I'm a great fan of Harry Potter and I love Lego, so mixing the two is fabulous for me. I'm not, however, an avid gamer so sticking it on the Xbox is a bit of a novelty. I'll be honest at this point, I need a handy child to tell me how the controls work and help me navigate around the Xbox properly so I'm not what you'd call a hardcore gamer. But the Lego / HP combo was enough to draw me in.

In spite of my ineptitude on the console, I found this game very easy to use. The controls are quite straightforward and the game guides you along, showing you how to do different spells as you acquire them. The game follows the story of the books and movies so if you've read/seen them the game progression should be quite familiar. Interspersed at the beginning of and between levels are little Lego versions of scenes from the movies which are also pretty funny.

The game play is very clever with the player using spells and skills of the characters to solve puzzles and complete tasks in order to complete the level. Different characters can have different skills (for example, Professor McGonnagall can turn into a cat, Hermione can use her book to solve certain puzzles, Dudley Dursley is extra strong) and the 'bad' wizards have access to the Avada Kadavera spell which the good wizards don't. The game progresses through each book/movie until you've finished book 4, and then you can go back and replay each level using different characters which means that all levels can (and in fact must) be played more than once. You can also go into Hogwarts between levels and there are puzzles to solve around the castle outside of the levels.

Challenges in the game are to complete all the levels, find and collect characters (which you can then use in replay levels), collect red boxes (which gives you access to extra skills) and collect gold bricks.

The game is a lot of fun. I'm not sure that it would be very challenging to the hardcore gamer but my kids absolutely loved it, and I found it very enjoyable and easy to play. As you're able to go back into the levels once you've played them - to collect extra characters or just because you enjoyed it - I found it lasted for a long time and therefore is good value for money.