Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban GameCube game

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

2004

Overall rating: 3 out of 5

from 436 members

The third instalment in JK Rowling's phenomenally successful series of children's books is about to take over the world's cinema screens and, faithfully at heel as always, is the cross-platform release of the accompanying video game from EA. If you're a fan of the books you'll know that Prisoner of Azkaban brings a change in direction for the series and, subsequently, the game is a little darker and slightly more complex. Being the third episode, it's therefore the third year at Hogwarts for master Potter and his two young friends. Obviously nothing is about to run smoothly for the young trainee spell-caster, and stirring things up this time is the arrival of one Sirius Black, escapee of the wizard prison Azkaban. Along with the Dementors, the sinister guards of Azkaban, Sirius is about to cause more than a few problems for the three young friends. Prisoner of Azkaban sees you assume the roles of not just Harry but also those of his chief sidekicks Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Throughout the game you have the ability to switch between the three characters, thus making best use of their key skills and attributes in order to overcome the various challenges and enemies that you come up against. The gameplay itself treads pretty much the same territory as the previous two HP games, in that it's generally a case of exploring a host of JK Rowling's fantasy locales, interacting with the residents, solving puzzles, and defeating enemies. This time around, however, the aforementioned three-way gameplay element means that you need to take advantage of all three characters in order to progress through the game. For example, Harry's grappling spell serves as a means to reach those hidden ledges and, at one particular point, Harry and Ron have to work together when battling Malfoy on a train. The GameCube version of Prisoner of Azkaban supports Nintendo's much-touted GBA connectivity, which means that - if you own both systems and both versions of the game - you can wire the two consoles up and transfer what's known as an Owl Care Kit to your Game Boy. Kind of like a Tamagotchi, the Owl Care Kit allows you to take care of an owl by feeding, cleaning, exercising and teaching it, before you upload it back to your GameCube and enter it into owl races.