Who doesn't know him, Harry Potter, the student-wizard of Hogwarts who was the only one to survive the attack of Lord Voldemort and therefor has to walk around with a scar on his face for the rest of his life. When the world of the non-magical humans discovered his adventures, a real Pottermania started. After the books there came the movies and of course also the games. An aspect that was present everywhere but never really in a prominent role was Quidditch, the magical sport of wizards. Now that has changed.

As you can imagine by the title, Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup is all about Quidditch and nothing but Quidditch. What immediately catches your attention when launching the game is a very moody intro movie where you get to see some fine Quidditch tactics. After this nice pixelviolence you enter the main menu where you'll soon notice that this game doesn't use the mouse. Everything you do will have to be done with the arrow keys. Still, to be child-friendly, all the keys that are possible for use and nicely marked at the right bottom of your screen.

Before you can start with the real world cup you have to qualify. To do that you first have to become champion in the Hogwarts cup. Of course you have to play the necessary games and follow enough training to be allowed in this cup.

Each training is very thoroughly explained and the standard keys feel very natural during play. The trainings have an increasing difficulty level and after each one of them there's a match. When winning this match, you'll unlock new stuff like extra trainings, new matches, ...

It did strike me that the matches were quite easy. The first victories are so easy you can get them without spilling even one drop of sweat. This decreases the playtime of the Hogwarts cup significantly although the huge replayability of the game makes up for that as there's always something to do.
You can play four teams and there's loads of different games to do.

The easyness leaves very rapidly once you start the world cup. Even in the lowest difficulty level the game suddenly becomes a lot harder and the matches last a lot longer. Also here is a huge replayability due to the many different teams with whom you can play the world cup to reach for the highest goal.

Multiplayer is present in that sense that you can play against someone else on the same computer. Remember the old days when you had to sit right next to each other to play together ? Those times are back ! Internet or LAN play are abscent.

Graphics are decent and actually pretty good. Not to say excellent. The camera nicely tracks the ball during play and the rest of the stadion and players are nicely drawn. Also the sound is well done and very natural. The commentators are good understandable and the effects are beautiful. Scoring a goal after the special move of the Norwegians remains extremely spectacular to see :)

HP:QWC is a rock solid game although the spot itself is a bit awckward in comparison to what we here on earth tend to play :D. The game is definitely a must-have for the fans as it shows an aspect of the Harry Potter world which has been neglected a bit in the previous games but now has been extremely nicely worked out, but also the normal bloke in the street will definitely it. Admit it: who didn't like playing a wizard in his youngest days, pretending to be able to fly on a broomstick to do some crazy stuff ?