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Review by Acey The written material on this page is produced by 64SCENER staff and is not to be used elsewhere without permission. © 2001 64SCENER (NES WORLD) |
The future of Nintendo videogaming is here, and Luigi is back from his absense on the Nintendo64,
bringing us his very own game to enjoy while he goes looking for his brother, who most likely is enjoying the
nice sunshine somewhere while his "bro" here, Luigi, is carrying a vacumcleaner on his back and wandering
around in an old dusty, not to mention scary, old mansion, hrmmf. Luigi's Mansion was one of the first GCN games I ever heard of, and not exactly one which I was looking forward to, I mean how fun can it be to play in the role of a almost forgotten videogame character who has become a Ghostbusters wannabe, and who seems to have a secret, erm... thing, for vacumcleaners. No Nintendo console launch without a Mario game, however since Mario decided not to get finished for the launch, we all just had to hope that Mario's brother here could do the job, starring his very own game, for the first time, atleast when it comes to a game created by Nintendo themselves. He did star his own game back in the NES days, called Mario is Missing - produced by Mindscape. But nothing ever really beat Mario 64 on the Nintendo64, so Luigi here does have a somewhat impossible task. At the Space World Show 2000, in Tokyo - Japan, Nintendo for the first time showed the public what as to become Luigi's Mansion. Back then the game wasn't announced, but was called a "technical demo" of what the GameCube was capable of, and it did look quite impressive, like a reflecting flashlight when aiming at a mirror. The game was finally announced as a launch title at the US Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, in May 2001. Still the pictures and movies comming from E3 didn't manage to impress, I unfortunately didn't have the pleasure of being at the show myself. But when I ordered my GameCube in Japan, I decided to go for Luigi's Mansion anyway, as the GameCube seriously lacked launch titles there - only 3 titles available at launch day. The game is a 3D action game, with a 2D angeled camera, which takes place in an old mansion. Mario is Missing again they say, and it's up to Luigi with help from the mad doctor, E. Gadd, giving lots of good advice. Luigi's mission is to explore every corner of the mansion, solving a number of puzzles, sucking up lot of ghosts while picking up a lot of money. At one point in the game Luigi ends up in a room with lots of intruments, by pushing each and every one of them, they will start playing a tune - not just any tune, but the well known Super Mario Brothers tune, well known from the NES games(!). But the basic idea of the game is to walk around sucking in all kinds of freaky looking ghosts. Luigi points his flashlight at a ghost and starts sucking it into his little red vacumcleaner, gets a bit boring after awhile you know. Once all ghosts in a room are captured, the light is being turned on, yes it's dark to begin with else the flashlight really would be of no use, yes really. In some rooms Luigi will receive a key to unlock doors previously preventing him from opening, as they obviously were locked, although doors in old houses does tend to be a bit hard to open sometimes. An overall of the control is above average, eventhough I dislike the controller itself quite a bit, guess I'm too used to the good old Nintendo64 controller. Sound is nothing special at all, but Luigi's calls for Mariiiiooooo does make me laugh a bit (should have a sample here). The visuals are amazing, or maybe it's just because I got a bigger TV just before I got the GameCube. Nah really, the first time I powered up the GameCube it gave me chills, this stuff looks friggin amazing, really. Eventhough this is no Mario 64 successor, which it wasn't really meant to be either I believe, it does have it's own charm. However there must be atleast one Ghostbusters fan employed by NCL, because it's not hard to figure out where they got the idea for this game, is it? One of the bad things about Luigi's Mansion, what I bitched about the most, is that the game is incredibly short and easy, one day of intense gameplay and the game is over and done with, Luigi ofcourse has to defeat Bowser at the end, just like any other Mario Bros game. Still had this game been any bigger I probably would've stopped playing, you can only take a certain ammoung of ghost hunting before you get bored, and Luigi's Mansion is short enough to avoid just that. But all in all a quite cool game which any GameCube owner should check out, the game deserves it, atleast until something better comes along, like Mario Sunshine?... still what kind of title is that? *urgh*
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