You will only find Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the video game useful if you are a small-r republican. Every copy sold means more cash in the personal money bin of author J.K Rowling, and therefore a larger figure distinguishing Rowling's fortune from that of the second-richest woman in Britain, Her Majesty Elizabeth II. If you are a small-r republican, you may find this amusing enough that you will want to contribute your own small sum to the greater cause. Failing that, keep your money for yourself. Or spend it on a Harry Potter book. Or on another video game.

The game is tightly connected with the new movie of the same name (which is apparently, and coincidentally, doing super wicked great at the box office, helping cure Hollywood's blues and advancing UK republicanism at the same time). It features voice acting from Daniel Radcliffe and his teen-actor peers, and the cover art is all taken from movie publicity stills, and great swells of filmy music accompany even the smallest bit of the play experience.

It is the sort of video game you would expect to like a lot. You get to be a wizard with a wand that shoots fire and levitates rocks, and your friends are also wizards and witches, and you get to face off against things called Death Eaters. Your power is fierce and you can barely keep it under control, but you are learning, and that ought to be exhilarating. It is not. So what's the problem?

Size, for one. The PSP is trying very hard to make us all fall in love. It has a glossy black finish and a smooth comfortable little joystick. Its screen is enormous, at least for a handheld game machine. It tries and tries and tries to give off the smell of designer hipness. It wants to be the iPod of video games. The sound it makes when you turn it on tells you who's boss. “I,” it says, “am a machine with limitless potential. Hear me roar, etc.”

And then you get to playing, and you think to yourself, gee whiz is this thing ever the boss. I'm on a level set in a forest at night, and even now I can read by the light the screen gives off. You are in a friendly mood and you are eager to like the game.

And then you realize the awful truth, which is that whoever designed the look and the feel of this thing was using a much, much bigger screen than the one on the PSP. Yes, it is has the same aspect ratio as a wall-mount plasma HDTV, but no, it is not 60 inches on the diagonal, and no, it is not acceptable to make the teenage wizards so small you have so squint to see them. Somehow, whoever was in charge of art direction on this project managed to completely ignore 15 years' worth of industry experience designing for Game Boys and Palm Pilots and Blackberrys and cellphones, and the result is worse than unacceptable: it is dumb. We are trying to be friends with the PSP, remember? Do not make it hard for us.

We learn how to stun monsters with our wands, and we learn about levitation and how to all cast spells together that do what none of us could have done alone. These are marked with beautiful flourishes of sparkle and light and processing power. They are very nice to look at, and unlike the wizards they are easy to see.

Anyway. Wee Harry and his wee pals have magicmaking to do, and much of that falls roughly in line with the way the movie goes. There is this big dangerous tournament happening, and Harry is supposed to be too young to play, but the cauldron that chooses the players picks him anyway, and adventure ensues. It's a good idea for a video game. Maybe somebody will pick it up and run with it.

You will be glad to hear that Every Flavour jellybeans appear in the game and are used for fuel. Presumably they are not the vomit-scented ones.