Game Review - Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7

Game Review - Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7

Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7
Platform: PS3
Released by Warner Games
Once again, and for one final time in this series anyway, it's back to the world of the bricks we go.
Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 is the latest from Travellers' Tale Games, who've excelled in this series of Lego crossovers - from Star Wars to Indiana Jones, Batman to Pirates of the Caribbean, there's little they can't do in this arena without a few cheeky moments and some relatively easy gameplay.
This latest collects together the final chapters of the Harry Potter franchise and is an extremely rewarding game for you if you're going to put in the hard yards.
Once again, Harry has to collect studs, solve puzzles, collect spells and rescue other students in various elements of peril in this pulled together storyline from the final three books. Each chapter's broken down into other chapters and there's certainly plenty of reasons to go back and replay each one as you try to achieve the true wizard level on each by collecting as many Lego studs as you can and collect Gold bricks and school emblems which are scattered fiendishly throughout. Add onto that the need to get every character unlocked from within the game and you can see why it's fiendishly addictive.
But what is also apparent is just how charming it is as well. There's certainly a lot of humour throughout with the cut scenes, despite the darker nature of these final chapters of the Potterverse. It also makes it a joy to watch these scenes rather than pushing buttons to get them to hurry on. There's plenty of detail to the backgrounds and the worlds in which Potter finds himself and one early flying sequence on brooms through London's skyline is just brilliantly good fun.
All in all, Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 is one of the perfect Christmas presents for this year; while it's true to say the LEGO series is aimed a little more at the younger end of the market, it's certainly bound to give all ages hours of entertainment thanks to its charming feel and clever, deeply rewarding gameplay.

Rating: 8/10