"Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me." - Amy Wong
You can't get fooled again. EA only has one movie tie-in game left, and Deathly Hallows Part 1 is not a promising lead-in to say the least.
The game starts with an awkward over-the-shoulder-on-rails-shooter section that has you knocking Death Eaters out of the sky from Hagrid's sidecar. Once you've arrived at the Burrow, the wedding is on and you can walk around and talk to various guests including Ron and Hermione who like to do a weird kind of backwards run thing if you get too close to them. At this point the game gives you a spell called four-points that is used to show you which way to go. Using this mechanic over something like a map seems very lazy, and the spell never seems to want to co-operate anyway. If you are facing in completely the wrong direction when firing the spell, it can be difficult to spot or even realise that it worked at all, which it sometimes straight up doesn't.
During the attack on the wedding, the game's main focus gameplay-wise kicks in: third-person cover shooting, which consists mostly of standing around and mashing R2 while locked on to enemies. Cover is next to useless, the only time you'll need it is the few instances when there are too many enemies on screen at once. Otherwise, firing Stupefy at everyone and their Protego charms (they only prolong the inevitable) until they fall down will get you through. There are even points when you can simply run past enemies, the rather sad AI is powerless to stop you.
After the wedding escape, the trio are hiding behind a building and Ron decides that a random person standing at the other end of the street might be a Death Eater, so Harry is tasked with making his way over there to check them out. Putting on Harry's cloak puts you in a first person perspective, which completely kills your peripheral vision, making it all the more difficult to dodge unsuspecting muggles who like to bump into you and make you start again. After navigating around people, poles and metal fence things, as well as standing still to wait for your stealth bar to recharge, Harry looks at the person for a second and somehow deduces that they are just another muggle. Your reward for reporting this shocking news back to Ron is having to repeat the task twice more, with Ron's suspects being further away each time. Turns out none of them are Death Eaters.
After a few average (at least in comparison to the rest of the game) levels in Grimmauld Place and the Ministry, the trio find themselves tailing Dean Thomas and Griphook through the countryside. As if this shit wasn't tedious enough already, this portion of the game has you traversing Whomping Willows, Cornish Pixies, Snatchers and all manner of other bothers just to catch another snippet of Dean and Griphook's conversation. I'm reminded of a line from the PS1 Emperor's New Groove game, when they are tied to a log in a river: "This scene was much shorter in the film." And how.
At several points in these wilderness sequences you come upon a boulder blocking your path. The solution is simply to blast it away with a spell. There's no challenge, it's impossible to fail at, and it serves no purpose other than to make an already tedious game that little bit longer.
Speaking of making things long and tedious, there are a few times throughout the game when the story progression is interrupted by completely disjointed and unskippable side missions that all consist of some form of "Rescue muggle-borns and kill Snatchers/Death Eaters." One of these is set in the Ministry directly after the trio's daring escape and arrival in the woods. One throws unkillable Inferi at you to contend with while carrying out the mission. Another plops Harry in the middle of a deep cavern and tasks you to "Escape the dragon's lair!" with zero explanation for how or why he is there. There aren't even any muggle-borns to save, you just run past the AI impaired Snatchers and fire four-corners until you reach the exit. Not even the dragon can do enough damage to kill you before you've run right past it (the same goes for Whomping Willows).
Once Harry and Hermione figure out how to destroy Horcruxes, Ron has a tantrum and fucks off. Anyone who has ever watched the Lion King and then gone and played the Pride Lands world from Kingdom Hearts II will know just how much changing a scene's music and lighting and such in the transition from film to cutscene can completely kill the atmosphere. Ron leaving and pretty much all of the story points in the game have this problem. Honestly, I don't understand why developers don't just use actual clips from films as cutscenes any more.
So Harry and Hermione go on their merry way, sneaking muggle-borns out of Godric's Hollow and following creepy old ladies into creepy old houses. Eventually Ron comes back and it's time to destroy the locket. This is one of the most ridiculously frustrating boss battles I think I've ever seen. As the fight begins, the game informs you that "Voldemort's soul fragments are vulnerable to spells," subtly dropping the hint that you have to shoot the dozen or so black snakes that are in front of the locket. Only the problem is the locket has started lobbing smoke grenades at you in large numbers, which seem to take about 90% of your health in one go if you get too close. So already, standing still for even a second is out of the question. The second problem I had was that it was only after several failures that I realised you could run 360 degrees around the locket, which made dodging the grenades a little easier.
Once you manage to off a few of the snakes, you start getting chased down by venom-spitting spiders, which would be manageable if you didn't need to run around dodging bombs and shooting snakes at the same time. The locket also switches to a squiggly laser beam attack that is much harder to evade. To compound the frustration, for some reason, every time I died and the level restarted I had a completely useless spell selected automatically, which became very annoying every time I forgot and tried to get a quick shot off on the snakes right off the bat. In the end the only way I could find to beat this boss was to keep a fair distance behind the locket and snipe at the snakes whenever possible.
The next stop on the Plot Train is the Lovegood residence, which is both preceded and followed by a lengthy galavant through the countryside while defeating/running past enemies. The attack on Xeno's home is a survival level in which you have to defeat an endless wave of Snatchers and Death Eaters and not get killed until the game decides it's time to move on.
The last level in the woods sees the trio ambushed by Scabior and a whole shitload of Snatchers. The game's helpful advice this time is "Survive the Snatcher attack." Now, to me, that means "This is another survival level so just sit tight and kill these dudes a bunch," which would make the most sense since the trio don't actually win against the Snatchers. But after several minutes of solid battle with constantly respawning enemies and leveling up about three times I started to wonder why it was taking so long and figured I'd better try casting four-points. Sure enough, there is a path you're supposed to take to reach the end of the level. I don't know if it's actually required to beat even a single Snatcher.
The final battle in Malfoy Manor really is another survival level that has Bellatrix, Narcissa and Draco standing around shooting spells in your general direction while you run around like a headless chicken until the game has had its fill and kills Dobby.
