Hands-on with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

So what in Merlin’s beard happened to Honeydukes and the Hog’s Head pub? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows may be a bit on the grim side, what with the small matter of impeding doom at the hands of noseless wizarding Hitler, Lord Voldemort, but it would have been nice to pop a squat inside the pub for a tasty pint of Butterbeer, eh? Or have a nosey around that aforementioned magical candy store? Alas, it’s not to be in The Deathly Hallows Part 2: The Game – Hogsmeade is nowt more than a map-ful of conveniently placed lumps of cover with a few Death Eaters to shoot at. Sigh.

And that’s what I’m doing right now as I start my hands-on with the speccy wizard’s latest (and last) videogame outing. Harry, Ron and Hermione zip into the cold, deserted, streets of Hogsmeade village, the whole place blanketed in crisp white snow and rammed with murderous wand-waving fascists. Armed with only the stupefy spell, we leg it behind the nearest fence and watch as red globs of magic sail harmlessly overhead.

Essentially a cover shooter but with wands instead of AKs, the game is simpler than a Longbottom brain-cell. Jab the left trigger and out pops Harry from his cover, allowing you to spam the stun spell at the Death Eater hordes, who’ll be only to happy to stand about and take a beating from a young wizard-in-training. Ron and Hermione help out a bit, but they needn’t. The cover spots are generously placed, and once you’re snug behind a fence you’re rarely in danger, if ever. Your enemies do nothing to flush you out, nor do they bother trying to out-manoeuvre you. Besting them is a simple matter of poking your head up and slinging off a few well aimed spells.

With the first wave down it’s off to the next area, but only after we’ve waited for Hermione to trudge up and magically unlock the gate. Six years of magical education and apparently Harry still hasn’t learnt the Alohomora spell. Tch. In the next courtyard (which looks very much like the last one – fences, houses and snow) there’s another wave of Death Eaters waiting, but this time they’re using the protego spell.

Now we get our first taste of actual tactics, as Harry must carve through the enemy shields using Expelliarmus before he can bump them off with stupefy. This spices up the action somewhat, and we actually have an enjoyable scrap, darting from cover to cover as spells blast about all over the shop. It’s also worth noting how very pretty this game is. Everything looks and feels just like it does in the movies, with the character likenesses in particular spookily accurate. Another wave of Voldemort’s minions defeated, and we meet up with pub landlord Aberforth Dumbledore, who shows us a nifty shortcut to Hogwarts castle via a portrait in his common room.

From there we meet up with the rest of the Hogwarts posse, many of which are playable this time round – Neville, Ginny, Mrs. Weasley (if you’ve read the books, you’ll know at precisely which bit she’ll be playable), Professor McGonagall and, er, Seamus. You’ll also be taking control of Ron and Hermione for periods of the game too, but for now we’re back with Harry as he confronts a couple of Snape’s cronies – the Carrow siblings.

As encounters go, this is a bit of a damp squib. The nasty Carrows have nothing in their spell-casting repertoire we haven’t seen before, and besting them is a simple matter of reeling off the Expelliarmus and Stupefy charms while staying tucked away behind cover in the Great Hall. Exactly like regular Death Eaters then, albeit with a chunk more health. Our final test comes when the sallow-skinned Snape himself whips out his wand from beneath his swirling black drapes.

It’s not Harry he’ll be facing though. Nope, in steps doddery old Professor McGonagall for a tasty teacher-on-teacher duel. She handles like her age suggests too, creeping around the floor as Snape apparates around the room pelting down offensive spells on the poor old pensioner. For the record – we never imagined we’d be controlling Maggie Smith in a videogame. But control her we do, soon bringing slimey Severus to his knees with the Prof’s handy Expulso spell, which is sort of like the magical equivalent of an uzi.

We did carry on playing past this point, until an EA PR rep tapped us on the back and told us we’d got to a bit we’re not meant to see. Boo! Hint – it involves a hot girl, a ginger boy, and lots of dark, windy tunnels. So Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is very much as we expected – a slick looking cover shooter with plenty of action set-pieces, with solid if unchallenging combat.

If EA can cram some variety into the battle scenarios (there’s certainly plenty of scope for this with the way the story pans out) we may yet get a Potter movie tie-in that banishes the still raw memory of Deathly Hallows Part 1. Here’s hoping.

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