Hello children, and welcome to your new class, Magicking Up Money. We'll be learning a basic but very effective spell today, one which is guaranteed to cause money to come flowing to you as easily as water to the sea. So, please, raise your wands and repeat after me… "Cashinium Maximosa!"

Okay, so it's not quite that bad, as there is some degree of enjoyment to be had in the game of the film of the book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but there's no disputing that this is not all that it could have been - not by a long shot. I didn't get around to playing Prisoner of Azkaban, but I did very much enjoy Chamber of Secrets, which laid a promising foundation for a relatively free-roaming adventure of exploration, tasks to complete and secrets to discover. So imagine my disappointment when I found that Goblet of Fire, which potentially could have been the best game yet, is a step in the wrong direction of tasks for tasks' sake and very linear gameplay.

The story begins at the Quidditch World Cup, and the first thing that I was very disappointed about is the complete lack of clips from the film. There is no film footage to introduce each section; instead we have barely animated, storybook style cut scenes that look quite nice but just aren't half as good as using film clips, or even the graphics engine, to reproduce scenes. Stephen Fry does a good job of narrating, but even so, the narration is minimal and unless you're intimately familiar with the book and/or film, you really won't have a clue what's going on. It is fair, to a degree, to assume that anyone playing this game is a fan of all things Potter, but even so, in a game there's really no excuse for cutting corners - there isn't a time factor like with a film, and there should be more scope for setting the scene and telling the story well.

Anyway, Voldemort's Death Eaters are wreaking havoc at the Quidditch World Cup and Harry, Ron and Hermione must escape the scene by way of a portkey, an object that has been enchanted to transport anyone touching it to a predetermined location. The game begins and it's nice to see that, for the most part, our three chums are inseparable, moving around the level and working together to defeat enemies, open up paths and solve puzzles. However, because there is a co-operative mode that allows two players to team up and play through most levels together, the camera angles are fixed and set at quite a distance, so everything looks quite small and, consequently, unspectacular.

To be fair, the level locations are very well realised and capture the authentic feel of the Harry Potter world nicely; the balconies and rooftops of Hogwarts, the Defence Against The Dark Arts classroom, the gloomy trees of the Forbidden Forest, the grand archaic architecture of the pipe system beneath the prefects' bathroom and the overgrown grounds of Professor Sprout's greenhouses, plus of course the settings of the Tri-Wizard tasks themselves. Each environment is nicely crafted, with plenty of detail in the environments, and a range of things to interact with. There are objects to find and jinx on each level (like dragon statues and shovels), there are rocks that you can levitate to move out of the way or drop on enemies, plus there are obstacles that you must use magic to overcome.

There is no shortage of magic to use here, although an oversimplified system and a lack of variety in this area has reduced the exercise to unfulfilling button bashing. You have two main buttons, the Jinx button and the Charm button, plus your Accio button, which is used for collecting nearby health boosts, chocolate frogs (extra lives), Tri-Wizard shield fragments, and the incredibly annoying Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans, which bounce all over the place and run away from you whenever possible. The Jinx button allows you to attack enemies, stunning them first before blasting them into oblivion, and to shoot objects to reveal more beans.

The Charm button has a range of uses, the handiest of which is Wingardium Leviosa. You can use this to levitate an enemy while your team mates blast them with jinxes, you can lift rocks and throw them at enemies, and if you combine your power you can lift and manipulate heavy blocks to give you access to new areas. The next charm allows you to drag objects, usually opening heavy gates or pulling down drawbridges to let you across. Another charm, Herbivicus, allows you to cause buds to bloom, which opens up new routes across ponds as you lily pads burst into life and spread across the water, or flowers bloom to bridge gaps in the overgrown Herbology greenhouses. Finally, there's a charm that allows you to put out fires, handy when you're facing Salamanders or being chased by a Hungarian Horntail (a particularly vicious breed of dragon).

