Harry Potter's Zelda-Influenced Philosophy

Thanks to C+VG for their interview discussing the newly announced Harry Potter And The Sorceror's Stone with an EA producer, after this heavily rumored PS2/Xbox/GameCube update of the first book was officially announced last week. The game is summarized as having "..some stealth sections, some flying modes, but probably 80 percent of the time there's this sort of arcade adventure, it's almost Zelda-esque. We're not afraid to admit our influences." So unafraid, in fact, that they mention the Zelda series at least 5 times during the interview. There's already been a glut of Harry Potter games, most of which have been significantly different from one another - which ones have you actually enjoyed?

Re:Jordan? Try Goodkind

[Upaut]

I am one who is very addicted to Goodkinds work, but I sm starting to loose faith, I mean really, an entire book just to introduce a charactar? And the next book sounds increadably cliche. (Oh no... the main character/hero is poisoned.)

Re:The fifth book

[Lord Bitman]

You're on the fifth book and you haven't yet noticed that JKR is utterly suck about endings?
[nice build] [enjoyable scene] [good build] [great build] [climax] [stick a huge 7-page block of one person talking to explain everything else because the book is already twice as long as the last book and hasnt yet bothered with those "nice build"s for 90% of the story]

if they didnt bother to divide the books by year, it could be better for multiple reasons. The end of year four and the beginning of year five are l

Re:The fifth book

[Idlechat]

I didn't exactly understand your last section template (the long one that begins with the word "stick"), but basically I agree with you. The division-by-year might make HP worthless.. or something. I'm so disappointed at Jo Rolling (and I also envy her bf.. I wanted to be with her instead.. ;)

And I think that book 4 sucked. I liked the first 3 books the most.. especially the 2nd, where people were frozen all the time - I could feel the panic pretty well.. book 3 was nice too - maybe because it didn't invo

Re:The fifth book

[Lord Bitman]

well that part begining with "stick" was the entire point of the post.. do you not notice it? Did you not read the end of book three or four?
and you're a twit, book three kicked the ass of two

Re:The fifth book

[Idlechat]

First of all, book 3 was less of a thriller than book 2. Although I liked the ending of it a lot - it was also interesting that we didn't see Voldemort at the end of it.

Now, about the "stick":
[nice build] [enjoyable scene] [good build] [great build] [climax] [stick a huge 7-page block of one person talking to explain everything else because the book is already twice as long as the last book and hasnt yet bothered with those "nice build"s for 90% of the story]

What did you mean in "bothered with those nic

Re:The fifth book

[Lord Bitman]

Ah, what you have is a confusion between "story" and "book"
90% of the book is nice builds about 10% of the story, the rest is a hasty explanation thrown in at the end. Read the 2nd [or 3rd.. not sure..] to last chapter in book 4, it's nothing but one long block of somebody talking under influence of truth-serum for fuck's sake -- it would be cliche if it wasnt so fucking stupid that nobody else has bothered with it.

Hooray for clones!

[neostorm]

Wait! Next will be the Harry potter RTS!

Oh well, at least they're cloning something *fun*. Hopefully they do it well...

They need to make Wizzard Chess!!

[syzygy_001]

I would love to see them come out with a HP Wizzard Chess Game, it would be a 2003 revamp of the classic battle chess that I remember playing on my Amiga 500. I loved battle chess and would really love to see it come back with updated graphic's and newer fight animations.

Re:They need to make Wizzard Chess!!

[wickedj]

Making Wizard Chess seems like it would be overkill. First of all, not many people are going to out of their way to pick it up as it is just chess with animations. If anything, it should become a minigame in the HP game.

MMORPG??

[edwilli]

How about spending a year at Hogwarts yourself. Is the "Potterverse" too small? Just a thought.

Re:MMORPG??

[Greventls]

Ha, make a SimHogwarts similar to either the Sims or one of the Tycoon games. You are either a kid in the place or you are managing the school.

Harry Potter

[13Echo]

My fiance isn't much of a gamer, but she's a big fan of the Harry Potter series. I purchased the Gamecube "Chamber of Secrets" for her, and though it didn't follow the book's storyline to a T, it wasn't a bad game.

