OMG!

I got the Harry Potter: Order Of The Pheonix game for the PS2 today and WOW. I shall admit I am impressed. I'm going to rant about WHY now.

1. The Free Roam: IS BACK! No more Lord Of The Rings style mission layouts where you can't do anything besides what you're supposed to be doing! You can do whatever the hell you like! Really! More on that below however, for now I will say this. The world is huge, massive. You can explore EVERY inch of Hogwarts which is based of the movie blueprints, down to every last corner. As well as Grimauld Place. It looks gorgeous as well, which brings me to...

2. The Graphics: OH MY BLOODY GOD. It might not have Final Fantasy level graphics, but DAMN....Hogwarts has never looked prettier. Some of the camera pans actually made me stop and jaw drop in awe. That's just the scenery. They took 3D feature scans of the actors themselves this time round. So you don't just have some random red haired kid following you round, it IS Rupert Grint. It's the spitting double of Emma Watson.

3. Audio: On a related note to the above, MOST (not all which is a shame, but it's a very welcome touch none the less) of the actors provided their voices for the characters. It's awesome to be able to walk around Hogwarts and have Fred and George shout at you and it's...James and Oliver, who do a wondeful job. It just really makes you laugh with them, and growl in rage at Tom Felton delivering his lines with perfect malice. Instead of the cheesy MP3 sounding tracks, we now have licensed Harry Potter music, including the famous 'Hedwig's Theme' (Aka "The Harry Potter music' played by an orchestra rather than it being a track recording. And when you pass portraits they talk to you, you can hear howlers going off in the class rooms and the sound effects are just...wow.

4. Script: The script is better than I imagined it would be. Ron is sarcastic and snappy, Hermione has some truely wonderful bossy lines to deliver, Harry and Cho's scenes are just the right amount of awkward to make you laugh and cringe and Fred and George...er James and Oliver deliver their jibes at Ron and their jokes with all of the gusto of the BOOK Weasley twins. I can only hope that some of the funnier lines ('Thanks for helping with our reasearch.' 'What research?' 'You've shown us that fireworks are idiot proof!' will be in the movie it's self.

4. Gameplay: Is amazing. The annoying load screens have been removed completely, the ONLY load screen you see is at the start. After that the whole world is interconected. The only time it cuts from gameplay is to show a CG'd cutscene. Which flow flawlessley in between the gameplay. You play as Harry for most of the game, but it cuts to different characters. Most of it is action adventure, the house point system does not exist so you can curse the little git who yells 'Gryffindor are naff!' without any reprecussions (I have to admit, hanging them upside down with Levicorpus is my favorite so far xD) and you can choose what you want to do in your own time. The wand system is great, I love how you have to make different movements with the analog sticks to cast spells. It just works so well.

Scenes you get to play through are varied enough. You find yourself sneaking around under the invisibility cloak to steal confiscated items back from Umbridge, dueling with Malfoy, working with the DA to cause as much trouble as you can and...my favorite part...flying through the grand staircase and great hall as Fred and George setting off fireworks. Oh and their portable swamps gave me much amusement. The swamps bring me to something else...you see to get the swamps (which come in small tent-like containers) Harry has to shimmy up drainpipes, sidle across narrow walls on the very top of castle turrets and get back down again. It's rather odd, the combination of Zelda=like RPG and platform gaming. But it works like a charm.

5. Dissapointments: The lack of Quidditch. There is a match in the book but this seems to have been cut from the game and right from the off Gryffindor are banned from playing. It sucks, but it's true. No Quidditch this time round.

I am also a little dissapointed in how much is explained via cutscenes. I mean, don't get me wrong, they are short and the game is massive. But the cutscenes ghost over parts I would have liked to play through, it's a small price to pay for losing the loading times though.

Peeves. My poltergeist friend is mentioned a fair few times. Most memorably by Fred, 'give her hell from us Peeves!' and he DOES say his gorgeous little quote as he flies off into the (graphically beautiful) sunset. Peeves is named, shamed and blamed throughout the game. But YOU NEVER SEE HIM. He never makes an appearance. This is more than likely because whereas the old games are based off the book, this incorperates both book AND movie. And they didn't want to create him without a movie reference. It would have been a nice addition where the movies have let me down though. Shame.

All in all I am in love though.

You get to control the Weasley's escape. I almost fainted in ecstacy when control switched to Fred (despite not being able to leave the rather small room because he had a swamp to cast) but those small few seconds of 'non-flying' Fred control just made me so happy I'm so glad to see they have a MUCH bigger role in this than shop vendors as in previous games. You get to plot against Umbridge, mess with the clock, send howlers to Malfoy and co, unleash the portable swamps and pour babbling potions into her speakers. You get to curse people, you get to play wizard chess and exploding snap and you get to explore Grimauld Place.

<3 If I have ever wanted to marry an inanimate object it is now. And as an avid Harry Potter fan, who has been unimpressed by the video games so far, this is a high compliment.

EA, you finally got it, it took a while but DAMN was it worth the wait.