The man, the myth, the legend... Luigi (Luigi's Mansion (GC))

Member Name: drdriscoll

Product:	Luigi's Mansion (GC)
Date:	28/05/02 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Graphics, Umm, Mario lets his little bro into the lead title for a change

Disadvantages: Shoddy Story Line, Shoddy Sound, Shoddy just about everything else - need I say more

So Nintendo decided to make the Green plumber the main focus for one of the main launch games for the Gamecube. Rock on.

The plot of the game is relatively easy to understand. Lugi has won the titular mansion in a contest and for unknown reasons Mario decideds to go and visit it first. Eventually Luigi turns up only to find from my fellow professional, Professor E. Gadd (urgh) that Mario went into the mansion but never came out *cue outer limits music*. Luckily the Professor is a ghost researcher and gives Luigi a map and radar (Game Boy Horror) and a vacuum cleaner (The Poltergeist 3000 (and no I'm not making this up)).

You'll immediately be familiar with the game not by gameplay but by the sounds, Nintendo has kept all the 'yakka yakka' Snes mario noises and stuck them into this game. LONG LIVE ORIGIONALITY. Luigi also seems to randomly whistle for no adequately explored reason, perhaps he's lost his dog as well? You can get Luigi to yell out 'Mario' by pressing the A button which is slightly more fun for some reason though there are only 10 or so different yells so this starts to grate as well.

The gameplay is amazingly simple when you compare the game to Mario 64. It basically goes like this. Enter a room, suck up the ghosts, turn on a light, get the now released key, enter the next room... etc ARGHHH. Theres the boss ghosts of course every now and then but once you work out how to kill them then it becomes a matter of doing the same thing over and over again.

Lets stop here because if your really bothered you should know that this paragraph contains an END GAME SPOILER!?!?!1. I'm sure your very annoyed that I should spoil such an emotionally fulfilling game for you. At the end you find that the big evil bad ghost leader boss has resurrected Bowser (Marios evil arch enemy) and put Mario in a painting. I say leave him, he's far more cute in oil but Luigi says HAVE AT THEE EVIL BL
AGARDDDDDDDDDD or something or other and the end battle ensues.

The game is made that bit more fun by collecting pearls from the boss ghosts as you go through the game which make the portrait you get at the end of the game look nicer (sorry did I say it made it more fun). There are some other extras but to be honest I truly didn't care. Let me say this to you now, do NOT buy this game. I finished it in four days, you would be much beter off renting it because believe me it is not worth the £35+ pounds you would have to pay. There is little to no replay value yet I hear you say there is very little replay value in most games today. True but most games last longer than 10 hours these days.

Ah well the graphics are very nice but you don't buy games for graphics do you... do you? Well I admit I bought Gran Turismo 3 for the graphics but THATS IT, honest. Go get Rogue Squadron, it's much more fun.

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