Review by: Neilie Johnson

With 15 LEGO titles under its collective belt, the team at Traveller’s Tales are the experts on LEGO-izing. While a lesser company might rely solely on an existing license's popularity for its success, TT Games uses existing franchises as mere jumping off points to create extraordinary interactive entertainment. Unfortunately, while their latest offering, LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 once again works the TT Games magic, this time a good portion of it fizzles.

As a refresher, years 5-7 in the Harry Potter universe start with the fifth Potter novel, The Order of the Phoenix. In it, the Ministry of Magic inflicts a sadistic bureaucrat on the students of Hogwarts, and starts a smear campaign against Harry and Dumbledore. It's grim stuff that through subsequent chapters (The Half Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows parts one and two) gets even grimmer. You'd think this kind of story would work counter to the upbeat, humorous LEGO approach, but for the most part, TT Games makes it work.

Much of the story is Hogwarts-centric, and if you played LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4, you've more or less seen what those areas of the game have to offer. That's not to say that those portions aren't entertaining, but for the most part, there's little novelty to them. It's not until you branch off into new locations like London, Godric's Hollow and the Ministry of Magic that the game really takes off. Best of the new stuff are the surreal, dreamlike sequences where Harry gains insight into the lives of Dumbledore, Snape and Tom Riddle as well as a cool and creative section wherein Snape trains Harry to protect his mind from Voldemort.

Also great is that against all logic, TT Games manages to infuse such dark subject matter with its usual wit and humor. At every opportunity—even when characters die—the mood is lightened by silliness. Augmenting the goofy fun are Weasley's Wizard Wheezes (surprise boxes only a Weasley can open) and Hermione's (literally) carry-all bag. In addition to these, the core formula of the game still works; it's still a lot of fun to run around collecting studs, exploring locations and zapping any and everything with your wand. There are many different spells to choose from and nearly all of them are used to great effect, excepting the Patronus spell which in these chapters would seem much-needed, but strangely, almost never comes into play. It's an odd omission that represents other strange design choices found throughout the game.

The world of LEGO Harry Potter is highly, but selectively, interactive so in order to activate most things, you have to cast the right type of spell on it. Spells are gained as you progress through the game and so it's a given that when you first pass through a location, there will be things you can't interact with. It's a clever way to pump up the game's replayability factor as is the mechanic that only allows specific characters to interactive with some items. For instance, only Arthur Weasley can repair broken muggle machinery (yes, that's illogical when magic can do anything, but just roll with it) so if you want to unlock all the items in some levels, you'll have to play through them again once you've unlocked Arthur Weasley. These ideas form a great foundation for varied, interesting gameplay, but they're often undermined by inconsistent prompts and a pronounced lack of feedback.