News & Articles related to harry Potter - Page 22

July 31, 2005 - If there's any series of books that have showed imagination and creativity, it's the Harry Potter books. They are one of many few series to be accompanied with a series of licensed games [which strikes fear into the hearts of gamers worldwide] But, this particular game isn't bad.

I haven't suddenly become deranged. That is the honest truth. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the humble GBA, shows effort. It's not a superb achievement [which is the book is] but still, it's decent in length, decent in gameplay, and decent in ideas. It's not going to stand against Pokemon Leaf Green/Fire Red, or Advance Wars, or Sonic Advance, or Zelda: Minish Cap, but EA [for once] can walk away from publishing HPATPOA [as it is going to be referred to to save my fingers from dropping off typing] saying that they have been associated with a decent game.

HPATPOA starts off in familiar territory- the Leaky Cauldron. You only get to control Harry, but about two minutes in you're thrust into a battle. With a book- The Monster Book of Monsters. This is where the turn-based RPG genre is entwined with HPATPOA- the battle is extremely reminiscent of Pokemon. You start off with three basic spells from the books; Flipendo, Incendio and Verdimillious, and you can use any of these to send that book to an early grave. Again, HPATPOA uses key elements and puts them into the game- stronger, more advanced spells, require Magic Points [MP] to perform i.e. Verdimillious Uno needs 3 MP and Incendio Uno needs 6 MP. And, before you say that this game is essentially a magical Pokemon, you need potions [see where they got that from] to restore your MP. Sound simple? It really is. And then, of course, you have your HP bar that gradually increases every time you Level Up [you're thinking why don't I just buy bloody Pokemon?!?] And guess what? Your MP bar gradually increases every time you Level Up too! Even your enemies have a Level too, and you can even examine them with a spell named Informus, then add them to a special Folio, which lets you view information about that monster/creature/horrifically deformed human, and what spells they are particularly vulnerable to.

As you progress through the game, and your HP/MP bars gradually increase as you Level Up, and your Folio becomes more and more crammed, and you collect a truckload of Chocolate Frog cards ladeladela, you get to control gangly Ron and brainy Hermione too. Ron [maybe because of his tallness] has a superior HP bar to the other two, and Hermione [because her brain is so big her skull has been damaged with the strain of keeping it in her head] has a giant MP bar. Which kind of makes Harry the underdog, somehow. Obviously, you go to Hogwarts [which is where about 80% of the game is set] attend lessons and go on errands for teachers [most lessons usually last two seconds, or you play games the whole time] and beat the hell out of trolls, insects, fairies, elves, spiders, FireCrabs and bosses. These come in the form of Crabbe and Goyle, the huge Level 50 Whomping Willow, the horrible Werewolf Professor Lupin [who is invulnerable to Harry/Hermione's attacks so you have to keep your one-off companion Buckbeak alive, who absolutely wreaks havoc on the little get] the puny Level 14 Venomous Tentacula, and it is all resolved in an anti-climactic skirmish against the Level 60 Draco Malfoy [who is actually outnumbered by Harry and co.]

The graphics in HPATPOA are up to scratch. The character models look reasonably like their film counterparts; Ron is tall with his flaming red hair, Hermione looks like she's walked through a hedge backwards, and Harry looks as scruffy as he ever was. And they all have their school robes on, present and correct. Hagrid is suitably big, Snape has a somewhat enlarged head, and Buckbeak looks as, erm, white, as he always does. The environments are OK, rather than inspired, and end up looking a bit samey, but passable nonetheless. The top-down perspective is good though, but the actual world of HPATPOA is amazingly cramped. They could have made Hogwarts a bit bigger, a bit more of a labyrinth, instead of a repetitive seven floors, a Grand Staircase, a secret passageway room, claustrophic dungeons, and the grounds are a bit small. Compared to Zelda and Pokemon, they pale, but still, given the amount of battles strewn all over the place, you won't be seeing a lot of them. Animation in battles is a bit poor.

The sound in HPATPOA is, if you want a single word, rubbish. There's no voiceovers [which is obvious] there's only about five pieces of music in it, the spell audio gets boring, even the sound you make when you get hit is crap. It's "Ah!" or "Argh!" all the bloody time, and 10 hours of it really does your head in. A word of advice, turn the sound completely off, because it isn't a necessity to listen to the thing at all.

The gameplay has already been explained. It's a lot like Pokemon, has a lot of elements from Pokemon. But it's nowhere near as polished or open as Pokemon, and for the most part there's only one quest set in claustrophic corridors. And there's so much walking to and from the common room that taking the secret passageways really makes your brain disintegrate with undeniable boredom. But there's one thing different- it's Harry Potter. It's the magical setting, the magical plot, the spells, that JK Rowling created with that wonderful brain of hers, that really makes it appealing. You play as the quirky main characters, you undertake their role.

The lifespan... hmm. If you're a turn-based RPG nut, or if you wiped up Pokemon, it won't take you that long. Still, there's a lot of extras and you can replay it with the high levels you achieved the first time through.

