The Harry Potter movie games are pretty much interchangeable. Harry runs around Hogwarts in some abbreviated version of the film's plot with a handful of duels and wizard school-themed mini-games thrown in for good measure. The only thing that's changed in the last eight years is the technology, which increases the size of Hogwarts and makes the character models of the Harry Potter cast to look even creepier with every evolution.

The Half-Blood Prince is the penultimate book in J. K. Rowling's seven-book series. However, since Warner Bros. Pictures have decided to split the last book into two movies, we have another two movie tie-in games from EA to look forward to after this. Here's how this year's model stacks up.

Loved
Hogwarts Is Bigger: Instead of confining Harry to a rigid linear path between Potions and the Quidditch pitch, the game world is opened up gradually to include all areas of Hogwarts mentioned in the books (except Hogsmeade Village). Most areas you're free to go to once they're unlocked, although there are some places that you'll only see in cut scenes, like the Room of Requirement. Even so, the game world in Half-Blood Prince is so expansive, you actually have to have Nearly Headless Nick escort you to some places because you could really get lost.

Some Of The Mini-Games Don't Suck: It's common practice in Potter games to turn classes into mini-games. For whatever reason, the only classes Harry seems to have in Half-Blood Prince are Potions and Charms -– but at the very least, the potions mini-game doesn't suck. At least, not the first few times. The thrill of racing the clock to pluck out and pour ingredients with corresponding Wii Remote motion controls kind of wears off when the game forces you to do it five times in a row. Still, once you've unlocked the Potions Club, you can voluntarily mix potions and earn badges right from the main menu without having to dick around with Professor Slughorn. It's kind of fun.

Plot Gets Padded Out: Having seen the movie, I can barely express my exasperation with watching the in-game cut scenes mangle the movie. However, the game sometimes spares me the agony and replaces scenes from the movie with scenes from the book, or at least makes reference to things that happened in the book as a way of explaining the plot. So not only do you get a small fanboy or fangirl thrill from recognizing these parts, but you also get to see characters that were omitted from the movie, like Crabbe and Goyle.

Two Player Dueling Mode: There's a lot of flailing involved, but if two people are doing it together and perhaps you have a stash of liquor nearby, this multiplayer mode can actually be quite fun.

Fan Service: There are bits of the game that are clearly there just for the fans and not for anyone else. For example, the part of the game where you play as a love potion-poisoned Ron is hilarious. And pink.

Hated
Too Much Fiddly Wii Flailing: The game requires a lot of flailing just by its design -– for example, the duel mode is essentially all flailing and if you do anything different, you'll get knocked on your butt a lot. However, because the controls are just plain lousy in certain sections -– especially when casting Wingardium Leviosa to obtain Hogwarts crests -– you'll almost always find yourself suffering from shoulder pain as you struggle to maneuver Harry around sharp corners during a chase scene or guide him through six-pointed stars during Quidditch practice.

The Camera Is a Disaster: Most of the time, the camera remains fixed behind Harry in a third person view. However, the camera is slow and easily confused. Sometimes you'll lose it behind a bookcase, or it will become enamored of a corner while you're trying to get Harry through a doorway.

Plot Gets Padded Out Too Much: I don't mind when the game skips movie scenes and I don't mind seeing additional scenes from the book. I do mind when the game invents scenes and lines of its own that take people like Ginny or Snape completely out of character and just smack of bad fan fiction. To me, this is the opposite of fan service and I'd rather just skip it.

Some Really Horrible Voice Acting: I can understand if the Potter cast is too busy or too expensive to lend their voices to their game likeness, but couldn't the developer at least hire people who can act? It would make the butchering of lines from the movie a lot less painful.

The Liquid Luck Part: There's a very bizarre section of the game where Harry drinks a Liquid Luck potion and then the game goes into Naked Gun Intro mode so you can watch Harry stroll around Hogwarts to bad jazz club music. It's awkward, it's pointless and it actually causes me physical pain.

Fan Service Does Not A Game Make: Half-Blood Prince just doesn't seem like it's trying at all to establish a natural progression of events, a consistent sense of character development or anything that even makes the game worth playing on its own merits. It relies entirely on the Potter plot as a way to appeal to the player and as a means to get the player to forgive it for sucking with gameplay, voice acting and the camera. Subtract the Potter name altogether and you wouldn't even have a "game," just an elaborate torture device to inflict on small children.

The saddest thing about Half-Blood Prince is the part where it could have been a good game. It could have been Rockstar's Bully set in Hogwarts with Harry having free run of the grounds and the ability to interact with the wacky school and his fellow classmates. There is a little bit of freedom to run around at the end of the game, after you've finished the main adventure. By that point, however, you've probably thrown out your rotator cuff and tossed aside your Wii Remote in disgust after being forced to duel the painfully-voiced Bellatrix Lestrange for the half-dozenth time.

