Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Too short"

Pros: Sucking up ghosts is simple fun; Pretty good atmosphere

Cons: Controls can be a challenge at times; Virtually no content and replayability; Too easy

Launch titles are tricky. The technology is new, and there's a huge push to be finished in time for the console's release, leaving little room for polish and/or extra content. This tends to hit even the best developers, who often take a couple titles to get into the groove of things. Nintendo has typically been able to avoid this curse, however, with titles like Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, and Super Smash Bros. Melee standing tall until the very end of their respective systems' lifespans. However, Luigi's Mansion proves that even Nintendo themselves aren't immune to the problems that plague launch games.

This isn't to say that Luigi's Mansion is a bad game, but that it could have used some more time, polish, and content. What's included is pretty fun, actually, what with sucking up ghosts into a vacuum. You constantly have to pull against the buggers, and finding the weaknesses of each boss is fairly entertaining (particularly since they each have distinct visual designs). For what it's worth, the rooms in Luigi's Mansion are visually dense and have an unusually high level of detail for a Nintendo game as well. Beyond that, it's the usual Nintendo mixture of enjoyable feeling central mechanics and interestingly varied scenarios.

However, there isn't much else to the game. While the ghost hunting is fun, that's all there is, and the game's room-by-room formula is very predictable by the end of its four hour run. While I can commend the game for not overstaying its welcome, it gives you very little reason to return. Sure, you can replay and try getting a higher amount of cash (which you lose in small chunks each time you're hit), but the content and the encounters are identical from one play-through to the next.

And for what it's worth, the content is a little rough around the edges for a Nintendo production as well. For a company that has pioneered tight controls with its Mario games, Luigi's Mansion feels very stiff, yet imprecise in that regard. Luigi moves sluggishly, and the hitboxes for interacting with objects require a remarkable amount of precision. The worst offense of the controls, however, is that the core action-fighting ghosts-often results in you getting dragged into other enemies against your will (the only way to 100% circumvent this is to make sure you round up all the ghosts at once, which is often very hard to do). This is more irritating than generally troublesome, given the game's hesitance to take any real health from you.

It all combines to make Luigi's Mansion an easy, breezy, lighthearted affair that doesn't leave any significant impressions. It proves that even Nintendo can be off their game sometimes (although Nintendo's off-game is still fun). Who knows if the 3DS sequel will fix the issues of the original and make Luigi's Mansion another Nintendo-caliber franchise, but for now I can't really recommend the original or condemn it either. It just exists.