Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has announced a new game entitled Harry Potter For Kinect. Developed by Eurocom, the title will be exclusive and available only to Xbox 360 gamers. Details are below.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Eurocom will cast a spell among Harry Potter fans of all ages this autumn with the Harry Potter for Kinect videogame exclusively on Kinect™ for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft .
Based on all eight Harry Potter films, Harry Potter for Kinect allows players to join Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger as they embark on an unforgettable journey through Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and beyond. With Kinect’s scanning technology, for the first time ever in a Harry Potter game, players will be able to scan in their own face to create a unique witch or wizard to journey through the adventures of the film.
In addition, Kinect’s hands-free and voice recognition capabilities allow gamers to cast spells using physical manoeuvres and by calling out spell names, offering an extraordinary, immersive Harry Potter experience.
“Harry Potter for Kinect will engage Harry Potter fans old and new by bringing them into the wizarding world as truly active participants,” said Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President, Production and Development, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “Kids and parents will enjoy recreating their favourite Harry Potter adventures, from flying a broomstick in a Quidditch match, to battling pixies and duelling other wizards.”
Harry Potter for Kinect gives players the opportunity to experience some of the films’ most memorable moments, both as the relevant characters or as their own avatars, including visiting Ollivanders, choosing a house at Hogwarts, and confronting He Who Must Not Be Named in a climactic final battle. Players who master their lessons can also take on their opponents in competitive mini-games, or join forces with family and friends in co-op gameplay.
All comments (17)
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I expect the only way this game will sell is if Parents buy it for their kids, so it may make a bit of money - not much. All the Potter games have been rubbish for the most part. The best reviews were for HP and the Order of the Phoenix, which I played on Xbox 360 and quite liked.
If Warner Brothers could remake that version with improved gameplay, graphics and characters I would buy it as the game designers were clever enough to avoid the plot from the book which was pretty awful. But, not the Kinect version please as that gimmick really is only for Keep Fit Games or Dance Games for star struck schoolgirls who like singing into their hairbrushes.
I don't know if this will be a collection of mini-games or not (although I have a feeling the main game won't be since they mention multi-player mini-games as a bonus feature) but Eurocom seem to have a good history with not only "motion-games" (like the Wii and PS3/Move versions of GoldenEye 007 and Dead Space: Extraction, at least according to reviews and player comments I've seen, although I boycotted GoldenEye 007 because not only did they not support Kinect despite supporting Wii & Move but they replaced Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig! :( Blasphemy!!!) but also Harry Potter too as they made the only (non-Lego) Harry Potter game that got universally good reviews, Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. I haven't played that myself though.
Considering the amount of time needed to make Kinect games (many have been delayed in the past including Crimson Dragon, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour and Ryse which still aren't out yet, although the first 2 are finally released next month) this game could have already been in development for 2 years for all we know but couldn't come out any earlier because of the development time needed, especially if it's a big game as it does span the whole series. And I doubt it's missed the train (I can't believe you missed the easy gag and didn't say "Hogwarts Express", lol!) since I'm sure Harry Potter is still very popular and the last movie only came out last year.
As far as Sorcery goes I don't think it missed any trains either, it's just ironically a victim of Sony fans' (and other Kinect haters in general) Kinect bashing since they don't seem to understand the immersion that motion-control can offer so it probably just appears to them to be a fairly simple third-person magic-em-up. (Copyright me, if nobody's used that term before, lol!) Although I haven't played it so I don't know how immersive it is or even if it's any good or not. But I have to say, and I'm honestly not bashing, that it doesn't look like anything special at all. Since people have been going on about it for ages I was expecting it to look like an awesome game but judging by the videos I really couldn't see it, even with the immersion of controlling magic with a wand but it doesn't look like they've done much with it and most of it is just point and shoot magic from your wand at enemies, especially if you compare it to something like Fable: The Journey for example which has already shown you can customise your magic with your hands on-the-fly (and can have different attacks in each hand too) plus use your body to dodge attacks 1:1 like in Blackwater by the looks of it. (I think the same about the Force in Kinect Star Wars by the way, they should have done more with it, although I guess you can use it more during the game if you can get good enough because things usually get too hectic to use it properly during most battles so most of the times you use it are just when you have to in specific parts of the game to progress. I like the game generally though, but the main campaign is a bit too short and they even cut out the level that they showed part of at E3 last year for some reason! :( The controls are a lot better than shown last year though. ) Also a lot of fuss is made about the fact that you use the Navi Controller (or just a regular joypad in 1 hand, which some people seem to forget) to move the character around and that somehow makes it better than Kinect. Well not only can Kinect games be made and already have been made where you move the character around with your body but developers can make Kinect games where you hold a joypad in 1 hand and use the thumbstick to move the character around if they want to and even use buttons, just like any Move games that use a thumbstick to move around and the buttons on the Wand.
....on a similar note, their faces are foobar