As a parting shot, let me reiterate what I said when Order of the Phoenix came out for the DS: If you're looking for a way to savor Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, you're better off re-watching the movie. Or re-reading the book. Or whacking yourself in the face with the book over and over again. Either way, you'll be better off for having not played this game.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was developed and published by EA for the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS and PSP. Released June 30 for $29.99 to $49.99. Played the Wii version and completed story mode, played two-player duel mode and spent way too much time trying to get all 150 crests.

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Loosely based on the Rafael Sabatini books that spawned an Errol Flynn movie and possibly a 2011 remake by director Phillip Noyce, Captain Blood follows the adventures of a doctor sold into slavery who later becomes a pirate. Developer SeaWolf picks up the story between the time when Captain Blood is no longer a slave and the time when he settles down with Olivia de Havilland.

What Is It?
Captain Blood is an action-adventure game for the Xbox 360 and PC. Players navigate Blood through linear levels on foot and through open water in his ship, the Arabella. The on-foot parts involve hacking and slashing rival pirates with a series of cutlass combos and occasionally shooting them with stolen pistols or muskets. The open water parts involve aiming cannons at attacking ships and clearing the deck of rival pirates that manage to board.

What We Saw
I played one boss fight about five times without being able to beat it and then quit out to the main menu to play a boat level where the goal is to sink four or five attacking ships.

How Far Along Is It?
Captain Blood is due out this winter. Publisher 1C says the game is still in alpha and there are some significant changes to gameplay in the works. It looks like the major gameplay elements are in place and the graphics look a lot further along than alpha.

What Needs Improvement?
Hack, Hack, Slash, Slash, Rinse, Wash, Repeat: A lot of hack ‘n' slash games get a little repetitive and Captain Blood is no exception. Part of that comes from the weapons Blood had on him during that boss fight; as you progress through the game, you're supposed to be buying better and better weapons which can be upgraded for more combos. Unfortunately, Blood only had the one cutlass with him and just two combos that never quite seemed to do enough damage. Worse, a lot of the animations repeated themselves during the boss fight – like a mini cut scene where the boss pulls a weapon out of his treasure chest.

Blood Falls Backwards: During the boss fight, the bad guy pirate would lob firebombs at Captain Blood. Whenever he'd get hit by the fire, Blood's injury animation would cause him to fall backward into the fire. This would cause him more damage and he'd keep falling backward deeper and deeper into the flames until he died or the fire went out. I hope this is one of those "significant" gameplay changes the developer is still working on.

Rage Mode Doesn't Do Much: There's a special Rage Mode that the player can trigger with the right bumper which supposedly makes Captain Blood do more damage. All it did for me was turn the edges of the screen white and fuzzy and make the controller vibrate.

You Can't Control The Camera. Ever: Boo!

What Should Stay The Same?
The Boat Levels: It certainly sounds repetitive to run back and forth across the Arabella's deck, trying to get to different cannons to fire on enemy ships. However, because the firing of the cannon requires actual skill, it's pretty exciting. Each cannon has a limited range of side-to-side movement and its arced trajectory is realistic. A misfired shot might go over an enemy ship to land harmlessly in the ocean on the other side, or it might graze the sails and render the enemy ship sluggish in the water. Distance and timing are key in this part of the game. Small, fast ships can zigzag up to or circle in on the Arabella and rake her while dropping off boarding parties. In the time it takes them to get there, they rarely present a target for more than a few seconds. Even when they do, it can take Captain Blood a long time to get from one side of his ship to the other what with all the deck clutter and frantic crew members in the way.

The Graphics: The colors in Captain Blood were pretty vibrant and the water looked amazing. Surprisingly, the environments reduced the repetitive feel of the gameplay – and since you spend about half the game on a boat or near a boat, water appearance is all-important.

Dodge Roll: It's mapped to the right stick which is really helpful for getting out of bad melee situations and fire that you might fall backwards into.

Quick Time Events: I actually don't mind them in Captain Blood, perhaps because they're not necessarily required for boss fights or opening doors. If the captain gets knocked off a ledge or a cliff, he'll grab onto the edge and a QTE will determine whether or not you succeed in climbing back up – but the timing is forgiving. Also, instead of just mashing a button over and over again to encourage Captain Blood to try harder when climbing up the side of a cliff face, the sly dog will do cool things like parry a cutlass slash or grab a guy's leg and fling him over the side as he climbs up, making the whole QTE both useful in thinning out mobs and way more entertaining.