She had a bit of trouble with many boss fights and puzzles. The camera was a bit awkward for her. But I've been playing games for 18 years now, so I thought that the game was a bit too easy for me. Regardless, it was still quite fun (even if it can be finished in two or three days of extended play.)

I think that gamers that like 3D platform titles would like it, even if they aren't fans of the series. But the game might be a bit too tough for people that don't normally play games. It could have used a bit more balance, and a bit more work on making the game a bit longer and more in-depth. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Eurocom will be doing this new game. They had a fabulous multi-platform game engine. Maybe Warthog will get the opportunity to improve upon this engine, assuming that it belongs to EA now.

Re:Harry Potter

[Piquan]

Ugh. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't believe that Rawlings would have signed off on it, had she actually played the game.

The camera controls were terrible, and a number of areas were only difficult because of that-- you couldn't line up right for a jump! The levels themselves had nothing to do with Harry Potter, and could have been prepared for any game beforehand; I suspect they were.

The overland area was okay, but walking into a dozen identical classrooms and checking a dozen identical desks each is

As someone who's also played games for multiple

[Inoshiro]

decades, I found that HP: COS was unevenly hard, because the game would very sharply punish you if you went off of the path. It'd also limit you in many ways.

From the best

[Gr33nNight]

Well, if your going to copy someone, it might as well be from the best. I also give them props to admitting to it as well.

Re:Who the heck IS Harry Potter?

[johannesg]

Harry Potter is the star of an utterly overhyped fantasy series aimed at children. He is an orphan magician who goes to a magical school somewhere in the UK, and gets into all sorts of magical adventures with a couple of friends. So far, five volumes have been released, each covering one year of Harry's life. The books are not extremely bad or something, but certainly not worth the incredible hype surrounding them.

Congrats on missing them, you'd better keep your location secret so it cannot be traced by t

Re:Who the heck IS Harry Potter?

[aplank]

You obviously arent a kid but you seem to think that you know exactly what kids think about this book series. You can't talk about the whole population's perception of a book. I liked the books even though im not a child. The series isnt overhyped. Well.... I geuss it is but the books are very good for all ages. (there is even an adult edition here in Britain.)

Chamber of Secrets for GC was fun...

[RevAaron]

I'm fairly new to gaming. A bunchamonths back, my roomate- who is a big fan of the Harry Potter junk- rented the GCN version of the Chamber of Secrets. I ended up playing the whole game in a weekend- it was a lot of fun.

This was before I ever played Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When we got an n64 a couple months after that, as well as Ocarina, I realized how much the HPCoS game was like Zelda, which is a lot! The game was still fun, but used "plot" devices that were kind of lame at times. It'd sure be nice to be able to go back to play Quiddich and Wizzard Dueling after you'd beat the game, though.

Not really.

[Inoshiro]

This is like saying that GI Joe for the NES and SMB for the NES are a lot alike because they are both 2D platformers. 3D puzzle/adventure games which have action combat tend to have the same exact control scheme (including the L or Z targetting lock on), because it's a tried and true control method.

Not because EA was ripping off Zelda.

Re:Not really.

[RevAaron]

First, the two games had a lot more similarities beyond being games where you control a person in the third person in a world, doing stuff. Two, I never said that HPCoS was a rip off of Zelda. HPCoS is very much influenced by Zelda, implementing the same kind of game enjoyable for the same sort of reasons, played in the same way. In a lot of ways, HPCoS is a lot like Zelda. But, HPCoS it was fun, even as a person who isn't a big Harry Potter fan (never read any of the books).

Did anyone notice

[Fareq]

Did anyone else notice that this game, which will take place at a school called "Hogwarts" is being developed by...

Warthog?

On a more serious note, I think that making a better game out of the license is a good idea. The Harry Potter fan base is huge. The segment of the population who dislike it are vocal, but they won't likely stop fans from buying or stores from selling.

And... the PC game, at least, was extremely lacking. Great waste of $19.99 in my opinion. Perhaps the 8-year-olds liked it, I don'