E3 2001: Hands-onHarry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
It's a third-person action/adventure title that puts you in the shoes of Harry Potter. Gamers can expect to encounter all the major characters from the books, which will be modeled after the actors playing them in the movie. You can walk around the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, learning spells and solving simple puzzles. Because EA is aiming it for a younger audience, there are lots of things to do, and the game moves forward fairly quickly. Later areas will add some variety, and there will even be a mini broomstick-racing game.
The game is powered by the Unreal engine, so it runs in both software- and hardware-accelerated modes. The demo we were shown was running at a steady framerate on a Pentium II 233, so expect very low system requirements. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone isn't going to thrill hardcore gamers, but it should please fans of the books when it's released this November.
