Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Member Review for the Xbox360

   When i was third grade the 3rd Harry Potter book had come out and all my friends were talking about it which pissed me off. But me being a lazy 3rd grader i never gave the book a chance and i assumed that it was about some kid that got magic powers because of that scar on his forehead.

   But i was wrong a year ago i decided to give the books a chance and i don't usually read but those books were pretty damn cool. The idea of going to a school where you can fly on broomsticks, make potions that will change you into a different person, and occasionally fight the dark lord himself in epic battles of magical skill.... Unfortunatly you don't get to do any of these things in the game which is why i wrote this reveiw so that people who want to buy this game know what there in for.

PLOT- So basically if you have read the 5th book you know that Harry is mad that no one is telling him what the Order of the Pheonix is up too in trying to stop Voldemort, and that Hogwarts gets taken over by Umbridge a teacher assigned to the school by the ministry of magic because the minister of magic is afraid of Dumbldore. Now not spoiling the ending that is exactly how the game portrays the story, points in the book where i was shaking in anticipation were replaced by utter disappointment in how they can make a fight between Sirius and Lestrange seem like two kindergardeners arguing...

Gameplay- Now this category of the game is definetly the most disappointing. When you start the game starts you learn 3 spells in which you can lift,push,and pull random crap that rarely needs to be moved unless you want to throw a chair or something at ron. As you progress through the game you'll learn 10 spells 1 of which you only get the oppurtunity to use i think 3 times. Now some of the dueling spells are pretty cool like petrivocous totalous and levicorpus but the fighting  in which you use those spells sucks because usually it's you ron and hermione against one or two people or it's it's a 7 vs 7 battle in which you have no idea what the hell is going on... it's not fun. And when your not fighting your basically an errand boy for the 20 some members of dumbldors army which is also not fun because some of the tasks just expect you to know how to find hidden objects without telling you, and it's really hard to find set objects with the type of camera set up (think God of War). And when your not running errands your basically the school janitor cleaning up random broken vases and fixing crooked suits of aromor and what not, why would i want to go to Hogwarts if all i get out of it is a degree in ****in costodial arts...

Graphics and Sound- Ive only played this game on the xbox 360 but from what ive seen it's a little above average. the enviroments are great but the character models can be kinda blocky at times also except for significant characters the school consists of about 10 different people 5 girls 5 boys, you honestly cant tell the difference between slytherins and ravanclaws unless your talking to them... the sound however is pretty good, in the sence that the magic sounds cooler than it looks and the music around Hogwarts does set the mood pretty well.

Overall- Like i said before the concept of this whole story could be a great game the people who made it just need to make it a little more exciting and not take the already dumed down movie and dumb that down into a game... More effort please... so don't buy this game for more than $30 and only if you like Harry Potter enough that your willing to drag yourself through this 17 hour game.

Final Score- D+