1. You must have been under a rock, in a cave on the dark side of the moon for the last couple of years.
2. Why are you reading this anyway? - Haven't you got something better to do?

So anyway, the game of the book of the movie of the lunch box plays like this: Part exploration, part collection, part flight sim and part platform adventure... This incarnation of HP owes a debt of gratitude to classic games like Tomb Raider, Pilotwings, Zelda Ocarina Of Time & Metal Gear Solid - the control system and many game elements have been borrowed, simplified, polished up real nice and used in a pleasant and friendly way, which makes for an initially engaging experience.

   

Lots of wandering around and exploration is broken up by spell-casting battles, puzzly bits and broomstick flying sections (you even get to play in games of Quidditch). The game looks consistently gorgeous. Perfect character models (that do a superb job of aping the book cover illustrations) are well animated and Hogwarts is always heaving with other pupils who seem to have their own little school lives (during the day time anyway). Splendid textures belie its multiformat roots, and with some impressive boss characters and interactive environments you can't fail to enjoy parts of HP, even if it's the simple pleasure of flying around the massively impressive Hogwarts on your Nimbus 2000. The game always feels friendly, even when there are tricky sections a restart point is never far away, and there are lots of opportunities to save your progress.

Problems arise when you try and figure out who the game is really aimed at. The samey (and what is at times painfully easy) wandering around type of gameplay might not appeal to older more sophisticated gamers, and some of the tricky flying, timed and stealth sections seemed to alienate younger gamers (some of whom we found wandering around Gamecell Towers and were subsequently forced to play and give their opinion).

   

The best solution is probably for Mum/Dad/Big Brother/Sister to play along with Kid, which is a nice idea but seldom works in practice. With some better testing (dodgy cameras on the stealth bits and a tricky difficulty setting for the kiddies), more freedom (there are lots of blocked off doors) and a bit more imagination (you can fly all around Hogwarts but there isn't much to do), Harry Potter's Xbox debut could have been a corker, but ended up just being good (if you love the books that is).