Here's an oldie from my childhood that has... definitely not aged as well as I thought it did in my mind.

Basically, Sorcerer's Stone on the PC plays like a third person action adventure game with shooting in the form of mouse aiming, and sounds super cool. It's generally very barebones though; there aren't a whole ton of sections to explore and cast spells upon to find more nooks and crannies, and most of the game involves linear challenge sections with tons of platforming instead. It's also worth noting that the game is very much stuck in the early 3D polygonal era of early Playstation/Windows games; the hit detection is very janky (so a lot of your shots will get cut off by corners sticking out), jumping feels serviceable but can mess up and cause you to tumble into the abyss if you're a hair off, you can get damaged while in engine cutscene mode for some reason, and some game physics involving shattering vases cause suspended particle effects that in one instance, messed up a Lumos platform and forced me to use a cheat to bypass the platform. The camera is also notoriously awful here, as this strange mix of too sensitive yet too stiff; moving your mouse a little up or down will immediately cause the camera to stick up or down, and this happens every time you adjust the verticality of the camera, producing this head bobbing effect that is sure to give you motion sickness within a minute while making aiming at enemies up high/on the ground a nightmare and making platforming a mess while fighting off the camera. Fortunately, a mod I found online fixes this as well as fixing the flying controls from directional keys to mouse directional, and definitely saved my whole experience.

Other than the obvious flaws due to its age (as well as how many patches modders have needed in order to overcome the SecuROM DRM and the additional jank of it not working on modern Windows), it is more or less what's advertised on the package. Boss fights could have been a lot better (they're pretty straightforward and somewhat boring, just shoot spells to survive), Quidditch is trivial (though the flying for the key at the end was strange because the hit detection didn't always activate there for some reason), there's a stealth section in the near end that I felt like I was present in for half of my life, and the platforming feels excessive though it's passable. The formula definitely gets improved in later installments with better level design and more exploration (and there are skippable cutscenes, thank god), and house points actually mean something unlike this game... still pissed that I 100%ed all my spell drawing lessons for no reward whatsoever. Still worth a look if you want an idea of the series' potential despite the many hoops you will have to jump through for a playable experience, and I will be playing Chambers of Secrets later this year; hopefully Harry will get his shit together by then and the soundtrack won't just be "FLIPPENDO ALOMAHORA FLIPPENDO FLIPPENDO" over and over again.

The game could easily be trashed for its simplicity and bugs, but that would require me completely ignoring what an achievement capturing the setting truly is. For a child living at the time this franchise was at the peak of its popularity, these movie tie-ins were nothing short of awesome.

Exploring Hogwarts in 3D, even at its simplest form, still fills me with giddinness. It's designed so cleverly, as even though you don't explore that much of it, the rooms differ ever so slightly every time, making for the feeling that the entire castle is alive, ever-changing. The game has this ominous aesthetic, the music is haunting and most of the rooms are dark and dangerous, but it is occasionally intercepted with these joyous discoveries where the music becomes happy once again. Those short moments stick with me over the years: stumbling upon Nearly Headless Nick's hidden napping place, finding a gigantic statue of a dragon, Fred and Goerge popping up out of nowhere to get their 25 beans. I think they made up the core of what made this a great game for children, it added a sense of wonder and amazement, providing a peek behind the courtains of what the movies or books haven't shown/described. They add some personality to this iteration of the story.

Of course this isn't a definitive game based on this particular part of the saga. Every game has elements that other games are missing—you don't get to explore Diagon Alley in this one, but on the other hand you get a longer section with the invisibility cloak.

Games like this make me nostalgic for the time where video games based on pre-existing IPs were extremely common. Sure, they were rushed and often underwhelming compared to other products on the market, but the value of being able to explore the IP itself, taking control of these scenarios and seeing everything about it expanded upon, is worth much more than I realized. Nowadays, when these sort of games are announced they are made out to be a huge deal, but they often end up as underwhelming compared to their contemporaries, and draw just as much inspiration from them. In reality, little has changed, we just get to be teased about these experiences instead of getting more of these tiny, passionate projects like the Harry Potter video games.

This game is quite enjoyable, although it has a bit of jank. The controls are crazy stiff, and jumping feels really wacky. However, the structure and exploration of the game carries it hard. Each individual sections feels very nice and looks very good for the time the game came out in. The voice acting is a tad rough but it’s much better than the PS1 version. Harry’s arsenal isn’t super well explored, but all the standard spells are there. The bosses are a bit lame, and the ending is quite rushed, but the game remains fun throughout the whole thing. Plus it actually included some content from the book that isn’t in the movie, which is nice.

A very, very nostalgic game for me... but even as a kid, I felt this was half-baked. Don't get me wrong, I loved it so very much, and I still feel a lot of that love (even this rating's probably generous), but you can tell they didn't quite stick the landing. Bugs are very easy to reproduce, the game's pacing is very lopsided (though, on revisit, that's actually pretty in-line with the book), world and level design feels very restricted, things like the bean checks and the missable Wizard Cards feel like they should belong in an open world game rather than a strictly linear game, this isn't the game with PS1 Hagrid but the graphics aren't that far off, etc etc etc.

But the game does nail a lot of the appeal that comes from exploring a setting like Hogwarts, ever-changing and full of secrets. This would be much stronger in later games, but there's hints of the potential here. Also, Snape's pretty well-used here; there's Fred and George's prank at the end, of course, but I was charmed by his Potions Class overall on this playthrough.

I didn't have this game when I was young unlike HP2 and HP3 PC versions, and I played this much later. The game is not perfect, and didn't age as well as the aformentioned installments, the camera and controls are quite stiff, you can't move while casting, and one annoying thing for me personally is that if you don't have anything to cast at, harry will stay in place for a little longer to cast a "nothing" spell, it's so pointless! But otherwise this isn't the worst, the early Harry Potter charm is still there, there are still neat secrets to uncover, and the level design is at least mindful of player's limitations. Not the worst but pales in comparison to sequels.

Way better than the movie.

At its core Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a pretty basic puzzle-platformer. Although it has combat too, it could barely be classified as an action game. Most of the game you're solving very simple puzzles and jumping over platforms. Despite its simplicity, it actually works really well, and the tactile feeling is sufficient enough to make the process enjoyable. I think there's just the right balance between challenges and rewards.

However, the core mechanics do have a few flaws. The spells don't always get casted; not all ledges can be grabbed onto (which can lead to some frustrating deaths out of confusion); the camera and movement controls are pretty clunky and especially become a problem during boss fights, which are the only cases you're allowed to move while shooting casting. The cutscenes are unskippable, and the checkpoints are usually placed before them, so you gotta watch them again and again every time you die.

That being said, they keep them short. There isn't a lot of story here, but it somehow manages to cover the entire plotline of the movie (maybe because most of the movie did not have much of a story either). Also, unlike the movie, there are black people in this game, hooray! It is no longer a white supremacist paradise.

One thing I love about this game is the presentation. The colors are vibrant and the music is beautiful. That's one of the main reasons I kept wanting to return to it and actually completed it, despite starting to get a little bored.

I mean, this is clearly a game designed for kids, but for what it is, it works. It's pretty simple, but it gives you a quick and immersive little adventure through Hogwarts. And, personally, as far as I can remember, I liked these first three games way more than the follow-ups. Complexity doesn't always equal quality.