Hogwarts Legacy: A childhood dream come true

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Released: 7th February 2023

Developer: Portkey Games

System: PC / PS5 / XBox Series X/S / PS4 & XBox One (May 2023) / Nintendo Switch (July 2023)

Price: $59.99 USD / £49.99 GBP

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The time has finally come to go to Hogwarts - we’ve all been waiting for this since we turned 11 years old! I have been a huge Harry Potter fan for over 25 years so when the first reveal showcased Hogwarts Legacy I was extremely excited. I have played previous versions of Harry Potter video games, notably the original PC ports of Philosopher’s Stone & Chamber of Secrets (They went a bit downhill after those two) as well as the Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 and 5-7 games - which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, none of these predecessors really scratched that itch of being able to fully explore Hogwarts and the surrounding areas, discovering all of Hogwarts’ many secrets. Hogwarts Legacy changed all of that.

Even with the surrounding criticisms - Hogwarts Legacy was one of the most awaited games of 2023. Despite the backlash and attempts to ‘cancel’ the game, it still went on to sell 15 million copies and earned 1 billion dollars globally. 

So let’s start with the graphics. There is no denying this game is beautiful. I was lucky to be able to play the game on PC and I have a fairly decent set up (RTX 3080) and went with the recommended High settings that the game suggested. I did have some strange lighting issues while inside caves or inside Hogwarts castle whenever I had ray-tracing switched on, so I played the majority of the game with this switched off.

Luckily I was also able to play the Steam Deck version which I used for a huge portion of my playthrough. It ran pretty well on Steam Deck if I set the graphics to low. However, I ultimately did switch back to playing on PC in the end. I was infuriated to find that, during a 5 hour flight I was unable to load my save file as there was no internet connection. At the time of writing this review a patch has been released which greatly increases the performance on the Steam Deck.

We begin the game as a young student who is starting Hogwarts in their fifth year due to the fact that we are able to see glimpses of ancient magic. The Harry Potter fan in me originally thought this was a bit strange - starting Hogwarts in fifth year? With no prior magical education? Ridiculous. However the game washes this away by making it clear the main character has been training with a Hogwarts professor for a good couple of weeks before term starts. The game has a good opening with decent tutorials and plays very well. However, if you’re like me and cannot wait to get to Hogwarts to be sorted into your house - it can feel like a bit of a drag.

Eventually you do get to Hogwarts, albeit late to the sorting ceremony. I believe there was an option to link your Pottermore account to the game and it would sort you into the House you were sorted into on the website, or you can just take the sorting hat quiz in the game and it will sort you. If you do not like which house you are placed in, you can choose which house you go into. Naturally, I was sorted into Gryffindor. Do note that there are slightly different ways parts of the game play out depending on which house you are sorted into. There is also one sidequest that is exclusive to Hufflepuff which I think many people would like to play - however I don’t wish to spoil what the quest is during this review. 

Hogwarts in this game is an actual dream. It’s everything I wanted and more. There are a lot of mysterious things lying around and doors surrounded by runes which you are unable to open at first. Figuring out the secrets of Hogwarts was one of my favourite things about this game. I spent hours upon hours just running around the castle and exploring. The game does a very good job of opening different parts of the castle up to you as you progress through your lessons and the storyline. The fact that I was still exploring parts of the castle at 25 hours into my playthrough was just wild to me. 

The atmosphere around Hogwarts is just as magical as I hoped it would be. Often while just running around the castle I was highly entertained by suits of armor humming and singing, or even beating each other up! Portraits would talk to you, some students were being harassed by howlers - it was just brilliant. I was also very happy to see that Peeves the poltergeist was in the game. He was omitted from the movies and to have him back was amazing.

There are a lot of side-quests in the game, in addition to the main storyline - some of these are really well written stories, such as Sebastian Sallow’s arc. Others are not as deep. I did find that after about 20 hours into the game, I got bored of side quests - they just became a bit too repetitive for me, and ultimately I just ended up doing the three main relationship quests for Natsai, Poppy and Sebastian, which was my favourite quest.

The combat flows very well in this game. I was interested to see how they would make combat work as it is not your traditional kind of combat. You learn many different defensive spells throughout your playthrough and you use these to hit enemies, following up with basic casts which will grant you higher damage points. One thing I did find frustrating about the combat is when casting spells, for some reason your character steps forward after each cast - meaning that if you’re fighting on a clifftop or close to a ledge, you have to be very careful to ensure that you don’t fall off!

A couple of hours into the main story you will gain access to brooms and flying. The controls for flying were a bit difficult to get used to, especially on mouse and keyboard. In general I think this game definitely lends itself better to gamepad controls rather than mouse and keyboard. The flying controls I found to be so clunky that I struggled with the main flying side-quests which are needed for you to be able to upgrade your broom. Luckily, as I am a filthy casual I was playing the game on story mode I was given the opportunity to skip these flying sections after 2 failed attempts, so all was good there. 

Flying is a lovely way to explore the vast overworld the game offers up. I admit that it took me a long time to realise that you can actually cast the ‘Revelio’ spell while flying which highlights all nearby points of interest - this was really helpful for identifying caves, magical beast areas and much more. 

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the game, there were some issues and things I didn’t like about it. 

When flying around on your mount or broom, quite often you would hit areas you wouldn’t be able to fly through - namely around the Hogsmeade area and the Coastal Cavern. This was annoying to me and really broke the immersion. 

In the early days of the game, you would activate ‘floo’ flames which act as fast travel points. It was a clever idea as the map is so huge it would take a long time to get anywhere, so floo travel was a way to get around the map quicker. Unfortunately, all of the floo flames were accompanied by busts of Ignatia Wildsmith, who continually reminded us of how inconvenient travel was before she invented floo powder. Every time you walked past a floo flame, the bust would basically shout lines at you, catching you off guard and scaring the hell out of you.

‘You can’t IMAGINE how inconvenient travel was before I invented floo powder’ 

‘Off on another adventure, are we?’

‘How nice to see you, my young friend!’ 

‘What are you up to now?’ 

If I had a dollar for everytime that this floo powder lady jumpscared the hell out of me, I’d certainly be rich by now. I am happy to say that after a week or two, the dev’s put out a patch which nuked how often she talked and I think it also decreased the volume of her speech!

One of the biggest complaints about the game I have noticed, which also greatly affected me as well, was the fact that you were unable to pause cutscenes. This was really inconvenient and I cannot understand why the devs did not implement a pause option? Some cutscenes, especially near the beginning of the game were quite long and it was annoying to not be able to pause them. 

In conclusion - this game was everything I hoped it would be and more - it was the Harry Potter game I didn’t know I needed, and didn’t realise I had been waiting for my whole life. If you’re a fan of open world games, I recommend that you definitely give this a try! 

Pros:

• Beautiful Overworld & Graphics

• Gigantic Hogwarts to explore

• Dev team actively working to address any issues

• Some great storylines

Cons:

• No function available to pause cutscenes

• Limitations on flying break immersion

• Flying controls quite clunky

• Can get a little repetitive after 30-40 hours

Pokemon Centre London pop-up Store Take Two: A Much Improved Experience

The Pokémon World Championships took place between August 18th-21st at the ExCel Exhibition Centre in London. Featuring the Pokémon Card Game and also Pokémon Sword and Shield, the event was jam packed with fans, spectators and competitors alike. In addition to the championship events, there was also a Pokémon Centre pop up store not unlike the previous store which was situated as Westfield Shopping Centre in White City, London back in 2019.

I was fortunate to be able to snag a reservation to visit the Pokémon Centre pop up store on Sunday, August 21st and I can confirm that the whole experience was vastly improved upon. You may remember reading about the chaos surrounding the 2019 Pokémon Centre pop up store, with queues lasting upwards of twelve hours just to be able to enter the store. Thankfully, the Pokémon Company have learned from this and a reservation system was created alongside a virtual queuing system for those who did not have reservations to visit the store.

I arrived at the Pokémon Centre pop up store a little before my reservation time, but was allowed to enter the store with no problems. Fortunately, there wasn’t much of a line! As it was the final day of the event, there wasn’t much exclusive London merchandise left apart from badge sets, backpacks and umbrellas. The store was very impressive with a lot of merchandise up for grabs. Small Pokémon plushies were priced between £9.99 to £14.99 and bigger ones were around £18.00. There were a few gigantic Pokémon plushies, of which we saw an Arcanine, which cost £299.99 - as you can imagine there weren’t many of these left for sale by the time I got to the store.

Other than exclusive London merchandise and plushies, the store also hosted a range of trading card sets, the trading card game set and also quite a few different t-shirt designs however, these were priced at £39.99 which I thought was a bit expensive for a t-shirt. One of my favourite items I saw while waling around the store were 3 exclusive boards, what I can only describe as skateboards without wheels. There were 3 different designs and they were beautiful. Unfortunately they were priced at £199.99 otherwise I definitely would have bought the Galarian Ponyta one for my niece.

After walking around the store twice and ultimately deciding to buy a Sir Fetch’d and a Magikarp plush, we decided to take a walk around the venue to see what else was on offer. Unfortunately, all the spectator passes had sold out, so we weren’t able to watch any gameplay. The main concourse of ExCel London is huge though and quite nice to walk along. There was a dedicated trade area where many fans were congregated to trade their Pokémon. There was also a Nintendo Switch demo area where you could play some Pokémon Legends: Arceus should you feel inclined to do so. 

An hour or so later, we decided to leave the event and make our way over to the Emirates Airline Cable Cars - which in partnership with the Pokémon event were decorated accordingly! The cable cars take you from Royal Victoria Docks over to North Greenwich Peninsula (Where the O2 Arena is located). Both Cable Car stations had been decorated accordingly - a huge poster captioned with ‘Enjoy your flight’ could be seen just before boarding your cable car.

Every single cable car was decorated with different types of Pokemon! There were separate cars for Rock Type, Grass Type, Fairy Type, Normal Type, Ice Type… You name it, they had it. We boarded the Ghost Type cable car and began our ascent. The views were pretty interesting from the cable car itself - showing the O2 arena and Canary Wharf area of London. The trip was rather short - I don’t think it could have been more than 5 minutes in total. Regardless of this though, it was a really fun activity to try out and the Pokemon themes at both North Greenwich and Royal Victoria Docks was amazing.

It was very refreshing to see that The Pokémon Company have really took on the criticisms voiced from the previous Pokémon Pop-up store and improved the experience ten-fold. The fact that we barely had to wait in line was so wonderful, in-fact we waited in line for the Emirates Airline longer than we waited in line at the pop-up store! If one of these Pop-up stores ends up coming to a location near you, I highly recommend you pay them a visit.

Tips and Tricks for Incorporating Gaming into your Wedding Day

It's going to be one of the happiest days of your life, so all the things that make you happy should be incorporated into your day. Family, friends, colour schemes and gaming. Yep, you read that correctly - Gaming. Everyone who knows me and my partner knows that we are avid gamers, we even met on Twitch. For this reason, we wanted gaming to have a big presence on our wedding day because it is a big part of who we are and a big aspect of our relationship.

For our wedding ceremony itself, we incorporated gaming in a very subtle way. We chose three pieces of music to play as our processional & recessional music and also whilst signing the marriage register. If you're curious, we chose 'Romance in the Air' from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for processional, 'For River' from To The Moon for signing the register and 'Fossil Falls' from Super Mario Odyssey for recessional.

We did not have a traditional wedding reception and instead opted for a party with all of our family and friends, this is where we really let our love for gaming shine.

Traditionally at weddings the bride and groom have a post box available for guests to post their wedding cards. We did the same but with a twist; Ours was a question block from Super Mario!

I made this post box by hand with friends a few days before the wedding, it consisted of buying a cardboard cube and spray-painting it yellow. This took a few coats of spray paint to make sure it was a solid yellow.

Once the paint had dried, I took 4x Mario question marks that I'd printed and cut them out and stuck them to 4 sides of the box.

Next, to treat our guests we invested in a piñata in the shape of a pokeball, which we stuffed full of sweets, stickers and miniature Pokémon figurines. This went down a storm as people took turns hitting the piñata while the Pokémon theme song was blasted out of the speakers. This was such a big hit and I would recommend this 100%, nobody is too old for a piñata! Some other ideas I had for the piñata before deciding on the pokeball were: Mario Star, Mario Question Block, Mario 1Up Mushroom, the ideas are endless, and if you search Etsy you will likely find that someone has created these for purchase!

Finally, one of the most important parts of the wedding party - the wedding cake. There are endless ideas you can find online for gaming wedding cakes. While researching I found some very clever Portal wedding cakes as well as ones that were formal on one side, and gaming themed on the other side.

The design we ended up choosing consisted of a 1 tier white wedding cake at the top of a cupcake tower. As you can see from the photo, we went with a Super Mario theme. The top tier featured the Mario and Peach wedding amiibo's from the Super Mario Odyssey set, which were generously gifted to us by a friend.

The lower tiers hosted an assortment of red and green Mario mushrooms, with each cupcake case decorated with the eyes. It looked absolutely stunning and, of course, tasted delicious - we were very fortunate to have close family friends work on our wedding cake, so we were able to have it exactly as we pictured it. If you want to top it off even more perfectly, you can cut your wedding cake with the Master Sword like we did!

So these are just a few pointers that you may consider for incorporating gaming into your own wedding day. Have any of you had a gaming themed wedding? Let me know what you chose in the comments!

Five Hopes for Breath of the Wild 2

I am currently replaying Breath of the Wild in preparation for the much awaited sequel, coming to Nintendo Switch in 2023. Although Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece in its own way, I can’t help thinking about things that I hope will be improved and/or changed in Breath of the Wild 2, so here is my list of five hopes that I have for Breath of the Wild 2.

5 - Easier 100% completion

I always enjoy playing Zelda games to 100% completion with my partner - who is a completionist through-and-through. We always ensure that we 100% complete every game we play if possible.

