With my wife calling first dibs on reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I spent the past weekend engrossed in the game version of Order of the Phoenix. I’d waited until watching the new movie before getting into the game (needlessly, really, since I’d already read the book) and what struck me about the film was how familiar I was with Hogwart’s School for Witchcraft and Wizardry—from the courtyards and covered bridges to the ever-moving staircases and that sloping hill down to Hagrid’s hut—because of hours spent with the previous Playstation adaptations.

 

But the latest game really steps up the realism in the series’ inaugural now-gen entry (the PS3 and 360 versions are prettier, but Wii's motion-sensitive controller works like a wand). Using the same blueprints as the film’s set designers, the school is more realistic than ever, by a vast margin. It’s not as expansive a setting as, say, Oblivion, but they’ve done a fine job at digitizing J.K. Rowling’s imagination.

 

So it makes sense that they’ve turned the previously action-oriented series into a sandbox title that allows the game to be played in a nonlinear fashion. Alongside Ron and Hermione, you spend your days wandering the castle and grounds, attending classes and recruiting fellow students into your Wolverines-like insurgent group Dumbeldore’s Army.

 

There are plot elements that vaguely propel the story forwards via cutscenes—and don’t worry, you will get that big showdown between Dumbledore and Lord Voldie at the climax—but pixilated recreations of, say, the dementors attack on stupid cousin Dudley is not what where this game excels.

 

Which is not to say that the developers couldn’t have used the opportunity to delve into the deeper aspects of the source material, which involve a Kafkaesque magical bureaucracy, government and media collusion and plentiful war-on-terror allusions (the Ministry of Magic and Fox News-inspired Daily Prophet treat Harry like he’s Joe Wilson).

 

But still, free-roaming a Hogwarts this detailed—with all the teachers, house elves, secret passageways, talking paintings and moaning myrtles you could imagine—is pretty damn satisfying, almost as much as knocking Draco Malfoy on his ass with a stupefy spell.