Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 sees Harry away from Hogwarts for the first time now that he’s a big boy, in the most grown up Harry Potter game yet. It’s not out in shops till 19th November but we got a chance to play it, using Microsoft Kinect, in a forest! Read on for our Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 Microsoft Kinect impressions.
Just recently we had the pleasure of being whisked off to the middle of a forest, at night, to play the latest in the long line of Harry Potter games to go hand in hand with the latest in the film franchise – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Not been keeping up with the Harry Potter films? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows follows Harry and co. as they seek to discover and destroy the secret to Voldermort’s immortality and put an end to the chaos he’s caused.
Telling us about it all Jonathan Bunney, VP of Head of Production at EA Bright Light Studios told us “For the first time Harry is way from Hogwarts and everybody is after Harry. It’s a different setting with ten times more action. The audience is grown up and the game reflects that.” It shows it too. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, though dark is certainly the most polished looking Harry Potter title we’ve seen.
Naturally it’ll be the first game in the series to use Microsoft Kinect – the controller-free motion sensing Xbox 360 camera used to play games with just your body. On top of the single player mode Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 will feature a “special challenge mode” with 20 special missions, which we got to play using Microsoft Kinect.
The first task we got to try out using Kinect had us attempting to vanquish evil magic wielding beings using Harry’s arsenal of magic spells in an on-rails time attack mission. You control Harry in third-person view mimicking the same gestures Harry would use when casting said spells.
The core spell we ended up using was Stupefy – a basic one shot pistol-like burst of magic you conjure up by pointing your finger straight at the screen, before cocking it back and pointing again. Initially we had trouble getting it to work as accurately as the on-hand demo people there with us did, however, once we realised aiming our finger like a pretend gun was the way forward we were soon throwing spells at baddies in (almost) rapid succession. To aim anywhere on the screen simply point anywhere on the screen with your fingers.
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Other spells were unfortunately more bothersome to conjure up. The more powerful Confringo spell is activated by holding up your left hand to head height and pushing your right arm far forward. When activated, Harry unleashes a lethal reddish blast at his enemies. A major issue we found here is that the game recognises solid gestures instead of fluid movements, meaning you have to almost hold a pose for a second before it activates, owing to a somewhat stilted Kinect experience than the free-flowing one we’d have loved to see.
Things got worse when trying to use the shield manoeuvre. This is done by holding both arms out forward with your palms facing out. Whether Kinect didn’t like us or not, we couldn’t get it to work, though to be fair we did spot somebody else getting it to work (a couple of times).
The above underlines the problems with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ Kinect controls. Fail to match a gesture correctly and the moves won’t work. Currently, it’s all very stiff, and not as expressive as one of the first games to support Kinect could and should be, although throwing potions by doing an underarm hurling action with your left arm worked without fail.
To sum up, our Kinect powered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows experience we weren’t as impressed as we were hoping to be. Kinect obviously works but from our Harry Potter experience it was a little hit and miss, certainly in the challenge mode we played. It relies on precision pointing, not going “willy-nilly” said one of the demonstrators. But surely that’s the point of Kinect. No?
Before the pitchforks come out, we’re not predicting an early doom for Kinect, not at all. Having used Kinect before, and being impressed in our Kinect UK first play we were hoping for a slightly better experience here.
In this case, Kinect’s reliance on having to recognise gestures leads to a stiff, almost strike a pose experience that makes you feel rather uninvolved in the action, despite dictating it with your body. There’s no doubting that Kinect will have a massive impact on gaming, but we hope that Bright Light can iron out the kinks in the month before launch.
Out 19th November | £TBC | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
