Luigi's Mansion - Not what we were looking for (Luigi's Mansion (GC))

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Product:	Luigi's Mansion (GC)
Date:	15/05/02 (171 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Graphics, Quick Fun, No Mario!

Disadvantages: Poor Camera, Limited Appeal, Over Quickly

So, I finally got a new game system. After five years of school, one with a N64, and fourtelling everyone who’d care to listen I’d never buy a Nintendo system again because they refuse to make either RPGs or games for people older than 14, I finally got one. Well, I did sort of stay true to my word, because I didn’t buy the Gamecube… rather, it was a present.

In the end I went out and bought Rogue Squadron, Luigi’s Mansion, a second controller, and the BIG memory card. Since Mario 64 was the first game I played on N64, I decided to start up my Gamecube experience with a Mario game… or rather a Luigi game, the true unsung hero of the Mario family.

Luigi Mario, the man, the myth, the legend.

The storyline of the game is simple. Luigi wins a mansion in a contest. It happens to be located in a dark and scary forest. Mario heads there first… because I guess Luigi was too busy doing whatever it is the OTHER Mario brother does when he isn’t sitting in Mario’s shadow. When he gets to the mansion, he finds Professor E. Gadd, who happens to be researching ghosts. Come to find out Mario went into the mansion a while back and didn’t come out.

So, Professor Gadd gives Luigi two important tools… the Poltergeist 3000… which is a vacuum cleaner, and the Game Boy Horror… which is a Game Boy with a map and radar. Yes, Nintendo has stooped to product placement in their own games. Luigi’s only tools the entire game are a flashlight, a Game Boy, and a vacuum cleaner. Hey, no one ever accused the Mario designers of having killer storylines, did they? No… I don’t think they did. He’s been saving the same stupid yak from the hands of Bowser since the eighties. Much like Link, actually. You’d think she’d be smart enough to hire some personal security guards. Nope, she’s content with an Italian dude with the same first and last name w
ho has a tendency to let her get kidnapped so he can come to the rescue.

Ever see the movie Ghostbusters? Well, this game combines the Positron Glider with the Trap and rolls it up into a handy vacuum cleaner… which is also good for cleaning up cobwebs and dust on on the floor.

If you’re easily annoyed, you’ll be ticked off with this game’s sound thirty seconds into it. While Professor Gadd is speaking to you, he makes “cutesy” noises. After playing for less than five minutes and hearing “Dooku dooku. Seeka seeka. Yaboo yaboo” on the order of forty two thousand, three hundred and two times, I almost chucked the four-hour-old Gamecube out the window. Luigi also whistles incessantly, and the game has the movie tendency of the music picking up when something bad is about to happen… This part can be fixed by turning your TV sound all the way down and turning on something less annoying… “Rosanne Barr Sings Your Favorite Showtunes” comes to mind. One fun thing is every time you press the A button (the search button) and there’s nothing to search… Luigi yells for Mario. They at least have ten or so different yells, so these tend to wear on your nerves less. I find it amusing that Luigi cares so much for Mario, when all Mario has done for the last twenty years is stab him in the back.

Think about it… start with Mario Brothers… the whole thing was to out-do the other brother… Mario obviously won, because he got Pauline, and entered a five-year long feud with Donky Kong. Where was Luigi during all this? Well, obviously calculating the coordinates of the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario was still a carpenter at this time and Luigi was the plumber of the family… so, Luigi found the first sewer pipe leading the Mushroom Kingdom while Mario was busy Spanking the Monkey, as it were.

Eventually, Pauline saw through Mario’s charade and ditc
hed him, leaving Mario to grab Luigi’s coat-tails and ride them all the way to Mushroom Kingdom, where Luigi was already preparing a life with Peach. I think Mario worked with Bowser to have the Princess kidnapped, so HE could be the hero. And it certainly worked, didn’t it? Mario got Peach and Luigi was left hanging out with Toadstools. And with all the money, what happened to Mario? He went downhill on all the shrooms. Think about Super Mario 2, which was all a whacked out dream Mario had while he slept off a bad trip. The Princess was ready to throw him out, so he had her kidnapped again and Luigi was right by his side again, unaware of all the evil going on in his brother’s mind. Just look at Mario… you can tell there’s evilness going on behind those eyes. Blue eyes on an Italian Guy? Not natural, I tell you.

Regardless, Luigi does bury the hatchet and come to rescue Mario from the clutches of the Evil King Boo, who set the whole thing up. Unless it was all a complex trap laid by Mario to try to eliminate Luigi once and for all. Rumors had started to spread through the Mushroom Kingdom that Mario was out and Luigi was back in.

The game isn’t exactly complex, so if you’re looking for Mario 64 Version 2, you’ll be in for a big disappointment. You basically do the same thing through every room. Clear it of any ghosts, which turns the lights on, which releases a treasure chest containing a key, which you use to open up another room… where you trap a ghost, which turns the lights on, which releases a treasure chest containing a key… repead ad nauseum. In some rooms, there are “Boss Ghosts” which you have to defeat in some special way and have more Heart Points.

