Wonderbook: Book of Spells is the first game that uses the brand new augmented reality book called Wonderbook, a book that allows you to bring stories to life with the PS Move.

Wonderbook: Book of Spells is written by Harry Potter author J.K Rowling and it focuses on a spell guide known as ‘Book of Spells’. The purpose of the book is to teach those who read the book various magic spells.

First and foremost I think it is important to get the discussion of the games controls out of the way. To be frank the Move controls are bad, on many occasions the Move controller left me rather annoyed as the device seemed to suffer depth perception issues and just overall poor response time. These issues led to spells not going where you want them to go for example when I wanted a spell to go to the top of a page it wouldn’t do so straight away and after several attempts the Move finally realized what I was trying to do. That said while the Move controls were painful, the game as a whole is rather enjoyable.

The main point of the game is to learn and use magic from the Harry Potter universe which ranges from the well known levitation spell to a slightly lesser known bird summoning spell.

Spells are taught through five chapters, with each chapter containing four spells for you to learn and master. Spell are easy to learn, but mastering spells can be challenging as you have to do mini tests after learning each spell to make sure you know how to use the spell correctly. After you learn all the spells in a chapter you must complete a chapter test which involves you using all the spells you learnt to complete an array of challenges.

The challenges and tests aren’t overly tricky and they just require you to remember what sign to make to use the spell you need, if you get stuck you can ask the game for a hint and the game will show you what sign you need to make with your move controller. There is however a penalty to asking for help as the amount of house points you receive for completing a test is decreased.

Now let’s step back to before you get to flick your move around like a wand. The game introduces and teaches you the various spells in an interesting and compelling way by having the necessary information read out to you by a narrator. The narrator reads the text to you and talks through little interactive videos which shows the history of the particular spell you are about to learn.

After the history lesson you are told the spells name which the game asks you to shout out for no particular reason before proceeding to show you the symbol you have to make to active the spell.

Overall it is very simple way of teaching, but it works well especially with the little videos that can be rather amusing and they do offer some interactivity by asking you to fill in missing words.

SCORE: 80%

With easy to understand gameplay and helpful narration Wonderbook: Book of Spells is a great interactive story for both children and Harry Potter fans to immerse themselves in.

Wonderbook: Book of Spells Information

• Developer: SCE London Studios
• Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
• Genre: Augmented reality
• Rating: 7+
• Platform: PlayStation 3 (Wonderbook, PS Move and PS Eye)
• Release date: out now
• Website: http://ie.playstation.com/ps3/games/detail/item502636/Wonderbook%E2%84%A2-Book-of-Spells/?WT.tsrc=portal+games+gallery