My Latest Passing Fancy: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Video Game
I've been pretty lazy this summer. I just loaf around home most of the time doing nothing that requires much brainpower, such as listening to old PotterCast episodes. One PotterCast episode had an Extendable Ears interview with none other than the folks from EA Games who were responsible for creating the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix video game. And damn did it sound interesting. A complete, working Hogwarts and spells that you perform by making wand movements yourself.
So for a couple of days, I fancied buying the PC version of the game and playing around with it for a few weeks before skipping off to MIT, and then continue playing the game during any free time I may so fortunately stumble upon there. Problem with that was the amount of time video-game-playing would consume. Even though I have been doing nothing much of use all summer doesn't mean that I have no work to do. Thus, I decided that it would be best to put the though Harry Potter video game in the back of my head.
However, I succumbed to the temptation of playing Harry Potter today. The EA Games Harry Potter website has a game set-up under the UK division of the site, which was fun to play until I realized there wasn't really anywhere I could go with the game. The Room of Requirement would only up one spell for me, I didn't have the password to the prefect's bathroom, and everything came to a boring standstill. The Wizarding Widget had some mini-games, and if I played enough of them and got high enough scores, I would achieve requirements listed in the Room of Rewards. I achieved one and nothing happened. I figured by then that the Room of Rewards would only reveal its secrets to me if I achieved ALL of its requirements. Looking at the list, I garner that I probably could only achieve 4/6 of the requirements. Two of the requirements had to do with playing Gobstones, which I'm pretty bad at. At that, I knew I would get no more joy out of exploring the EA Games Harry Potter website. Sad pandas.
But look! There was a sign on the side of the screen that said "Demo the Demo NOW". How exciting... so I downloaded the demo. And it was terribly slow with bad resolution. From then on, I pretty much gave up my fancy of playing the Harry Potter games. I really do have better things to do... and I already wasted so much time on the preview games--both on the EA website and the demo game I downloaded. =(
On a related note, I have this urge to play video games in general. I've thought about breaking out my old underused GameCube and playing Super Mario Sunshine on it. And I've thought about continuing my Pokemon gameplay. At the end of the day, it's probably best to not play those games at all. Boo. *goes off to do productive things, hopefully*
Edit: I think another Internet ban is in order.
So for a couple of days, I fancied buying the PC version of the game and playing around with it for a few weeks before skipping off to MIT, and then continue playing the game during any free time I may so fortunately stumble upon there. Problem with that was the amount of time video-game-playing would consume. Even though I have been doing nothing much of use all summer doesn't mean that I have no work to do. Thus, I decided that it would be best to put the though Harry Potter video game in the back of my head.
However, I succumbed to the temptation of playing Harry Potter today. The EA Games Harry Potter website has a game set-up under the UK division of the site, which was fun to play until I realized there wasn't really anywhere I could go with the game. The Room of Requirement would only up one spell for me, I didn't have the password to the prefect's bathroom, and everything came to a boring standstill. The Wizarding Widget had some mini-games, and if I played enough of them and got high enough scores, I would achieve requirements listed in the Room of Rewards. I achieved one and nothing happened. I figured by then that the Room of Rewards would only reveal its secrets to me if I achieved ALL of its requirements. Looking at the list, I garner that I probably could only achieve 4/6 of the requirements. Two of the requirements had to do with playing Gobstones, which I'm pretty bad at. At that, I knew I would get no more joy out of exploring the EA Games Harry Potter website. Sad pandas.
But look! There was a sign on the side of the screen that said "Demo the Demo NOW". How exciting... so I downloaded the demo. And it was terribly slow with bad resolution. From then on, I pretty much gave up my fancy of playing the Harry Potter games. I really do have better things to do... and I already wasted so much time on the preview games--both on the EA website and the demo game I downloaded. =(
On a related note, I have this urge to play video games in general. I've thought about breaking out my old underused GameCube and playing Super Mario Sunshine on it. And I've thought about continuing my Pokemon gameplay. At the end of the day, it's probably best to not play those games at all. Boo. *goes off to do productive things, hopefully*
Edit: I think another Internet ban is in order.