The problem is, the usage of both jinxes and charms is context sensitive, meaning that you never get to choose which spell to use, you just hammer the button, and jinxes and charms come flying out as appropriate. This makes the action feel very repetitive - all the levels, except the Tri-Wizard Tournament Tasks, consist of running around, blasting any enemies that attack you, and using charms to open up routes in endless search of shields, beans (to buy new power upgrades) and other sub-tasks, like jinxing all the stone dragons and taps in a level. There's no attempt at a story or narrative within the game, there's no feeling of progression when it comes to learning magic, there's no variety to the tasks and there's no real feeling of exploration or achievement. Yes, the levels aren't linear in the sense that there are several areas to each location, but it all feels very restricted and you're just going through the motions of dugbog standard level design.

Despite the fact that you can choose to play as Harry, Ron or Hermione for most levels, each character plays identically, thus removing the need for any kind of strategy with regards to which character you pick, or differing magic abilities. There is a nice upgrade system, where you use your beans to buy a range of collector's cards, and then you can equip up to three of these for each character before you start the level. Cards can increase the power of your jinxes, give you multiple or ricocheting jinxes, increase your stamina, prolong Magicus Extremos (a super power mode where all three of you get beefed up magic for a few seconds), regenerate stamina, give you advantages against certain enemies and more, but the gameplay is so basic and samey that to be honest, it really doesn't make much difference which cards you pick.

There aren't many enemies in the game and those that do appear are pretty irritating - dugbogs, salamanders, erklings, blast-ended skrewts and vampire mosps, all of which attack you viciously and knock the beans out of you. It would have been nice if you could dodge attacks while casting, but you can't, so when there are multiple enemies attacking you have little choice but to stand there and hammer that jinx button until you've stunned all the enemies, taking hits while you do so. The enemies look okay, and the magic effects are quite nice, but nothing makes you go wow or looks that spectacular - except possibly the first Tri-Wizard Task.

Once Harry's mounted on his broom and being pursued by the Hungarian Horntail, you're in for something of a roller coaster rider, as you speed through the trees of the Forbidden Forest, around the turrets of Hogwarts and then along the lakeside, dodging fireballs and hitting turbo circles as you go. It's very fast and quite exhilarating - but sadly even this very short-lived level is almost entirely on rails. It would have been wonderful to have a proper cat and mouse game, giving you an open level to duck, dodge, fly and weave where you choose as the dragon closes in. Instead, this is little more than Sonic the Hedgehog on a broom and the camera steers you around a pre-determined route; all you have to do is make minor adjustments to dodge around obstacles and collect beans and speed boosts. Still, it does look very nice and at least it'll be easy enough for the kids. The second task is also on rails, but this time it's slow, as you swim around a very atmospheric underwater structure in the Black Lake, blasting grindylows with your wand. Sadly, this is one of the dullest levels in the whole game, and the final task and finale against Voldemort, I'll leave for you to discover.

Although Goblet of Fire doesn't look that amazing, it sounds great. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint lend their voices to the production and they come up with some amusing one-liners - particularly the bickering between Ron and Hermione, which is very well acted, as are Ron's whimpers of fear and cries of delight as he spots yet more Bertie Botts beans bouncing about! There's a surprising lack of music, unfortunately, and while John Williams' score does come into play, a lot of the time there isn't any music and it's a shame there wasn't a better dynamic score that varied according to the action. The rest of the sound effects, for the monsters and spells, all fit in well with the visuals.

While I've been very negative about Goblet of Fire, it's fair to say that the young ones who enjoyed the film will definitely find it very enjoyable. It captures the look and feel of the films very well and there's plenty enough in here to keep children challenged and engaged for a while. The addition of the co-operative mode is a great idea too, and as long as you stick close together, children will enjoy working together to progress through each level. However, I'm sad to say that unlike the books, the game will not entertain adults and children alike. Seasoned gamers will find very little of interest here, regardless of how massive a Harry Potter fan you are (personally I love the books and the films). It's a real shame. Wouldn't it have been great to have free run of the entire of Hogwarts, the grounds, Hogsmeade and the Forbidden Forest, attending classes, exploring the school and choosing whether to take part in side quests or go to the next location that would progress the story and lead to a new main mission, GTA style. The potential to create a proper, fully realised interactive version of J.K. Rowling's books is definitely there, and I hope that EA's inevitable release of The Order Of The Phoenix is a deeper and more open-ended affair that caters for adults as well, rather than just placating the kids.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).