LEGO Harry Potter Collection Review

Fumble-dore:

The Lego games have slowly started to end up on the ‘HD’ remaster in-tray, and the latest is the two Harry Potter games. Do they still hold up after a few years?

One of the criticisms levelled at the Lego games is that the pace of change is glacial, so it was interesting to actually go back to one of these games at least five years after I reviewed them originally.

Story:

The first thing to notice is that these are ‘old’ Lego games – there’s no voice-overs, and the story is told through mime, emotion and some slapstick recreation of the 8 Potter films. Some of the cut-scenes are still funny enough, but despite my original reservations over the move to speech, seem quite dated and low-budget in comparison.

Gameplay:

It’s also worth noting that despite a fairly slow pace of change to the gameplay, TT Games have made significant enhancements to how easy puzzles are to figure out over the years. Hand-holding is one thing, but these old games are absolutely woeful at providing advice and hints on how to progress.

Many of the puzzles are completely impenetrable and massively frustrating as a result, often because of the very specific order you have to carry tasks out, and because useless aiming reticules make precision targeting almost impossible. Even with the enhanced frame-rate, the controls and aiming feel stodgy at best, and completely let you down at worst. One of the first puzzles in Year 5 has you aiming at some bins to tip out the Lego bricks.

Getting into the right position to trigger a lock took me at least five minutes of painful jiggery-pokery with the DualShock 4. The very first levels of both games had me reaching for FAQs or YouTube videos several times thanks to the obtuse and hidden things expected of you in order to progress through the level – things which are much better signposted in modern Lego games, whilst still requiring you to think a little about the solution. These little iterations that have crept in over the last five years to improve things make the Harry Potter games feel like a real step backwards in terms of playability.

If nothing else, you do have an enormous amount to do. By including both games, and also launching at a reduced price, there’s well over 40 hours’ worth of content for less than 50 Euros. That’s not to be sniffed at, although I’d have preferred a more robust remastering and a higher price. New cut-scenes and some light gameplay enhancements (and more care over bugs, which have seemingly crept in, and translation issues) would have elevated this to being a genuinely interesting proposition.

Multiplayer:

As ever, there’s two-player local co-op available, with drop-in, drop-out functions. Perfectly serviceable, but not exactly exciting.

Presentation:

As remasters go, the Lego Harry Potter Collection doesn’t exactly fall under the visually ‘exciting’ banner either. The developers have clearly been given a limited time or budget, and most of it has been spent on the upgrade to a 1080p60 framebuffer. There’s also some enhanced effects and lighting, although you’d probably need video of the originals to notice the difference.

The game is certainly crisper and smoother than on PS3 or Xbox 360, but that also serves to highlight some of the bland and rough textures and models used, especially in the background. Even the splash screen where you choose which game to play looks like it was done by an intern on a lunch-break.

The sound is now lossless, and whilst the Potter theme and soundtrack is well used, the lack of voice acting now just seems out-of-place. The levels sometimes just feel a bit too quiet as a result.

 

Conclusion:

The Lego Harry Potter Collection is a pretty standard remaster. The visual tweaks and performance enhancements are minor, and the fact there’s new bugs and translation errors is pretty unforgivable. There’s a huge amount of content here if you’re a cash-strapped parent looking for quantity over quality for a kids game, but even a seven year-old is likely to be aware there’s better out there, including significantly better Lego games. If you were too young to play the games the first time around, this is probably the best way to do so, but I can’t imagine too many players coming back to play these games again given the limited work done to them.