(NO SPOILERS INCLUDED) 

I picked up HP last weekend, and had have a few hours with it. Its an interesting title, so I thought it was worth writing up about it here. If anyone else has also played it, I'll be interested to hear your opinions as well.

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First off - my HP background:

I guess I am a "medium" HP fan. I have never read the books - except for "Order of the Phoenix", which I finished just before starting the game. I have seen all the movies, and have enjoyed most of them (really liked Goblet of Fire). Own one of the older HP PS2 titles - but it was crud, never played it much.

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I am about 10% into the game (roughly) - so my impressions are still pretty early.

Graphics:

The graphics are some of the best (if not the best) I have seen on the Wii. The most impressive are the large, sprawling environments, with detailed models. No loading while wandering around, you can run around the various locales (more than just Hogwarts school) and explore them pretty much at will.

The texture work on most of the environments are pretty good/excellent, whereas the characters vary between good and bad (some of the hair textures stick out as poor - obvious lack of special effects here). The character textures have obviously been scanned from the real-life characters/actors, so they look pretty lifelike.

The animations really let the game down. Graphically this is the weakest part I would say. The game tries to be very cinematic, and I find them to stick out really badly (as they are not up to the task).

There is also a "horrible" arm skeletal/boning thing going on with Harry's wand arm. They tried to implement 1:1 movement with the wand and Wiimote (and pretty much succeeded) - but as a result, Harry's wand arm looks like a snake that can move in any direction, and seems to bend in unnatural ways. Pity.

Also worth a mention is the lighting system they are using in the engine. Something is wrong - not sure what though. Sometimes the characters appear "unlit" - so they are "cardboard cutout", and stuck against a nicely lit background. Sometimes  they appear almost pitch black, with unnatural bright highlights on the faces. But a lot of the time, it looks perfect - and the illusion of being at Hogwarts is complete.

I think the game runs at 30fps - and it seems pretty steady. You never move around at lightning speeds, and I haven't had any issues with FPS drops.

Sound:

There are a lot of sound effects, and they seem simulated in proper 3D. Footsteps, chatter, etc. There is full voice in the game - all lines are spoken, and the voice work is pretty good. Too many of the comments are generic though, and fail to convey the true emotions that Harry is feeling (he is quite pissed off in most of the book).

The music - when there - seems to be excellent, and really suits the setting. However, I have a general complaint of there being NO music when wandering for too much of the castle. I find this detracts a lot from the game, and its a real pity (Zelda for instance, rarely has NO music...).

Control:

Wow. This is the first spell casting game for the Wii(?), and I think this is a sign that there will be a LOT more. The Wiimote works great as a wand - casting spells is very, very easy to do (don't even press/hold any buttons). It becomes 2nd nature, and the real pleasure of the game lies in wandering around the castle, casting spells on everything you can lay your eyes on.

Selecting targets isn't quite as good. The visual indicator for whether an object is selected is sort of weak, and sometimes can be missed. You simply press 'B' to toggle between any visible objects, so you sort of get the hang of it pretty quickly.

I haven't reached (much) combat yet, so can't really comment how well that works.

BTW - in many ways, casting spells feels just like how you would imagine using "force powers" would feel like. :)

Gameplay:

Unfortunately, this is the where the real dilemma/issue with HP lies. As its based on the book/movie, the game also follows the same story. The problem is that the overall structure of the game doesn't fit that well with the events in the story.

Running around and exploring the castle is heaps of fun (you use your spells to clean up, put paintings back on the walls, repair suits of armour, uncover secrets, etc). The story events are much less fun. The cinematics involved are too short, and too much of the story is "skipped" between each one. And they are not polished enough - and this really hurts the game.

The game keeps prompting you to complete/reach the next objective - which gets rather annoying. Especially when there aren't any real time limits or restrictions placed on the player. Sometimes they are out of place as well (i.e. once I was told to find/head to a particular location, when I was already there - and just had not spoken to a character yet).

You collect XP(its effectively XP) for completing tasks around the castle - and this ups your spellcasting skill. I haven't worked out exactly what this does yet, but there is a "trophy" room - with heaps of unlockables/trophies that can be won/gained by completing various objectives (similar to the way Spiderman2 had its various world objectives).

Spell effects are graphically weak, and this doesn't really add to the encouragement the player feels for casting something well (or upping their spell level).

Conclusion (so far):

HP (Wii) is a game in two halves. The open ended, GTA style gameplay within the castle is really fun - and you will want more of it. However, too many of the story events feel tacked on, separately from the main part of the game - and are not in depth enough, nor polished enough to complement the rest of the game.

If you are a HP fan, own a Wii - and love the idea of a deeper, more traditional (non-minigame based) game, with voice and serious production values, and works great with the Wiimote - this may be the title for you.

If you hate HP or are a real stickler for a tight, well integrated game - you probably want to skip this one.

Score (to date): 7.5/10

Very good review.

I would like to add a few things (I have the wii version):

1) During occulmancy, the motions weren't registering well in the side to side direction, but fine in the up and down direction. I don't know what caused this, my pointer was calibrated and worked very well in other games.

2) There was no point to the battles. 99% of them are meant to be lost. There is only one case where you need to win, but all you have to do is strife around the whole time and let Ron and Hermione do the work. And this is was on the difficult setting.

3) Chess with the Hufflepuff champ is too difficult, especially for a kids game. I had to use a computer chess program to play against it in order to win.

Looking forward to playing it some more - trying out the Chess especially :)