Steff is the biggest Harry Potter fan I know. She’s read all the books. She owns all of the movies. She’s brought me to platform 9 3/4 in England. She can even claim that the actor that plays Draco Malfoy was totally checking her out when they met for a photo-op a few years back at Fan Expo. I’m still a bit bitter about that last part, but I digress.
When we saw Wonderbook: Book of Spells at Sony’s E3 2012 press conference, she made it clear to me that this was something she needed to play someday. Having been a good girl this year, she received it from Santa for Christmas. Though I didn’t play much of it myself, I did watch her play a bunch of it. Was it as magical of an experience as its source material would imply?
In case you’re wondering, the actual Wonderbook on its own features a total of 14 different AR codes (including the front and back cover). The covers feel almost foamy, while the inside pages are some sort of foam core. Unless you’re really horsing around with it, I don’t see it falling apart.
Setting everything up to run the game proved complicated due to the narrow nature of our living room. The game suggests that the book is placed on the floor and perch your camera on your TV stand. Because of the narrow floor space, Steff couldn’t set up the game in a way where the camera would capture both the book and her face at the same time (which the game asks you to do) so she ended up playing most of the game with her face cut off. For some reason, she also had some initial issues with the PlayStation Eye reading the book properly, though this seemed to go away once she optimized the setup.
The actual game itself puts you in the role of a Hogwarts student who has been given permission to learn from a magical book of spells. Each of the spells you can learn are based on those found in the Harry Potter franchise. Using the PlayStation Move as your magic wand, you can trigger the spells yourself with special gestures.
Before you actually learn the spell, the game gives you an extended history around the spell itself. It didn’t mean much to me, but as a fan of the franchise, Steff really appreciated those parts. There’s a bit of interactivity in these segments as well, as there are some branching paths in these history bits for you to explore.
Most of the fun comes from being the wizard yourself. The game first teaches you how to use the spell, and then puts you in a situation where you can use that spell to good use. When I was first watching her play, it seemed like the game coddled her quite a bit. However, as she made her way through, they put you in scenarios where you’ll have to use multiple spells to get through them and don’t provide any instruction. These were the parts that were the most game-like and interesting to watch.
It’s worth noting that the experience is relatively short. At roughly 4 hours long, Steff was able to complete all
Kudos to Sony for sticking their necks out to create something really unique. I have no idea where Sony plans on taking the Wonderbook concept from here, but they have won Steff over with Book of Spells.
Buy Wonderbook: Book of Spells PlayStation Move Bundle Now on Amazon.com
In Third Person 