Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 for Wii Reviews & Ratings by IGN

For the last few Harry Potter videogames, the fun has been investigating Hogwarts, mixing up potions, and finding hundreds of collectables hidden in the halls. In fact, if there was one part that always seemed to be "so-so," it was the wand-based combat. It seemed like Harry would just plant his feet, hurl a few incantations, and you'd move on to doing something more fun. Knowing all of that, it was a bit shocking to play the latest Chosen One videogame recently.



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1 is a third-person shooter where your wand is the stand-in for a gun. Believe it.



Hogwarts is gone this time around and instead you step behind Harry's spectacles as he runs about England fighting Death Eaters and tracking He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Rather than eating chocolate frogs and figuring out how to ride a broom, the Deathly Hallows is all about life and death so EA decided to make the game follow the book and film's more serious direction.



When the demo booted up and I took the controller, the scene looked like your typical Potter game. I ran Harry into a trashy construction site, he looked good, and the setting was your typical overcast (but mossy green) English day. Suddenly, a bad guy popped up in the area. Clad in ragged clothes, he looked a bit like a homeless man, but it was explained to me that this was one of the Snatchers, the lowest echelon of Voldemort's evil empire. I whipped out the wand, lined up the reticle on the screen and sent out a couple blasts of Stupefy to level the foe.



I moved forward, found a whole bunch of Snatchers and Death Eaters, and ran to a steel girder. With the click of a button, Harry threw his back to the construction beam and was in cover so that I could safely plan my next move. I fired a few more blasts before jumping behind a wooden box. The Death Eaters fired away, blew the box to bits, and little orphan Potter was on the run once more. Later on, I took shelter on a catwalk, and the piece of sheet metal I was hiding behind tumbled to the ground after taking too many hits.



There are a number of spells at your disposal in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1, and you can select them by cycling through with the D-Pad or pausing the action and calling up your weapon wheel. Now, what's interesting about these spells is that they don't act like they did in the previous games – I didn't see anyone going completely rigid or being turned upside down when my magic nailed 'em. Instead, each charm shoots out of your wand as a colorful energy blast and is like a different gun in your typical shooter. Stupefy is your trusty handgun that can be fired like mad but doesn't do a ton of damage, Crucio is like a submachine as it sprays out dark magic, Expelliarmus needs to charge before going off like a magnum, and Confringo sends out a purple blast in line with that of a rocket launcher.



Clearly, the impact of a Confringo blast is going to knock a Snatcher off his feet and even a headshot with Stupefy will take down the bad guys, but not every spell is just a different damage modifier. When I'd use Leviosa, I could pick up the barrels and boxes I was using as cover and task them with being a mobile fort for me or shoot them out in all directions as an attack. Meanwhile, Confundus bewilders any enemy it comes in contact with and makes the bad guy fight for you.



My demo was short. I made my way through the junky construction site, used Leviosa to open a path, and fought a whole bunch of Death Eaters. The build was early as there were a lot of blurred visuals as Harry moved, he didn't exactly look flush with the wall when he took cover, and the animations weren't quite there yet, but it was interesting to see Death Eaters dodge my incoming spells and fire off their own attacks. Even sweeter, the game ended with Dementors descending on some wizards I was out to save, and as I approached the scene, the screen began to ice over as the world went supernaturally cold.



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1 is definitely a different take on the franchise, and that alone is exciting. There's a lot of work to be done on the game, but it is cool to get into these magic shootouts where spells are ricocheting off of barrels and bad guys are disappearing into plumes of black smoke. I doubt it'll be a Gears of War killer, but fans shouldn't be expecting the same old same old when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1 ships alongside the film this fall.

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