Ah yes, Heart Points… when you latch the Positron Gli… er… I mean Vacuu… er… Poltergeist 3k onto a ghost, you see their HP, which is how much more power they have to struggle agai
ns the Ghost Trap. When they run out, you trap them. For some of the boss ghosts, you have to do something besides shine light on them to sten them. For instance, to beat Granny, you have to throw her balls of yarn at her to knock her off kilter, then suck her up. You have to punch heavy bags into the guy working out in the weight room to stun him, then suck him up. At the end of each floor, you face off against a “boss ghost” who teleports you to some stage, and you have to figure out how to beat him. As it is with most Mario games, (see, even I am guilty of it… Mario worked his way into the American psyche as a brand name, while Luigi gets his own game and it’s considered a Mario game… CONSPIRACY, I TELL YOU) something the boss tries to do to you can be used to defeat them.

What do you do with the Poltergeist 3k when it’s full? Well, that’s a good question. After beating the boss, you take the ghosts back to Professor Gadd and he puts them in the Storage Facility… but her calls it the Ghost Portraitificationizer, or something like that, which takes the ghosts and imprisons them in paintings. Not very nice, if you ask me. I mean, at least the Ghostbusters put them in a Storage Facility where it was one constant good time. Remember the episode where Slimer went to find Samhain in the Storage Facility? It was a big party inside. Gadd puts them in a painting. Not very nice, if you ask me.

When you do get all the way to the end of the game, you find out that King Boo has (big surprise) resurrected Bowser… and they together were responsible for putting Mario Inside a Painting. You know, after Mario 64, where he entered every world via paintings, you wouldn’t think it’d be that big of a deal. Bowser sucks you in and battle him.

There are also, throughout the house, random, hiding, white Slimers they call Boos. You get a Boo-dar detector attached to Luigi’s Game Boy so yo
u know when you’re in a room with one. They have such creative names as “Bootiful” and “ShamBoo.” I, however, did not find a “Bootylicious,” which is a damn shame if you ask me. There are fifty of them in the house and, on my first pass through, I found 47 + King Boo, who may not count.

Complexity: As I said, not much. There won’t be any times where you’ll be looking to break anything with in reach or chuck your pet across the room. The challenges in it aren’t very laid out. In fact, the only random ones I can think of were collecting all the Boos. Also, each of the bosses releases pearls while you’re trapping them. The more you collect, the better the portrait will look wen you hang it up in the gallery. Supposedly, the more you collect, the better your rank is at the end. I got an F, but I did finish the game in less than three days. There are also apparently golden mice hidden in the house. I wasn’t able to get two doors unlocked, either.

Another thing I found supremely annoying is the fact you can’t rotate the camera like you could in M64. You’re stuck with a side scrolling view in the hallways, and a fourth-wall view in all the rooms. This isn’t normall a problem, but you also can’t control the camera when you’re fighting bosses, which can be a problem… especially with Bowser. Also, a minor point of contention is the fact there isn’t even a jump button in the game. A Mario Game without a Jump Button is like a Dr Dre video without Hos… it just feels like it’s missing something. Luigi also tends to be a little tough to control… when you’re trying to do something specific like face a direction to search something. Also, aiming the vacuum can be a nightmare.

Once I finished the game, it freed up a “Hidden Mansion” option, which appears to be like the second quest of the original Legend of
Zelda… same basic map, but things in different places and enemies are a bit harder. I haven’t played through the whole thing yet.

Don’t buy this game. If you have a weekend with a lot of time, rent it at Blockbuster for five nights (or, preferable, a local mom and pop video store for three) and beat it. The absolute toughest part of the game figuring how to hurt the sub-boss and boss ghosts, and even THAT isn’t too hard. From what I can see, it doesn’t have much of a replay value, other than trying to find all the things you missed. In retrospect, Mario 64 didn’t have much of a replay value either, but at least it took on the order of two months to beat with all 120 stars… of course, whether it’s because you already knew where everything was or because you just didn’t want to touch the evil, vicious game varies between the player. Personally, by the time I finished up Mario 64, I would have been perfectly content to burn the game. In fact, the 120-star saved game file is STILL on the game, because I refused to erase it.

One major point I’ll give the programmers of the game is the lighting effects. Whether it be from Luigi’s flashlight or candles… the lighting is absolutely amazing, which gives the graphics a really cool, flowing feel. The ghosts and animations are kind of fun too, if you’re watching them.

So, in summary, the next stage of Mario 64, this is not. It’s a fun game, but doesn’t have near the depth M64 did. Mario wouldn’t give that much of the spotlight to Luigi. I heard they had to pay Mario a stipend or he’d walk out of his contract for giving Luigi his own game… and even THEN he had to be a part of it, and the last visual had to be on him… which it is. If you’re buying it for someone young, they might enjoy it… but even a little kid might finish it in a quick amount of time. I may play through it a
gain to see if I can get a better grade, or I might just stick it on the shelf and buy Resident Evil instead.

Overall:
Graphics: A-
Control: C+
Packaging: C
Sound: D-
Storyline: F
Number of Players: Only one
Length: about 10 ~ 12 hours of gameplay
Suggestion: Rental Material, no purchasing

Summary: