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The game also requires a nauseating amount of backtracking, making the tedium all that much more unbearable. I'd rather be forced to eat vomit flavored Bertie Botts Beans than play this travesty against all things Rowling for another minute.

The game had real potential, however, as a simulation of a student's life at Hogwarts. The developers have created a living, breathing world similar to that of Rockstar's Bully where Hogwarts is concerned. Students shuffle about to and from classes, Draco Malfoy is always up to no good, ghosts take great pleasure in flying right through your solid form, and the paintings on the walls move and talk just as you'd expect them to in Harry's world. Moaning Myrtle even puts in a rather humorous appearance or two.

Unfortunately just as you start to enjoy making your way through this incredibly well done environment you are forced to stop and pick up bits of paper, use some magic to fix a smashed vase, or locate some pathetic Gryffindor student who has gotten lost among the school's notorious moving staircases and hallways. Again and again and again.

Last year Warner Brothers studios made a bit of a ripple in the gaming world when they announced a policy that would hold developers responsible for bad games based on their film properties. If they hold up their end of that bargain, the folks who brought us Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in videogame form should all be safely rotting away in Azkaban right now.