Overall Rating

Rabid Nintendo fans got their first glimpse of "Luigi's Mansion" when it was still just a tech demo used by promoters to highlight the GameCube's ability to render gorgeous graphics and shimmering transparency effects. Shigeru Miyamoto had been hinting that Mario's brother Luigi would be getting his own game for quite a while, but it wasn't until E3 in Los Angeles that we finally got to see "Luigi's Mansion" in all its ghosted-out glory.

Famous for creating such groundbreaking Nintendo mainstays as "Donkey Kong" and "Legend of Zelda," Miyamoto and his cadre of game programming gurus promised a more mature title for Luigi, but gamers looking for a "Resident Evil" style horror game should probably keep looking. "Luigi's Mansion" is survival horror for kids. It borrows more from "Scooby Doo" than from "Cthulu," and yet, the creepy caper exterior belies a very challenging and well thought out game with enough zany visual humor to have even the most hardcore gamers clamoring for more.




Luigi's Mansion
Platform: GCN
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
ESRB rating: Everyone

Ratings
Graphics: 5
Sound: 4
Playability: 5
Gameplay: 3
Overall: 4


Unfortunately, part of the reason they're going to be clamoring for more is because while playing the game, it just doesn't seem like there's enough there. That's not to say it can be finished it in an afternoon. It can't, especially if it's your first time playing it. But all the action in the game takes place in and around a single mansion. It may be a richly textured mansion with little visual surprises in every nook and cranny, but it's still just one house and can sometimes feel a little claustrophobic.

The story

You start the game in a great mansion that Luigi recently won from a contest that he claims he never entered. If that sounds shady, that's because it is. No sooner has Luigi won the mansion than his brother Mario disappears inside, and Luigi must go in to rescue him. That's where the game starts. After entering the mansion, Luigi bumps into Professor E. Gadd who fills him in on the backstory. He also tells Luigi that the mansion is haunted, and in order to rescue his brother, he must rid the mansion of ghosts.

Gameplay

The plot is linear and plays like your classic PlayStation role-playing game, a la "Final Fantasy" or "Chrono Cross." But instead of turn-based fight scenes, you have to clean rooms of ghosts. The biggest difference between this game and "Final Fantasy" and "Chrono Cross" is that this game only takes 10 to 20 hours to complete. This might seem too short for some gamers, especially since it doesn't hold much replay value. But what the game lacks in length it definitely makes up for in depth. Unlike "Final Fantasy" and "Chrono Cross," all that time is spent in-game, not in a bunch of cut scenes. This, coupled with the utter lack of load times between scenes, means a seamless world for gamers and a very immersive journey into Luigi's haunted mansion.

There are many rooms to exorcise, and all of them are unique with their own look and feel. After cleaning a number of rooms of ghosts and solving many puzzles on the way, you'll have to defeat a boss ghost. There are four bosses in all, and while the first two are relatively simple to defeat, the difficulty definitely ramps up with the second two. Boss battles take place in otherworldly arenas, which almost provide a respite from the claustrophobia that creeps in while you're exhuming the house of ghosts, but not quite.

While you're with the professor in the beginning of the game, he gives you all the equipment you need to rid the mansion of ghosts: a flashlight, a Poltergeist 3000, and a Game Boy Horror -- a strangely named PDA-like device that looks not-surprisingly like a Game Boy Color. The Game Boy Horror contains a helpful map of the house that will tell you where you are and lets you view things in first-person mode. But the main piece of equipment is the Poltergeist 3000, a ghost vacuum for sucking them out of the air.

Ghostly puzzles

Just like in the real world, catching ghosts in the game is not an easy affair. Not only do you need to coordinate several different movements at once, but you can only catch the ghosts when their hearts are showing. To get ghosts to show their hearts, you often need to solve a puzzle or obtain a medallion that will let you spray the ghosts with water, fire, or ice. The puzzles usually aren't that complicated. In one instance, you must turn an airplane hanging from the ceiling to bring out the ghosts of twins. In another, you'll have to suck up banana peel and some jam off a kitchen table to bring out a butler ghost.

Once you have the ghost in the room with its heart glowing, you have to click your flashlight in its face to freeze it. This grants a small window of a second or two in which you have to point your vacuum and start sucking, drawing the ghost into the range of your suction. Once you have it in your site, you have to hold it there for several seconds while it tries to whip you around the room.

Control

The two joysticks work like first-person shooter controls, moving you around the room. The main joystick moves Luigi around, and the small joystick controls his perspective. When the ghosts are struggling against you, you have to pull in the opposite direction like a fisherman trying to haul in a catch. We recommend backing up into a corner to keep from getting swung around into furniture.

Capturing one ghost at a time is a relatively simple task. The difficulty ramps up dramatically, however, when more ghosts start attacking you at the same time (during the most frenzied boss match, 15 ghosts appear on the screen at once!). That's because the ghost AI is something to behold. They'll sneak up behind Luigi, scaring him to bits. They'll team up to attack him all at once. And if he has a ghost caught in the pulsating stream of your Poltergeist 3000 when there's another one in the room, the other ghost will sneak up behind him and frighten him into letting the trapped ghost go free.

The AI isn't the only thing that shines in "Luigi's Mansion." The graphics are amazing. All in all, the game looks like a shimmering, computer-generated cartoon. It actually looks better than most of the cartoons you see on TV. No wonder it was used as a tech demo to show off the power of the GameCube -- the transparency effects in this game are incredible. It renders water, fog, and ghosts with amazing richness, and anyone who plays this game is certain to marvel at the power of the GameCube to create beautiful images.

While the game looks good, and the gameplay is both entertaining and engaging, some people might be put off by the fact that it's so short. But all in all, it's a dazzling title that will have most gamers smiling. Nintendo has done a nice job of balancing the relatively mind-numbing action of wandering around the mansion with the fast paced, up-in-arms movement of sucking ghosts up in the vacuum. The result is a fun, survival horror game for youngsters. Kids will like it because it's funny, and adults will like it because it will remind them of just how far videogames have come since Luigi's brother Mario made his first appearance in "Donkey Kong" so many years ago.