Lego Harry Potter, The First Four Books In One Lego Game

The top selling Lego platformer series turns the Harry Potter world into bricks and round headed mini figurines for your virtual spell casting delight. Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4, as the title implies, rounds up the first four books, Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire, into a puzzle solving platformer.

Similar to most Lego themed titles, Lego Harry Potter will focus on collecting and exploring but with a magical twist, including the Wingardium Leviosa spell that will lift and build Lego bricks to solve puzzles. The little Lego men you control will have to attend classes to learn spells, mix potions and ride broomsticks in a free roaming castle world that expands every year with more areas and secrets.

“Hogwarts is the biggest, richest, detailed and most all encompassing environment in LEGO we’ve ever created. You discover its size over the course of four years, so it’s not immediately overwhelming – but you get a sense as we go that there’s much more around to explore than is immediately accessible” Said Jonathan Smith Traveller’s Tales head of production.

With over 140 playable characters (I can’t even remember so many characters in the HP books), the experience promises to be diverse and customisable as the most distinct characters have different abilities and skill levels. So Harry will shoot jinxes while whizzing past on his broomstick and Hermione casts the strongest spells. Ron can use Scabbers to crawl into otherwise unreachable areas and Fang digs out items.

Players include: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Hagrid, Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Griphook the goblin, Draco Malfoy, Remus Lupin, Dobby, Buckbeak and centaurs. “What’s radically different is that you have characters who, over four years, go from not being very powerful to becoming incredibly powerful,” said Smith. The characters progress by attending classes and in turn the castle grounds expand with areas that are unlocked with newly earned spells. At the start of the game Harry is more likely to turn himself into a frog than create a successful potion.

Co-op game play is another feature that adds value to the game as another player can drop into a game at anytime. Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4 hits the shelf in May this year and will feature on Windows, Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 3, PSP and Xbox 360.