It's All About The Suction
Mario, the greatest videogame hero of all time has gone missing inside a mansion won in a shady sweepstakes, leaving it up to his brother Luigi to suck up some demonic. Devilish. DUST BUNNIES!… oh and the occasional ghost as well.
Luigi’s Mansion (as you know doubt guessed) stars everyone’s second favorite plumber Luigi. But that’s where all similarities to prior Mario games end. The are no platforms to jump to, no new worlds to explore, or princess in need of saving. Only sucking and the occasional desucking of your surroundings . As the game begins you are given the Poltergust 3000 which is used to suck up ghost so you can paintanize them later. (think of paintanizing as being crunchatized. Minus the delicious high fructose part of a balanced breakfast part). On a technical standpoint the game looks great all the rooms buzz with life; or is it death in this case? The ghosts themsleves look good as well and are animated very well, as is Luigi who is constantly being dragged across the floor as he tries to wrangle those pesky ghouls into his shop vac. However the gameplay pales in comparison to the games technological achievements.
As mentioned earlier this is not like other Mario games. This is not a platformer and is in fact more of a puzzler. In order to catch more advance ghosts you must surprise them with more than just your fancy flashlight and vacuum. For the first part of the game this works well, but the ghost catching becomes stale much too quickly. The most advance puzzles in the game require no more thought than sucking up food from a gorging ghost, or spitting out ice water onto a bathing one. The bosses don’t offer much variety either as they are all defeated the exact same way. There is never any sense of accomplishment for conquering any of these poltergeist because the game is just way too easy. It is doubtful that even the greenest of Ghostbusters will have any trouble with this game .
Even with the shallow gameplay the game is constantly winning you back, just because of how darn charming it is. From Luigi weakly whistling the theme song as he explores the desolate mansion, to him pleading for his brother to just show up so they could leave the premises immediately, Luigi more than proves that he can carry his own adventure. This game doesn’t suck, but here’s hoping the next game staring the green plumber has as much attention to the gameplay as to the graphics and physics. As it is this game just doesn’t have enough going for it to really suck you in.
