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By Brad Cook He may be just a kid, but his adolescent abilities may someday make him one of the most powerful wizards to grace the pages of a book, a movie theater screen or even your Mac. |
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 Going Out on a Limb.Harry rescues his friend Ron Weasley from the Whomping Willow. |
During the course of the game you’ll learn new spells, play in more Quidditch matches and go head-to-head once more with Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy. If you learn your lessons well, you may also discover what’s hidden deep in the Chamber of Secrets.
Grand Entrance. Harry enters the Hogwarts castle.
Fans of the books may view this game as simply a rehash of Rowling’s novel, but it’s more than a videogame representation of the plot. Like its predecessor, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets’ story is similar to the one in the book, but it also offers opportunities for you to explore previously unseen areas of Hogwarts and even learn spells that are a bit different from the ones you read about.
So then, you may wonder, which interpretation of Chamber of Secrets is the “real one”?
Different and Less Authentic, But Not Bad
To someone like Steve Vander Ark, who runs the fan site Harry Potter Lexicon, Rowling’s novels represent Harry’s adventures in their purest form, whereas the movies, games and other spin-offs “fall into a different, less authentic category.
“It’s important to note that this doesn’t make them bad,” he adds. “[Take] the spells invented for the games. Just because Rowling didn’t invent them, are they ‘bad’? No, but they aren’t ‘pure’ Harry Potter either.”
Vander Ark maintains that this distinction is important because Rowling spent so much time in the beginning of the Potter series creating a complex set of rules for her fantasy world. Unfortunately, due to certain choices that must be made when translating the stories into different media, those rules often have to be bent or even broken.
Casting a Spell. Harry tackles a monster during one of his trials.
As an example, he points out the scene in the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone movie when Hermione casts a spell that casts a light as powerful as the sun to drive away the Devil’s Snare plant. “If such a bright spell did exist, simple enough to be cast by a first-year student,” he explains, “then Dumbledore, who casts a flashlight-power Lumos spell when searching the forest for Barty Crouch in Goblet of Fire, must be an idiot or must not have wanted to find Crouch very badly.
“Now, I don’t care at all that they changed it for the film,” he continues. “That spell looked great shining through all those tangled branches. But it would be wrong to list that in the Lexicon as part of Rowling’s world when it doesn’t fit.”
Tweaking Hogwarts
In the Chamber of Secrets game, Lumos illuminates hidden objects, something that the spell doesn’t do in the books either. But that aspect of the spell is crucial to the puzzle-solving aspect of the game, so it can be forgiven. Vander Ark says that Electronic Arts, which published Chamber of Secrets on other platforms and licensed it to Aspyr, actually visited his site many times during the development of the game, according to his web logs, so clearly they were interested in adhering to Rowlings’ world even as they were tweaking it to suit their purposes.
They did leave many key moments from the book, such as the escape from the Whomping Willow and professor Lockhart’s dueling club, intact, however. Quidditch, with those high-flying brooms and Harry’s assignment to snatch the snitch for an automatic victory, also came through largely unchanged.
The development team at Know Wonder streamlined the Quidditch controls and made it easier to follow the snitch than in the previous game. Now you simply keep Harry’s speed relative to its velocity and avoid rival seekers, rather than trying to follow it around the playing field. This development pleases Vander Ark, who needed one of his kids to take over for him when he played Quidditch in Chamber of Secrets.
You Are Here. Use the map of the Hogwarts grounds to navigate the game.
While learning new spells was a bit of a chore for many players of the first game, Know Wonder also simplified this process and made it easier to acquire incantations.
Hidden Treasures
Another area where EA and Know Wonder made adjustments to Harry’s world was in their use of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. In the books, they’re simply wizard jellybeans. In the game, however, they’re vital to your success. You’ll find them scattered around the Hogwarts campus; collect as many as you can and trade them in for a variety of treasures, including a Nimbus 2001 broom that allows Harry to grab the snitch easier. You’ll find the beans in cauldrons, statues, jewelry boxes, and other places; simply cast Flipendo spells on them to release the goodies.
Learning a Lesson. A group of would-be wizards gathers for a class at Hogwarts.
There are plenty of other secrets to uncover if you want to be tenacious about finding them. For example, the challenges that accompany the learning of each new spell offer hidden bonuses, and the other students at Hogwarts may have something interesting to say if you talk to them. Simply approach a character and he or she will turn and say something to Harry. They may have items to trade, or they may offer useful information. Some simply have amusing comments to make.
Despite any differences between the book and the game, it’s clear that the basic themes in Rowling’s work survived unscathed when translated to the digital realm. Vander Ark believes that “the books promote and support an extremely moral world and life view which appeals to everyone,” and it’s hard to argue that the game doesn’t do the same.
If you liked this game, check out:
 | American McGee’s Alice |
| Bugdom 2 |
| Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone |
| Otto Matic |
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A Guide to Harry’s World
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