Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions Review: A Successful Snitch
Summary:
3.6
Fantasy sports ought to be a sub-genre of videogame, even though there are very few games around that delve into sports that don’t take place in real-life. Quidditch is of course the Harry Potter Universe’s favourite competitive sport, and older gamers may remember when there was a sixth-generation Harry Potter Quidditch game dubbed Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup, but whereas that curio has faded into obscurity, the game of Quidditch rises again courtesy of developer Unbroken Studios and publisher Warner Bros. Games. Does Quidditch Champions successfully catch the Golden Snitch, or is it too busy getting bludgeoned by Beaters?
Quidditch Champions gets down to business by soothing you into the experience with a training program called The Garden Cup, hosted by the jolly old Wheasley bunch. Learning how to play Quidditch alongside Ron and company is an accessible and cheery affair as you get to grips with movement, dodging, grabbing the Quaffle, and learning the key play positions of Chaser, Beater, Keeper and Seeker. The good news is you can swap positions anytime during a game if you enable the option to do so, which means you’ve no need to blaze across the pitch in a hurry, and you have dominion over where you need to be during the game to keep up with the drama and to repel the opposition’s advances. After each tutorial strand, there are brief match-ups against the Wheasley clan to reinforce what you’ve learned, so that you can put them into practice as though you’re undertaking a cup game.
This opening salvo does a tremendous job of acclimating you to how videogame Quidditch is meant to work. The pick up and play ease of the tutorials invites you to keep on playing, though admittedly trying to catch that blasted Golden Snitch by bolting through golden circles is a challenging ordeal, ya just gotta be in the golden ball while increasing your speed and channeling your reflexes accordingly. The added charismatic charm of them Wheasleys gives some character that coincides well with the game’s visual style and those accommodating welcoming vibes, allowing you to learn the skills necessary to dominate the pitch, just don’t overthink the name Madam Hooch and you’ll be fine.
Once you’ve successfully completed all of your training, you can freely sample the range of modes Quidditch Champions has to offer. You can dive into the career and climb the ranks to becoming the Quidditch world champion in single player or in co-op, you can take your quaffle-stealing skills online by participating in 3 versus 3 PVP multiplayer, and as you play and win you can level up and earn in-game rewards, which will help you buy newer brooms and various customization options for your plucky Quidditch hopefuls.
Modes might appear slim and unfulfilling, but Quidditch Champions is fit for purpose as a readily accessible fantasy sports title, with its arcade pleasures and general immediacy ensuring you’ll be feisty to grab onto your broomsticks and chase down the opposition. The single-player campaign is hollow, sending you through the already-mentioned initial tutorial Garden Cup, before letting you loose on the house, school and world cups, each of them requiring you to beat the other teams in a quasi-round robin fashion, before proceeding to a tournament bracket where you must win in order to advance or else be eliminated and sent back to the beginning to try again.
Difficulty options for single player don’t mean all that much, though you may prefer playing on the easiest setting in order to advance quicker. Be warned though, before you reach the Quidditch World Cup stage, you’re required to beat the School stage on advanced difficulty, meaning the challenge bumps up a bit, but you shouldn’t have problems advancing as the game’s difficulty isn’t overpowering or excessive in the slightest.
On the pitch, Rocket League comes to mind when booming through the field in Quidditch Champions. The pristine blue of the player team and the nefariously-tinged orange of the opposing team, as well as the turbo-powered speed of the brooms echo the fast and frenetic pleasures of booting a giant ball into the goal in Rocket League. The explosive thrill of scoring in Quidditch also draws parallels to that phenomenal vehicular footie game, which only makes Quidditch Champions more alluring to play.swiping the opposing team’s Quaffles, and hurling them into the goal rings, providing you with a great rush of satisfaction knowing your tactics to score have paid off. Be aware and dodge those hovering and buzzing Keepers though; they’re like hornets ready to deflect your shots on goal, but thankfully you can trick them by pretending you’re going to throw the Quaffle through one ring, but launch it through another-that’ll teach those jerks!
While on the subject of keeping your enemies in mind, they can easily bludger your unaware keester at a moment’s notice, though sometimes a quick reaction prompt pops up on screen, and if you press the correlating button on-time, you can dodge their pesky attempts at whacking you off course. This keeps you on your broom as it were because they can so easily clobber you and send you hurtling towards the pitch below, so not only are you constantly chasing and trying to snatch the Quaffle, you’re also forced to defend your vulnerable self, essentially acting as the cat and the mouse at the same time.
To win, your team needs to reach 100 points, which could mean you need to retrieve the Quaffle and send it into one of the giant rings, or if your Seeker successfully grabs hold of the Snitch, you’ll receive 30 points, which is a huge worthwhile haul of points, especially during a tight game. Going tit-for-tat is what makes Quidditch Champions sing, and the speed and ruthlessness of the games can be utterly thrilling to behold.
