Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Adam Larck on 08.16.2010
Can turning Harry Potter to Lego form still capture the charm of the series? Find out inside.
Title: Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Traveller’s Tales
Genre: Action-Adventure
Players: 1-2
Rated: E10+
The Harry Potter series is one of the most popular children’s books out there, and Lego is one of the most popular children’s toys to play with. So, Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 seems like a match made in heaven, right?
Unsurprisingly, it is. Lego Harry Potter lets fans of the series go through some of the major events of the first four books while controlling many of the characters that made the series famous.
Each book has six stages to go through highlighting key events, such as finding out Harry’s a wizard in the first book, battling the basilisk in the second book and more.
To get through each level, Harry and friends have to use a variety of magic that they have at their disposal to build new objects, break metal locks, freeze pixies and more.
All of the important spells that you need in the game are learned in Hogwarts Castle, which is the main location players will go to while going between missions in the story. Spells can only be learned by the students when they were actually learned in the books. So, stronger spells like Expecto Patronum can’t be learned until the third year.
Also learned in Hogwarts are various potions that can be made in cauldrons. The cauldrons can be found in levels and in Hogwarts, and usually offer one of three effects: super strength to pull levels, Polyjuice Potion to change who you are, and an aging potion to cross age barriers. There are a few more cauldron types that cause invisibility or blow something up, but these are usually level specific.
To use the cauldrons, ingredients have to be found in each level. The ingredients have a white arrow over them to point them out, but sometimes have to be found by putting things together or blasting objects.
The other main area you can go to in the game is the Leaky Cauldron, which leads to Diagon Alley, the shopping area where you can buy characters, cheats, gold bricks, and useless spells that can affect other characters. The characters and cheats you can only find after finding the tokens or red parcels in game, which I will touch on in a bit. There are also 12 gold bricks you can buy in this area that are part of the 200 that can be found in game.
Also in Diagon Alley is Gringotts Bank, which has 10 bonus levels you can unlock by collecting a certain number of golden bricks. While one of the levels is the customary collect X number of Lego studs however you can, the other levels actually test your ability to solve puzzles to get to the golden brick at the end of the level.
Besides trying to get through each level, there’s also the usual Lego game goal of trying to find a certain number of studs in each level, along with finding character tokens, Hogwarts crests and students in peril. Some of these goals can’t be accomplished until you go through in Free Play mode with characters that have unique abilities, such as using dark magic to lift red, glowing objects, or using a goblin to unlock a safe.
Gold bricks, students in peril and character tokens can also be found inside Hogwarts Castle at various places. Hogwarts also has red parcels that contain cheats that you can find. These are normally found by completing a task that has a few different parts that you have to complete to unlock the parcel.
The cheats you can unlock are the standard Lego fare, such as stud multipliers, locators for various objects, invincibility and more. Getting studs in the game are already easy enough, but once you add in the five multipliers the totals you can get are insane. I normally don’t leave a level now without 200 million studs or more with the multipliers turned on.
The game does allow for drop-in, drop-out multiplayer on the same screen, which is fun. However, the game really needs to have online multiplayer so that friends in different locations can go through the game together. Traveller’s Tales said that a patch allowing this would be up shortly after the game’s release, but the patch still isn’t available at the time of writing.
After collecting everything in the game, you can design your own levels at Gringotts Bank if you want something more to do with the game. The design process is simple, and does give you four tutorial levels to try out before designing your own. The designer itself isn’t too deep, but can allow for some quick simple levels to be built just to see what can be done. It would be great if levels could be shared with friends, but I didn’t see any option like that in game.
Graphically, the game captures the charm of the Harry Potter world impressively in Lego form. You’ll jump around familiar places in the game and be able to recall things from the books or movies, which is a good feeling. Some of the visual effects in the game were also interesting to see, such as the items that can be built or even some of the cutscenes.
The sound also deserves a mention here. The soundtrack recaptures the movie’s soundtrack great. I immediately recognized the main theme, and also quite a few other tracks that could be heard in the movies. The sound department did a great job in making a solid soundtrack based off of the movie’s music.
Pros
Lot to collect, both in Hogwarts and in levels.
Quite a few levels to explore through the four years.
Lots of characters to find and unlock.
Cons
Getting studs almost seems too easy, with or without multiplier.
After you collect everything there’s not much reason to go back.
Patch to allow online multiplayer still isn’t out.
The 411:
This is one of the better Lego games out there to get. If you’re looking for a family friendly game or have a kid that loves either Lego or Harry Potter, this would be a great choice of a game to get them. It’s not a deep game, and all four years can be completed in around eight hours, but you’ll put in quite a few more hours than that trying to find all the objects in the game. Lego Harry Potter offers a simple diversion for kids or older games just needing a break from deeper games by playing something simple.
Graphics
8.5
The Harry Potter world and characters are captured great in Lego form. Plus, it’s usually interesting and humorous to see what kind of transformations or changes can happen by using magic.
Gameplay
8.0
The magic helps to change up the standard Lego gameplay, but not by much. Still, it’s fun to play as you transform things to help or figure out new ways objects can interact with magic.
Sound
8.0
The Harry Potter soundtrack is recreated great for this game. It was always fun to listen to in the various places in the world you went through.
Lasting Appeal
7.5
It will take you a bit to get everything there is in the game. After that, you can build your own levels in game, but really is no reason to.
Fun Factor
8.5
The game offers a lot of simple things to enjoy, whether it’s just finding new characters or exploring Hogwarts. These easier games are really fun to pass the time with between new releases.