So, with this in mind - I’d really love for Breath of the Wild 2 to have a much easier way to 100% complete the game. Don’t get me wrong, the Korok seeds were a nice addition to Breath of the Wild, but having to find 900 of them to 100% complete the game was just overkill. 

4 - More story focused

It’s clear that Nintendo was chasing the open world exploration dream with Breath of the Wild, and honestly, it was refreshing to play a different kind of Zelda game.

Although I believe that due to the huge emphasis on exploration in Breath of the Wild, that the story greatly suffered to accommodate this.

I won’t spoil the ending here in case readers have not yet completed the game - but I was left underwhelmed by the end of Breath of the Wild and I hope that the storytelling aspect and the ending of Breath of the Wild 2 are improved.

3 - More traditional-style dungeons

In my opinion, one of the main things people love about Zelda games are the dungeons; they are an iconic part of the Zelda franchise. Breath of the Wild mixed it up a little, with the Divine Beasts being a replacement for traditional-style dungeons. They were an awesome addition, and I especially enjoyed being able to manipulate the way the beasts moved in order to solve puzzles and make progress throughout the dungeons.

My main gripe with the Divine Beasts was that there weren't enough of them. Breath of the Wild is such a huge game, set in the vastly enormous Hyrule - it seemed like there should have been more than four Divine Beasts. In my opinion, it should have been six Divine Beasts minimum. My hope for the sequel is that Nintendo incorporates more main dungeons.

2 - Climbing gear that allows you to climb during rain

Another pet peeve - it seems Breath of the Wild has brought the worst out of me! Climbing mechanics - great! Link can climb anything that isn’t a shrine/dungeon wall - awesome… Except for when it rains. 

Rainy weather turned out to be the biggest buzzkill of Breath of the Wild for me, the weather forecast was foreboding every time I saw the little rain symbol slowly approaching. This is because, every time it rained, I was unable to climb - it was infuriating. I honestly believe that the climbing gear set acquired in the game should have given Link the ability to climb while it is raining. Perhaps it could only activate when Link is wearing all three items in the set, as other outfits give a bonus when wearing the full set. Nevertheless, this is definitely something which I hope is addressed in the sequel. 

1 - Increased weapon durability

This is one of the biggest pet peeves I have about the original game. I agree that weapon durability is an interesting mechanic added to the Zelda series, however I believe that the threshold for weapon durability should be increased in the sequel.

This rings true even mores so for higher level weapons. Nothing made me more angry than using the majority of my weapons inventory killing lynels. 

So there you have it, my top 5 list of hopes I have for Breath of the Wild 2. What are your hopes for the eagerly awaited sequel? Let me know in the comments!

Thoughts on Mario Kart 8 DLC Wave 2

Nintendo dropped the Mario Kart 8 DLC Wave 2 on Thursday, August 4th 2022. This was a welcome addition to the game and personally, a nice surprise for me as I didn’t find out about wave 2 until release day. Releasing every few months up to and including 2023, the Mario Kart 8 DLC keeps things fresh by giving gamers 8 additional tracks to race on.

This time around, Nintendo has offered up the following tracks across two cups:

Turnip Cup

• New York Minute (Mario Kart Tour)

• Mario Circuit 3 (Super Mario Kart)

• Kalimari Desert (Nintendo 64)

• Waluigi Pinball (Nintendo DS)

Propeller Cup

• Sydney Sprint (Mario Kart Tour)

• Snow Land (Mario Kart Super Circuit)

• Mushroom Gorge (Mario Kart Wii)

• Sky-High Sundae (Mario Kart Tour - coming soon)

Now, if you’re like me and haven’t played much of Mario Kart Tour, then the Tour tracks are basically like brand new tracks and very fun to experience for the first time on Switch. They look gorgeous and the way that each lap changes slightly from the previous ones is a nice change from older Mario Kart tracks.

The fact that Nintendo is remastering all of these old tracks from previous Mario Kart game is a stroke of genius, as it will introduce players to older tracks which they never got to experience if they did not own older systems. For me, personally i didn’t own a SNES or a Gameboy Advance, so some of these remasters are my first ever time experiencing the tracks.

The two tracks that stand out the most for me and are my personal favourites would have to be Kalimari Desert (Nintendo 64) and Waluigi Pinball (Nintendo DS). Having grown up with the Nintendo 64 as our family console - Kalimari Desert holds a lot of nostalgia for me. The remaster is beautiful and the changes Nintendo made in lap 2 were amazing! Waluigi Pinball held a lot of fun memories for me from when I used to play Mario Kart DS with friends.

The Mario Kart 8 Expansion Pass DLC is available to purchase from the Nintendo eshop for $24.99. Alternatively, it is included in the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack for subscribers at no extra cost.