Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 – PC Game
The most disappointing thing about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is that it fails to capture the essence of the story it’s trying to tell. While the revamped third-person shooter gameplay stays engaging throughout most of the campaign, the context that it’s framed around is paper-thin. There is no attempt to tie the onscreen action to the motivation of the hero performing it; nor is there a coherent and engaging narrative to complement the gameplay and inject some sense of purpose. Crude character models, bad voice acting, a fragmentedstoryline, and a variety of bugs transform the richly detailed and minutely imagined world ofHarry Potter into an experience as colorless as one of Professor Snape’s lessons.
The final journey facing Harry Potter is not an easy one. Darkness, loss, and death now fill the space once inhabited by classes, Quidditch, and dorm-room chitchat. There are no more schoolyard adventures, traipses through the forest, or twilight romances by the lake. Instead, Harry, Ron, and Hermione must venture past Hogwarts into the cold, wet English countryside,tracking down and destroying the remaining parts of Voldemort’s soul. This is the picture painted so clearly and heartbreakingly by J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book and so unceremoniously represented here. Not only does the game’s story take liberties with the canon (when did Harry, Ron, and Hermione ever venture inside an abandoned factory?), but those elements of the story that are reflected accurately are portrayed through short,fragmented cutscenes that look dire and are completely unconvincing, making the story confusing and unclear for those unfamiliar with the books.
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