For the past several years that Harry Potter has been popular, it’s picked up a few fans along the way.

Part of me dismissed this as routine, a trend that would eventually subside.

It didn’t and soon my friends began talking about the books while my sister began buying the new ones as soon as they hit the shelves.

By the time both the group of them were camping out for the release of “The Deathly Hallows” this year, there was no getting around it; I’d have to see what the game was all about.

Despite being several books back in the reading cycle (and actually enjoying them – I really need to finish off “Goblet of Fire” one of these days) as well as never having picked up a controller for a Harry Potter video game in my life, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, developed by EA UK and produced by Electronic Arts, proved to be one of the most fun titles I’d had a chance to play on my Mac in recent weeks.

Perfectly modeled around the fifth book of the series, Order of the Phoenix tracks through the narrative events of the novel as Harry Potter revisits his encounter with Lord Voldemort, begins to become acquainted with the Order of the Phoenix and starts to recruit and train Dumbledore’s Army as a means of resistance.

Designed around a “sandbox” structure, Order of the Phoenix allows for full exploration of environments. Although the game is essentially “on rails” and guides the player through cut scene movies from one major objective/plot point to the next, the player is allowed to go almost anywhere they want in the castle provided it’s accessible to them. Simply pull up the map, select a location and put the map away. The game will then illustrate the correct path to that location via animated footprints that appear ahead of you as you run, the direction of the footprints keeping you from getting lost.

Exploration plays a key art in the game and the title both allows players to go off the beaten path and explore new routes. Once additional spells have been learned, the player can attempt to move and interact with different objects in the castle, eventually gaining reward points and unlocking character bonuses and upgrades.

Order of the Phoenix is designed as a marquee title, a factor that both helps and hurts it as a Mac game. The platform has received a fun title with good graphics and great sound (especially outdoor and ambient noises), but has also received a title with controls that feel like they were designed for a console controller as opposed to a keyboard and mouse. Specific preferences such as inputs, difficulty settings and video resolution feel awkward to configure given how the menus are laid out and a contrived save structure doesn’t allow for a game to be saved up to the moment the player chooses, but only up towards major plot points, such as completing a task or defeating an opponent in a wizard’s duel.

Even with these shortcomings, the game is still fun and fans of the series will enjoy it, even if the control scheme does take some getting used to. It’s still Harry Potter, it’s still a good story, the voice work remains commendable, it’s not every day that a person gets to play Quidditch and ample tutorials and reinforcement throughout the game ensures that the player learns a new spell and makes consistent use of it.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix requires a decent, but not earth-shattering, Mac to run (1.83 GHz or faster Intel Core Duo, Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later, 8X or faster DVD-ROM drive, 4.5 gigabytes of hard drive space and an Nvidia 7300 or ATI X1600 graphics card or better). The game doesn’t support the Intel GMA chipset (and therefore can’t be run on MacBooks), but plays nice with Mac OS X 10.4.10 and no problems arose during test play.

Order of the Phoenix isn’t for everyone, but its audience isn’t as limited in scope as one might think. The title remains fun, even if your interest in the Harry Potter books and movies is minimal at best. Between the spells, the story, the characters, the extra games (including Wizard’s Chess), Hogwarts to explore and the rest, even an aloof fan will find themselves being drawn in and want to see it through to the end and for US$39.95, EA has a genuinely fun game on its hands.

Minimum Requirements:
- Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later
- 1.83 GHz or faster Intel Core Duo processor
- 1 GB of RAM
- 4.5 GB free hard-disk space
- Video card: ATI X1600 series or later; NVIDIA GeForce 7300 or later
- DVD-ROM drive

Tested on:
-Mac OS X 10.4.10
-Quad Core 2.66 GHz Mac Pro
-2 GB of RAM
-Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT, 256 MB of VRAM

Final Score: 85%