It's always exciting when something new comes along in the gaming world, and every now and then that "something" turns out to be good. At last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, Sony placed a lot of stock in its Wonderbook: Book of Spells, and it generated much fervour.
An interactive PlayStationMove game within the magical world of Harry Potter's Hogwarts, developed with J.K. Rowling herself, sounds like a Potter fan's dream. But the thing about Potter fans is that all the i's have to be dotted and all the t's crossed, or wrath will rain down upon whichever form of media has dared to offend.
Book of Spells enrols you into Hogwarts and uses the PS Eye motion-controller and supplied book to teach you spells, from simple levitation and shooting water from your "wand" to eventually summoning a Patronus to ward off Dementors.
Each page of the book teaches you a new spell with a nice explanation on its background. You learn a spell, try it out and then learn the next one. Sadly, there isn't much of a story to bring the game together and take advantage of what the technology has to offer.
The game looks amazing and does what it does well, although it exposes the PS Eye camera as last-generation hardware.
Book of Spells falls well short of its potential but is solid enough to bode well for any future games in the genre. Let's just hope the scope for its use isn't too narrow.