Final Thoughts
Captain Blood reminds me a lot of THQ's Conan from 2007 – it's a simple action adventure game based on a popular (if way-old) book series. Oddly, Captain Blood is less bloody than Conan; but it still has this over-the-top violence that makes the linear levels feel more fun. So it's like the pirate flavor of a game that was based on a book which was the barbarian flavor of Sabatini's pirate adventures. Awesome. Go check out that Errol Flynn version if you haven't already.

I have a very mild form of it. I’ve gotten it mostly under control now. I played a lot of video games as a kid which really helped it. It basically surfaces as bad coordination.

Video games using their powers for good. Warms the heart, Harry, warms the heart.

Dirty Harry [The Daily Beast Thanks, Phil!]

And that's all they know. No further info given. Then again, being a Lego game, do you really need further info? They're all, largely, the same game. Running, jumping, shooting/punching, collecting Lego bits.

Just replace the IP, add a new theme song, then wonder aloud how long Traveller's Tales can get away with it before the buying public catches on.

To anyone and everyone hoping for Lego Blade Runner, Lego Kindergarten Cop or Lego The Italian Job, sorry. You'll have to maintain your silent vigils for a little while longer.

Lego Harry Potter in development? [CVG]

Form 8-K for ELECTRONIC ARTS INC. [Yahoo, via Variety]

I had it demoed for me by executive producer Jonathan Bunney and producer Justin Manning, and it came down to a fight.

Actually, the first part of the demo let me try out the potion-mixing minigame; you've got a bubbling cauldron and a desk full of ingredients like little vials, bottles, leeches and caterpillars, and symbol-based instructions for each step of the potion-making scroll up in a little wheel to the screen's right. A potion-making sim was a first for me, and I exploded the thing a few times, but it was mostly pretty fun, especially when you can tilt the Wii remote to spill a beaker's contents into the cauldron and then make a stirring motion to whirl it up until the color changes. It's all timed and ranks your precision, which was pretty fun.

Then, Bunney and I went at it with a Wii remote wand duel. He was playing Draco Malfoy and I was Harry. We faced off at either end of a long room, and you hold up the Wii remote to charge your wand for a powerful attack (leaving you undefended), or simply shake the remote in your opponent's direction to fire off a series of quick bursts.

You use the Nunchuk to move side to side, and swinging both Wii remote and Nunchuk across your body causes you to produce a deflection shield that can send your opponent's projectiles right back at him. Shaking both produces a special attack that can knock your opponent down or stun him.

I refuse to believe that Mr. Bunney politely allowed me to win, and instead, I'll tell anyone who will listen that I beat the game's EP in a wand duel.

Harry Potter is playable and there are some decent enemy patterns to fly through. At the start of the game Harry is sluggish. Slower than the Vic Viper without any speed power ups slow... If you shoot an entire formation you might get a weapon power-up, a speed boost or an extra life represented a by flickering Harry Potter head.

Harry Potter Shooter [Siliconera]

Unlike some of my journalistic brethren, I have no problem completely mortifying myself in the face of the internet as evidence by some of my past posts. So I will go on record as being a Harry Potter fan. I loved the books, generally enjoyed the films and am anxiously awaiting the final book in the series as well as the new movie.

Of course, a new movie means a new game, and EA has recently opened the doors on the website for the newest HP game, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. You can check out some trailers and download the requisite desktop wallpapers and chat icons with some other features coming soon. I'm really looking forward to this new HP game, especially the Wii version due to a control scheme where you get to wave your Wii remote around like a magic wand. Yeah, I like waving around a magic wand. Wanna make something of it? Flynn De Marco

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Game Website [EA]
[via Joystiq]

Pretty steamy scene between Cho Chang and Harry in there as well, though I'm sure it's nowhere as hot as in the fanfics. Engorgio! Michael Fahey

Both products will be released in the same week as each other in mid-July and so save up your pennies and your popsicles, because it's going to be a great summer. Kim Phu

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Trailer [Gamer Tag Radio]

Just two more movies to go and Grint can go back into his formative cocoon, Watson can pose in lingerie for Maxim, and Radcliffe can open that horse farm he's always wanted. Michael Fahey

Anyone with a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2, PSP, Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance or PC will be able to enjoy another rousing video game adaptation of the film adaptation of the book with varying degrees of quality. Exclusive to the PS3 and Xbox 360 version are perfect examples of the "uncanny valley". Watch for it! Michael McWhertor

Here's another Threadless design you all should vote for: a strange Katamari Damacy meets Harry Potter mash-up, "The Half Blood Prince of All Cosmos". Here's hoping the Prince is planning on rolling them all into a pit filled with glass and honey. Florian Eckhardt

The Half-Blood Prince of All Cosmos [Threadless] (Thanks, Aaron!)