What is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?

We liked the book and the movie, but Aspyr’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone struggled to entertain us on its own merits. It is great for kids and casual gamers, but its uninspired gameplay, awkward controls, and ho-hum graphics make it a snore for anyone else.

The story line of the Harry Potter game rings true to the original tale. A series of storybook-style illustrations explains how Harry Potter suffers through his early years in the Muggle (ordinary human) world until he gets an invitation to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The game begins at Hogwarts, takes Harry through his wizardly lessons, and slowly unveils an evil wizard’s plot to steal the magical Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry must thwart the evil Voldemort’s plot, fighting other foes along the way.

The game consists of Harry walking, running, and jumping his way around the Hogwarts castle and grounds. He learns spells (such as Flipendo, Lugis, and Alohomora), which you practice by tracing your mouse over the onscreen paths of professors’ wands. Potter then casts these spells to open secret doors, move obstacles, create magic staircases, and fight villains. Throughout the game, you collect as many challenge stars, Bertie Bolt’s Every Flavor Beans, and Wizard Cards as you can find, but

in the end it’s not crucial that you locate every single one. The challenges include jumps over a deep abyss, avoiding manbiting plants, fights with a poltergeist, getting past a snarling three-headed dog, and a troll’s harrowing chase. (We won’t reveal them all here.) Two areas in particular offer notable excitement. One is the last battle with Voldemort. The second is Quidditch, the wizard world’s version of Monday Night Football.

Unfortunately, that’s where the excitement might end for some. The gameplay itself is repetitive (how many times can you listen to Harry say “Flipendo!” without going nuts?), and the controls are oversimplified. Your primary means of motion are the arrow keys, along with one command for speeding up Harry’s movement, another for slowing it down, a third for casting spells, and a fourth for jumping. For a game based on the Unreal Tournament engine, we expected at least a separate strafe command for sidestepping. Also annoying were the occasional bugs that caused the screen to go black mysteriously, and the game really could have benefited from a quick-save key — the designated save points are too infrequent.

The graphics are pretty flat, but they do get more interesting as the game progresses. Some levels, like Hogwarts’ gardens and cavernous underbelly, are beautiful, but the castle interior, while true to the movie, gets a little tedious. The game is delightfully interspersed with cut scenes, where book characters like Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley appear with great voice-overs. And the well-executed graphics and audio in the cut scenes move smoothly even on our modest 400MHz G4 with 192MB of RAM, a rig that’s hardly adequate for most new games.

Even though we finished the game pretty effortlessly and its replay value is virtually nil, we liked Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone because of its engaging story and endearing characters. If you have kids, are a kid, or just really like Harry Potter, you’ll enjoy this game. If not, save your lunch money for a tougher challenge.

Rebbapragada, Narasu. (July 2002). Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. MacAddict. (pg. 52).

Download Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.6 up to Mac OS 10.5

Compatibility notes

System requirements:

* MacOS 8.6 or later
* MacOS X
* 300 MHz or faster
* 96 MB of Memory
* ATI Rage 128 or later

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver