While I was cruising the isles of gaming goodness, I stumbled the first EA game that I actually wanted to take a look at. Even though everybody was busy with Rock Band, Spore and Skate It, I wanted to take a crack at Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. While it didn’t have any footage of the actual story mode, it did have demos for Potions class, Wand Dueling and a full fledged Quidditch match.

The first demo that I played was for Quidditch. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the Harry Potter universe, Harry Potter plays the position of Seeker. It is the Seeker’s job to fly around the quidditch arena trying to catch this ball called the golden snitch. It starts interestingly enough with Harry in the middle of the screen with you in persuit of the golden snitch. The way you chase the snitch is similar to any type of flying game that requires you to pass through hoops for points or advancement. These hoops are star shaped, and the more you pass through them the faster you travel on your magic broom toward the snitch. The fun aspect of this is that you use the Wii Remote pointer to point at where Harry should fly his broom. The quidditch stage itself looks great, and the star hoops themselves are positioned not only on the field itself, but also span throughout the heights of Hogwarts and beyound. It looks great, and I couldn’t help but get a little excited flying around the grounds at ease trying to catch the snitch while the seeker from the other team has his fun bashing you around trying to catch it as well. Once you pass all the required stars, you finally catch the snitch, and the fan cheer as you toward the middle of the ring giving you a grade based on skill, speed, and technique. My only gripe is that you don’t really have the openness to fly around and actually catch the snitch yourself, but rather have to follow some sort of on-rails broom flying. When I asked the EA representative if there is any variety to the star hoop positioning, he said that depending on the match there are different paths that need to be taken to win the match.

The second demo that I was able to play was a wand duel. I was actually placed on a platform reminiscent of the dueling platform that was on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and put in front of Malfoy, the character everybody loves to hate. Using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, you preform various combinations to do various offensive and defensive spells. Considering that it was a beginners demo, I wasn’t able to perform that many spells, but there was a spell that I was able to cast on Malfoy that hangs him upside down like a pinata.   Taking advantage of the situation I unleashed a rapid fire of spells until he was KO’ed. The way you win the match is to consecutively knock the other character on the ground through various rounds. Even though it wasn’t as detailed graphically as the quiddich match, I can see myself having more fun mastering some of the reflective spells and perfecting combos and memorizing combos, than following repetitive on-rail broom riding.

The last and final demo I was able to experience was the Potions class. The purpose of this demo is to successfully create the spell that is required, and listed at the top of the screen to acquire good marks for class. There is a list of steps that are listed, but rather than give numbers and descriptions, you are treated to some pictorials of what needs to be done. For example, if there is a picture of a triangular blue jar, that means that you must grab the triangular jar from the table, and pour it into the cauldron until the liquid inside turns blue. You do this by pointing the Wii Remote pointer at the triangular jar and pressing the A button, then pulling the Remote toward yourself to position it over the cauldron. Once it is over the cauldron, you must tilt the remote sideways to imitate pouring the liquid into the pot. There are also other steps such as stoking the fire for more heat,  and stirring the solution either clockwise or counter-clockwise. What I really enjoyed was actually making mistakes. You can actually spill stuff all over the table, light the fire too hot which causes the room to smoke that you must clear by shaking the Nunchuk back and forth, and pouring too much liquid that is needed causing even more trouble. What also makes this challenging is that you actually have a time limit for each step, and depending on how quickly you can put all the required ingredients together in addition to how much damage you do to your station, the game gives you a grade for your progress.

Honestly I enjoyed this demo, and even though I didn’t have a chance to explore Hogwarts at my leisure, I was re-assured that this will be included in the final build with more detail that with Order of the Phoenix.

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