So, all in all, it's a decent game. For an RPG, though, it's surprisingly linear. The battling is good, the mini-games addictive, the actual walking about tedious, and the scripted sections appallingly boring. Whisk them all together and you have a passable adventure, but nothing to trouble Nintendo's giants.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth installment of the Harry Potter series, written by J. K. Rowling. Taking place during Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts, the book goes into detail about Voldemort's past.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on July 16, 2005 and was the first book in the United Kingdom to have a simultaneous standard print, large print, and Braille edition release.

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Dedication

Rowling became pregnant with her third child during the writing of this book, and often joked about them racing each other into the world. For this reason, the book was dedicated to her:

To Mackenzie, My beautiful daughter, I dedicate

Her ink-and-paper twin

Plot Synopsis

Harry and his friends return to a Hogwarts with extra security measures as Voldemort and his followers grow in power. The new teacher is Horace Slughorn, who enjoys creating coteries of people he sees as potentially useful. He takes over the teaching position that he held during his previous Hogwarts tenure. Harry receives extra lessons from Dumbledore centering on what is known of Voldemort. He struggles in Potions class and makes use of notes in the margins of the textbook scribbled in by a previous owner (the Half-Blood Prince) who appears extremely competent in the subject. Several students at Hogwarts are informed of deaths in their families, and there are mysterious attacks on students within and on the premises of Hogwarts (major characters are involved). Despite this, romantic relationships flourish, and jealousy along with resentment surface. Harry and Dumbledore come to a working theory of how to reduce Voldemort's power. The climax of the book begins as they leave Hogwarts on an expedition to attempt this. A major character is killed near the end of the book.

Factoids

• Within the first 24 hours, the book sold 6.9 million copies in America alone, roughly moving 250,000 an hour, making it the fastest selling book in history. It generated over $100 million in sales out of the gate, outpacing even the combined take of the top movies at the box office.

• The Canadian edition of the book, published by Raincoast Books, was published on 100% recycled paper. The American edition of the book, published by Scholastic Press, was printed with a percentage of recycled paper that Scholastic declined to make public. Before and after the release of the book, the environmental organizations Greenpeace and the National Wildlife Federation advised consumers in the United States who planned to buy Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to do so from the book's Canadian publisher, Raincoast Books.

Controversy

A grocery store in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada accidentally sold 15 copies of the sixth Harry Potter book before the authorised release date. The Canadian publisher, Raincoast Books, obtained an injunction from the Supreme Court of British Columbia prohibiting the purchasers from reading the books in their possession. On July 15, less than 12 hours before the book would go on sale in the Eastern time zone, Raincoast warned The Globe and Mail newspaper that publishing a review from a Canada-based writer at midnight, as the paper had promised, would be seen as a violation of the anti-reading injunction.

The injunction sparked a number of news articles questioning the injuction's restriction on fundamental rights. Canadian law professor Michael Geist has posted commentary on his weblog. Richard Stallman has posted on his weblog calling for a boycott until the publisher issues an apology. The Globe and Mail published a review from two UK-based writers in its July 16 edition and posted the Canadian writer's review on its website at 9 am that morning.

At a Chicago Walgreens the same week, a woman mistakenly bought a copy of the book, thinking it was on sale. When she got home, she read about the Canadian incident on the internet. The woman said she would not turn herself in, but that she would not read the novel until the U.S. release date.

Other bits of controversy have popped up like those in the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Raztinger in 2003, wrote a letter claiming the Harry Potter books subtly seduce young readers and "distort Christianity in the soul" before it can develop properly. The letter appears to have been written by an underling, but was issued under the Cardinal's signature. The letter (along with a second, allowing publication of the first) have been posted to the Internet by Gabriele Kuby, who had sent her book, Harry Potter - Good or Evil, attacking J.K. Rowling's best selling series about the boy wizard, to the Cardinal.

However, other Christian readers have pointed out themes in the Harry Potter books which reflect values exemplified or preached by Jesus. Lily Potter sacrificed her own life to save her child (John 15:13). Harry's Muggle guardians attempt to keep him from knowing of his gifts, yet he is taken away and set to learn to use his powers responsibly (Math. 5:13-16). Harry has died, or come close to death, in several stories, yet is resurrected and more determined than ever to fight evil. Some Christian bookstores even sell the Harry Potter series. J.K. Rowling is on record as a Christian who admires C.S. Lewis, and says she did not emphasize Christian ideals in the book because if she had, any intelligent reader would be able to guess how it all turns out.

Mistakes

On page 10 of the American edition, there is a sentence that reads "The site, therefore, of Fudge...". The word should be sight. In the Bloomsbury Edition (p. 15, line 28–29 there) the word is spelled correctly.

There are an unknown number of books with pages 533–564 replaced with the preceding pages 501–532. The extent of the misprint is unknown. One was purchased in the Concord, New Hampshire Wal-Mart.