In 2005, the sport of Quidditch transcended the fictional world of Harry Potter to the soccer fields of Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vt.
This Muggle variety, now called quadball to distance it from its controversial creator, J.K. Rowling, changes the magical game’s rules so real-life players compete without flying broomsticks and enchanted balls.
While the video game Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions doesn’t feature an impartial official running around the field with a tennis ball bouncing inside a long sock that hangs on their yellow shorts, the developers at Portkey Games have tweaked their game Quidditch, too.
Like quadball, the Golden Snitch is worth 30 points rather than the whopping 150 game-ender fans are familiar with.
They haven’t stopped there.
HP:QC features one Beater — players who strategically swing sanctioned iron balls at their opponents — instead of two for six, not seven, team members. This lets the 3v3 competitive matches to pair the Keeper, Seeker, and Beater positions with the goal-scoring Chaser role, which you can switch between at will.
Players customize each member of their team, but a limited character customizer lessens the ownership one feels over their ragtag group, while the system of broom and skill upgrades have little impact on gameplay.
Other structural choices for HP:QC are aped from huge games of service (titles designed to be played indefinitely) like Fortnite and Apex Legends , including a Battle Pass and an endless stream of unlockables.
Creating a game out of a fictional sport, especially one designed to be whimsical and fun for preteens, no less, from scratch is a Herculean task. Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is the second in what can be generously termed a spin-off series beginning with 2002’s Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup , from which this sequel pulls a surprising amount of DNA.
From incorrectly timed dodge meters to the consistently disorienting switch between the goal-scoring Chasers that leads to unfair penalties, it’s disappointing that the kinks haven’t been smoothed out after 22 years.
In lower difficulties, the game’s single-player mode crawls, requiring a painful slog for the six-match cup competitions required to unlock better modes. I frequently set my controller down to read a book during these seven-minute matches — and won them anyway.
Thankfully, the AI are competitive in the higher levels, although when a hard crash that forced me out of a match meant replaying a match I was about to win, it took everything in me not to swear off the repetitive game forever.
Multiplayer brings the most satisfying challenge, but finding other players in a surprisingly empty online ecosystem often meant resigning myself to playing the goal-guarding Keeper, by far the most boring position despite the position-specific addition of top-down strategy calls.
A well-timed bludger, the name for the mentioned iron balls, from a Beater can change a game’s course, making it second best to Seeker, the Snitch-catching job that requires players to drop everything to go on the hunt. Annoying in single player, it’s exhilarating against opponents online.
Multiplayer matches were frequently wildly lopsided, but my best match was a nailbiter with a 10-point difference right up until I barely bested an enemy Seeker, scoring the game-ending points. I’d play a lot more HP:QC if I could guarantee they’d all be like that. Unfortunately, no skill-based matchmaking begets an uneven experience.
Long term, my biggest issue is that even a Harry Potter nut like me doesn’t have anyone to play this with.
Harry Potter fans don’t tend to overlap with players of major sports video games — and if they did, they’d quickly return to the deeper mechanics of the better titles from whence they came.
Having played most of Warner Bros.’ current Harry Potter video game label Portkey Games’ offerings, I’ve long admired the creators clear love of the series they’re adapting. Here, this means the addition of Quidditch-specific achievements, challenges, quotes, and character.
HP:QC’s charming, stylized art style captures the likenesses of Harry, the Weasleys, and even the famously uncoordinated Hermione.
Fans will enjoy the inclusion of supporting characters known for their athleticism like Cho Chang, Viktor Krum, Oliver Wood, and Cedric Diggory (interestingly, the only character not modeled on his film appearance).
Best of all is the return of Luke Youngblood as Hogwarts Quidditch announcer Lee Jordan, whose pre-pubescent tones can be heard in the first two Harry Potter films. He’s been announcing other Potter properties of late — 2021's Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament of Houses comes to mind — but hearing him call plays is where he belongs.
I was thus disappointed to learn that the playable teams skipped straight from the different wizarding secondary schools of Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang to 16 nations for the international cup, skipping right over the 14 teams of the British and Irish Quidditch League.
I'd understand the exclusion of my beloved Falmouth Falcons (slogan: let us win, and if we don’t win, let us break a few heads). The omission of Ron’s beloved Chudley Cannons (quality of the Cleveland Browns, colors and all) and the all-female Holyhead Harpies, however, are acutely felt.
Similar decisions to exclude Ireland and Bulgaria, the contenders from the Quidditch World Cup seen in the opening scenes of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , feel ripe for future add-on-purchases, a cynical decision that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Like 2022’s Hogwarts Legacy before it, Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is an amalgamation of popular gaming trends mashed into one until its gameplay has no identity of its own.
Also like the immensely successful Hogwarts Legacy , it doesn’t matter.
There will always be enough of gaming’s least discerning customers — new or infrequent players, children, superfans — that a Harry Potter game must only be good enough to avoid criticism to rake in galleons beyond imagining.
Like the Tolkien adaptation Rings of Power from Amazon, the Harry Potter intellectual property has become too big to fail. Fans are fated to have their loyalty endlessly mined until fatigue sets in, like Star Wars and Marvel’s MCU before it.
I’d guess the developers who so clearly love the series are aching for better, too.
Cue the endless parade of DLC.
Local News
Comments / 0