Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince is a bunch of games within a game. The game follows the new movie which is great for Harry Potter fans but I felt it made the game move slow. As Harry you are trying to piece together a story line from the past (no spoilers here) and as you go through you are becoming a better wizard.
There are many games within the game.One game is gobstopper which is played with the stylus, most games are. You get to knock out balls of a perimeter circle. Each ball that is knocked out is 1 point. Once all the balls are knocked out the player with the highest score wins. There is also a match game where cards are shown and you need to make a matching pair until all the cards are gone. With each game you acquire different types of points. This is key because you can trade those points for potions or ingredients for a potion. There is also the classic game of Quittage featured throughout the entire Harry Potter series.
The graphics are pretty good for the DS and the characters are a very good depiction of the movie actors. The music is slow and drags the game. This goes with what I was saying that the game was slow, there are many many text boxes. It can take a while in between objectives just with all the reading you have to do. It is a game based off of the movie so you are following along the movie plot.
The controls can be challenging, you can use the D-pad or the stylus to move Harry but to move Harry around a corner or through a doorway and up staircases does become tedious at times. Also it is hard to get around as the map is of the immediate area not the whole school.
One of the coolest things that was done with this game is when you are in potion class and you are mixing potions, this is all done with the stylus and the potion becomes to hot you can blow away the smoke by blowing on your DS screen. We have come a long way from game boy and makes this games standout just for that cool feature.
For true Potter heads this an ideal game just for the potion and Quittage parts if the game. It will keep kids and tweens occupied for a good amount of time just from reading the text alone. For those who don’t dig Harry Potter – they may not be that interested in sticking through with it. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince retails for $27.99.
The Good: Great graphics for a DS and making potions was really cool..
The Bad: Those who aren’t Harry Potter devotees may not be interested in this.