If you were discombobulated by reading this review, here’s a general outline of what you can expect in a game of Quidditch. Quidditch has 4 positions of play, which you would know if you didn’t already pay attention to Oliver Wood explaining to Harry the rules of the game before his first bout of Quidditch commenced in The Philosopher’s Stone. The field positions are Chaser, Keeper, Beater and Seeker. As the Chaser, you’re furiously hunting down and trying to gain possession of the Quaffle and attempting to score with it. The Keeper is always on the defense, preventing chasers from throwing the Quaffle into one of the three big rings to score a goal. Beaters carry bats and clobber bludgers who seek to whack players off their brooms. Lastly, Seekers follow The Golden Snitch, and require pinpoint speed and reflexes until they’ve managed to capture this tricky miniature golden-winged spherical object.
The most enjoyable position to play as is The Chaser, as it’s the most straightforward and undemanding role of the four. Charging for the Quaffle holder is always exhilarating, and giving em a good tackle means you’ll gain possession of the Quaffle, which then changes your priority from attack to defense, so you’ll need to evade the players around you, and if the action becomes too intense, throw the Quaffle to another player to continue the rush towards the goal.
Keepers are like goalies in football, they’re reliable at ensuring the Quaffle is kept away, but they don’t maneuver very well, and you may end up yearning to play another position on the pitch. You can move side-to-side, up and down, and you can utilize a sleek broom tail-whip to send those oncoming Quaffles flying in the other direction, otherwise you’ll be playing a dull waiting game, and if you decide to venture too far forwards, the game will flag up a warning telling you that you’re straying too far from the goal area.
Beaters are always handy and physically-capable players who can wallop anybody on the opposing side if they come anywhere close. They aren’t too different from Chasers, but their main objective is to bosh opposing Chasers and Beaters until they’re temporarily eliminated from the action. You’ll send an energy into the sky that’ll magnetically attract itself to the target like guided missiles. It only takes a couple of good shots to fell a player, but the overall worth of the Beater position is nothing more than aggressive defensive tactic to ward off foes from stealing the Quaffle.
You’ll need to wait 17 minutes into the game before you can become a Seeker because that’s when the Snitch is unleashed. Here you’ll be guided to a marker that informs you of where the Snitch is, and you’ll need to pass through sparkly golden coronas that’ll give you a splendid speed boost, the more of these coronas you zoom through the faster you get, and eventually a trigger prompt will appear where you can nab the Snitch before your opposing Seeker, and you’ll be rewarded with a bevy of points, which can help turn the tide of the game in your favour. The path the Snitch takes can be tricky to follow, as they can bounce off walls at a moment’s notice, leaving you momentarily puzzled as to its whereabouts until you’ve tracked it down again.
The commentary from Lee Jordan is a reminder of how competitive the game of Quidditch is, and how nerdy it is as well. Lines are repeated to such a shivering and irritable degree, that you may want to turn Lee’s overly-enthusiastic voice down so you can concentrate on the position you’re spearheading on the pitch. If Lee’s constant joke regarding the Golden Snitch having wings instead of legs isn’t boring you to griffin teardrops by the third game, then you really should join a book club and wear a Hogwarts scarf, cos you’re probably really enamored with game of Quidditch and can overlook how blatantly smug Lee’s commentary is.
What exasperates the commentary issue further though, is that the lines are repeated nauseatingly, so prepare for a formulaic repetition of which team is in possession of the Quaffle, and that a player is close to grabbing the Snitch. In general, the commentary sounds like it’s being dryly read from a script. The female Quidditch World Cup commentator sounds regal sure, but the lines she delivers are so sterile and lacking in fluidity that it breaks the immersion of the game as she verbally leads us through it.
Quidditch Champion’s art style isn’t particularly pleasing to the eye, but it’s suitable for the fantasy world of Harry Potter, and does a serviceable job bringing colour and character to the sporting world of Quidditch. If you were expecting next-level immersion and something graphically astounding look elsewhere, but if you want a bright and cheery presentation, Quidditch Champions puts up a decent effort.
Far from a throwaway offering, Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is a genuine surprise. The representation of the famed Harry Potter sport here is impressively realized thanks to dynamic and thrilling gameplay, a pleasant artstyle, and a pick up and play allure that gives it a satisfyingly accessible edge. Career and customization options are slim, the commentary is tacky, and you might forget about it quickly, but the temptation to dive into a game of Quidditch in any position is irresistible, and what may look like an underweight and throwaway title, is actually ruddy good if you give it a chance and you keep on playing. The return of videogame Quidditch isn’t without a few hiccups, but it’s definitely a worthwhile option for anybody curious, or who can’t get enough of chasing down Snitches.
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