Review of LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 for the Xbox 360

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is the latest in a long line of LEGO video games for consoles that includes Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Batman. It follows the same general theming and format - players are LEGO toy versions of the original movie characters, and play their way through the story line, completing puzzles and gathering LEGO studs.

This is an entertaining although repetitive game for most people, but it quickly wears thin despite its initial fun. This isn't surprising, since its target audience is children. Casual gamers would have a good time, and it is also a cooperative game, so playing with a friend or a child probably extends its playability. There are enough areas to unlock and odds and ends to collect (gold bricks, red bricks, spells, characters and costumes) that even more serious gamers can spend hours playing and collecting.

The controls are a little clunky to begin with, but the awkwardness of them fades with some practice. They are simplistic, so it doesn't take very long to understand them and have good control over your character. I'm not sure if this is a bug or if it is just a problem with the specific copy that I have been playing with, but several of the "press B" skills such as Harry's Invisibility Cloak or the Lumos spell are very sticky and don't always work, even when I sit and press the button repeatedly. The spell wheel, which is pretty intuitive and functional, becomes more than a little irritating to use when all the versions of a spell are in one slot, so the player has to time their button pushing right to get the version they want. This could be fixed with a customizable spell wheel slot that lets the player chose the different spells from a menu with a full spell list. However, LEGO Harry Potter seems to be constructed as an easy or casual game, so this could possibly be why this isn't an option. Other gameplay and control issues are the inability to skip cut scenes (thankfully none of them are very long because of the game's story telling method) and not being able to control the game camera. Several areas have tasks to be done that are hard to see and just being able to change the angle would make parts of the game less frustrating.

Perhaps I am just a Harry Potter purist, but I found the frequent cut scenes full of LEGO people that can only squeak and sigh grating. The humor was juvenile and not funny to me, although, again, children may find it amusing. Some of the plot changes were baffling as well. Harry Potter is a children's book series. I would assume that many of the kids playing the game have either read the books or seen the movies, so why does the game feel the need to dumb down and change scenes where people aren't hurt or in tangible danger? Maybe that is just the way the LEGO game designers prefer to do it, but I found it just a little insulting for the kids that would be playing this game.

If the noises made by the LEGO characters are annoying, the music certainly isn't. It is orchestral music straight out of the movies, and this was a great choice by the designers. The movie music is nice to listen to, and it doesn't get grating like some game themes can, especially if the music is synthesized.

I enjoyed the several hours I spent playing with this game, but I'm not sure how much longer I would actually play it past that. Unless you have small children or are just overly obsessive about completing collections and games, this is probably a rental title. It's the same as all the other LEGO games, just a different setting, so if you've played one of the numerous other LEGO video games, it's worth skipping unless you are specifically interested in the Harry Potter theming of it.