an actually pretty accurate experience comparable to the film or the book. Like the many hidden alcoves and winding passageways at their leisure. Those of us that have not had the opportunity to play the earlier games can expect a big struggle trying to navigate around the huge map of the school, due to the movie staircases and missing several shortcuts through the portraits on the walls. However, if you HAVE played Phoenix you also don't have much more to learn to get around being as the map is actually identical along with all the secrets as well. If anything tho, it does make things a bit easier to navigate to the new objectives. There also is of course the option to utilize Nearly Headless Nick if you get lost which helps but also causes unnecessary backtracking.
Now having the opportunity to do all this extra running around (with some nifty motion blur to make you dizzy) you can enjoy (or suffer) through three optional wizard like functions. If you've seen the film (spoiler) in Half-Blood Prince, Harry's skills for potion mixing has increased tremendously so you should plan to spend some time learning the interface to utilize the various brewing concoctions. When you mix and combine the rather grotesque ingredients into even more disgusting final potions, it reminds one of those booger or dirt flavoured jelly belly jelly beans (if anyone had the misfortune of buying those when the first Harry Potter's were released.) The game does require several potions be mastered which in itself becomes very cumbersome and well, it's not like we wanted to play a 'cooking show' game now is it? Or maybe you did. Making the potions becomes so intricately repetitive, that it almost makes me fall asleep like I almost did during the actual movie itself.
The best thing about this minigame is you can actually place against someone else making the unpredictable battle much more rewarding.
The Harry Potter video games should complement the other media, providing gleeful interaction to match the excellent story from the books and the visual splendor of the films. But Half-Blood Prince isn't much fun to play once you've gotten a taste of the few simple activities. The game is ultimately a forgettable experience, pushing players through the same three minigames over and over again, without ever capturing the thrill of being a wizard. The story lacks focus and is difficult to follow, giving players only the faintest motivation to continue on before it finally ends on an emotionless, anticlimactic note. The Half-Blood Prince squanders its impressive license; you're better off reading the book again.
Two years ago, I nearly pooped my pants. See, Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix came out on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and it didn't suck -- in fact, it was pretty good. If you're just joining us, that's pretty much unheard of when you're talking about movie-based games. Now, with another H.P. movie bearing down on us, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is coming to your favorite videogame console. Can EA defy movie-to-videogame logic one more time?
The answer is "yes." While it doesn't blow the previous title away by any margin, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince improves on the stuff I liked in its predecessor and makes for a pretty fun game.
If you're interested in this title, chances are that you've already read the books and are awaiting the movie. Still, I'll do my best to summarize what's up this time around: Harry, Ron, and Hermione are back for their sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, everyone's abuzz about the latest happenings in the world of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and Draco is up to no good. Sure, that sounds like every Harry Potter story, but this time things are really bad.
If you've read the books, you know what those bad things are, and if you haven't, this game really isn't going to explain what's going on. See, rather than have you play through the events of the movie, Half-Blood Prince just kind of uses them as touchstones. Sure, you'll participate in the big battles and see videogame cutscenes depicting key moments, but these events won't really be properly explained nor will they carry the appropriate impact. You're not here to play the movie; you're here to live in the movie's universe.
Finally, as if this wasn't enough to make you either return the game altogether, you have to handle the Half-Blood Prince dueling feature or minigame as I call it. This actually turned out to be a bit more enjoyable, but not by much. You have to handle foes one at a time, shooting your spells at them and avoiding theirs. Firing your wand with the analog sticks you control one of six different spells based on how you wave it. If you fire off a perfectly timed pretego, it's kind of cool since you summon the shield at a precise moment which will bounce the enemies spell right back at him. The problem here is that the AI is pretty weak so all you have to do is simply stun your opponent with a decent hit, and then wear him down with some simpler quick attack spells. Like using the levicorpus spell will make him or her suspend in mid-air and you can shoot a bunch of quick easy stupefy shots to reduce their health and win.
What does that mean? Well, just like last time, you'll pick up the controller and become Harry in a fully realized Hogwarts. If it's in the movies, you can find it in this hallway-for-hallway recreation of the school. When you first start the title, sections of the building will be locked due to the latest You-Know-Who scare, but completing the game's events as they come quickly unlocks the place so that you can run around and do whatever you want -- which breaks down into the categories of making potions, flying, dueling, and exploring.
While it's not really a badge or anything you get to show off, this ability to explore also rewards you with seeing things you never would've if you just played the game strictly by the numbers. Although there's no reason to do it in terms of the game's tale, you can go into the Charms classroom and see Flitwick as well as climb high into the Owlery. Locations such as these don't serve a purpose other than a dose of fan service and I'm all about that.
Obviously, Potter's far from perfect. While the school looks good, you're going to be taken aback by some of the facial animations in this game. When the camera's close up on a talking Ron or Hermione, faces have a tendency to look like creepy robots. On top of that, none of the sound-alikes sound all that good, although the musical score is outstanding and you're going to hear that more than the lame voices. Again, you shouldn't be playing this game to get the movie's story, but these snafus definitely take you out of the experience. Thankfully, the moving staircases (which are much more responsive this time), the Herbology classroom, and so much more are around to keep you in the world of Hogwarts.
If we're looking to fuel the never-ending battle between Xbox 360 fans and PlayStation 3 fans, the Xbox 360 runs better than the PS3, which suffers from slowdown and framerate drops now and again when the action gets really heavy. On the other hand, the camera in both versions will awkwardly stretch Harry and Luna's bodies when they run up the hill at the beginning of the game.
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