The Haunted Mansion Hands-On

We saw an early version of The Haunted Mansion at TDK's E3 booth and took the game for a quick spin. For the most part, the game seemed to be quite early, and we didn't get to check out a lot of the action. You'll be roaming around a haunted mansion, solving puzzles and exploring the strange portions of the house, while you pursue your main objective of freeing trapped souls.

Though our experience with the game was limited, one nifty sequence really caught our eye. At one point, we were shrunk, tossed onto the surface of a pool table, and forced to play a sadistic game of pool. The way this worked was that a ghostly pool cue would appear every few seconds and shoot the cue ball directly at our character. It was up to us to position him in front of the appropriate ball to successfully line up a shot. It seemed that the pool-playing spirit was intent on killing us with the cue ball, so we'd have to jump out of the way when a shot was coming. Once we'd knocked all the other balls in, we went for the eight ball and finally completed the game, and this ended the sequence and made the character grow back to full size.

If the uniqueness of this sequence is any indication, The Haunted Mansion may turn out to be quite a good game. We'll bring you more information on it soon.