EricBall's Tech Projects - GCN - Luigi's Mansion

RSS Bot · July 5, 2006

This was one of the CGN launch titles, and I'm agreeing with some of the comments I recall reading at that time.

My biggest complaint is the linearity of the game. As opposed to SM64 where you had the opportunity to open multiple worlds very quickly, with very few roadblocks other than the Bowser battles, LM plods along - forcing you to visit rooms in a preset order (often requiring you to traverse the same hallways and stairways over and over). An in spite of this, I occasionally found I didn't know where I was supposed to go next. The built-in map is neat, but it really needs to highlight rooms which are open but you haven't visited yet.

The flashlight + vaccuum mechanic works well, for the most part. There were a couple of times I wished I had more control over Luigi's movements once he "hooks" a ghost, rather than being randomly dragged around the room and into dangers. It's also annoying that you can't "reel in" Boos and prevent them from escaping the room. I also found it wasn't always obvious what needed to be done to reveal the hearts of the portrait/boss ghosts (or how to defeat them). Of course, one major advantage of playing these games years after they first arrived is the availability of online guides.

I'm not quite done the game yet, but I can see that it will be a short game. Not much replay value either. Sure I could go back and try to pick up more gold, cash & jewels, but that's not much fun. It's not like going back in SM64 and seeing if you can get all of the stars. There may be some ghosts in LM which can be skipped, but you don't know which are only going to give coins until after you've defeated them.

I'd recommend Luigi's Mansion for a 7-day rental.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...;showentry=1690