The Haunted Hoard: Luigi’s Mansion (GameCube)

Ever since the early days of Mario’s career, whenever he needed someone to join him on an adventure, he could count on his younger brother Luigi to be there. For many years, Luigi was there to fill the second spot in the name Super Mario Bros., and while being perpetually player two to the biggest name in video games automatically made him more recognizable than the main characters of some franchises, he was never really given the chance to shine in the starring role. Even when he got his chance to play protagonist, it was in a mostly forgotten educational title called Mario is Missing where Mario still held the title spot. Almost twenty years after his introduction to the world though, Luigi would get his chance to not only be the headliner, but also usher in the new GameCube system as one of its titles available on launch. For his big solo adventure, the platforming plumber was given a game where… he explores a haunted house and vacuums up ghosts. While it had no roots in the character’s history then, this unexpected direction would color the way the world viewed Luigi, and it certainly helped him develop more of an identity than just being the green version of Mario who can jump better.

Luigi’s call to action for this unusual outing is a strange letter notifying him that he won a mansion in a contest that he didn’t remember entering, and when Luigi goes to investigate, he learns that it was a trap set by some mischievous spirits. Lily-livered Luigi would have likely not spent a moment longer in the mansion if not for one complicating factor, that being the much more capable hero Mario had already arrived at the mansion before him and was now a captive of the spirits of the mansion. Left no other choice, Luigi sets out to save his brother with the help of an old eccentric inventor named E. Gadd who gives Luigi a special vacuum that allows him to capture spirits in a similar manner to the Ghostbusters. Given the means to take down his foes, Luigi makes for an interesting protagonist. While he doesn’t say much, he is quite clearly terrified of his situation. His voice quivers as he calls out in hopes of finding his brother, he hums and whistles to himself to break the tense air of the silent mansion, and whenever a ghost springs up, he will always jump at least a little, sometimes even chattering his teeth in the middle of the battle as he fights to overcome his fears for a cause worthy of such devotion.

It’s hard to blame Luigi for being so on edge. While the ghosts he encounters are often cartoony blobs or simple humanoid spirits, the mansion itself is presented very much as a terrifying place to be. Even approaching it at the start, it seems to loom over Luigi, cutting an imposing figure in the night sky with the only two windows with lights on seeming to glare at him as he enters. The interior of the mansion is no kinder, with many areas cast in shadow that Luigi’s flashlight cuts a stark but insufficient slice through to help him navigate. Things do begin to light up as you clear rooms of spirits, but Luigi’s Mansion uses the trappings of legitimate horror to amplify the mood Luigi is meant to be experiencing while quickly disarming it with silly ghosts who throw around banana peels or try to frighten Luigi with what amounts to a childlike spring towards him. While ghosts do appear suddenly, rarely is the player caught off guard, the room’s darkness levels usually telegraphing if one can appear and the sound cues being ghostly laughter or babbling rather than something sharp or loud. For something set in the usually family-friendly Mario universe, it pushes as far as it is safe to go without losing that crowd.

When it comes to catching ghosts, the process is universal. When a spirit is vulnerable, you flash your flashlight at them to reveal a heart, then activating your vacuum to begin pulling on them to drain their energy. The ghost will thrash all about, beginning what is essentially the ghost version of trying to reel in a fish as the player must tug against the direction the spirit is moving the right amount to avoid losing it. When the ghost is out of energy, it will be sucked into the vacuum, the battle complete. From here, the three different types of ghost battle emerge. The most common one you’ll encounter will take place with the normal ghosts, these often looking like the next step up from a bedsheet ghost. Simple in design and color-coded for recognizability, these common enemies are found in most every room, the player often only able to get the key to their next location by clearing a room of all of the normal ghosts hiding inside it. Despite being the simplest type, each color and design of ghost comes with one special trait that informs how you’ll want to go about catching them. They often have low health and only pose a mild danger to Luigi, but if they catch you off guard or appear in groups, they can put up a decent enough fight, especially since, while you can vacuum up multiple ghosts at once, it’s not simple to set up and can be hard to maintain without losing your hold on one of them, meaning that it’s free to attack you as a different one drags you about the room. They serve their purpose as the basic obstacles well, although they are complicated a tad when the game introduces elements to the ghost-busting process. By sucking up certain elements after getting the appropriate medal, you can interact with the environment for small puzzles, but some enemy ghosts can only be vacuumed up if you spray them first with their opposing element. You can only carry one element at a time though and the sources of them can sometimes be a bit far off from the ghost who you need to use it on, leading to some moments of uninteresting backtracking to take down one simple generic ghost. Luckily, the game usually puts them where you should already have that element or have a close source for it.

The second type of ghost to be on the lookout for are Boos, small white orb-shaped hooligans who come to inhabit most every room of the mansion. 50 Boos can be found throughout the many floors of the mansion, a special radar telling you how close you are to finding their hiding spot. When found, each Boo introduces itself with its silly pun of a name before trying to run off, your vacuuming having to be quick on the draw or they’ll just float through a wall to escape. Uncovering the Boos adds an extra layer to every room besides the initial ghost extermination, and since they won’t be hitched into a tugging battle like other ghosts, you need to much more carefully track them with your nozzle to avoid them running off to hide somewhere else. At first, that potential for escape pushes you to be more aggressive in your vacuuming, but late game Boos tend to have so much health that they’ll constantly zip back and forth between locations, leading to something more akin to a tedious chase than an exciting hunt. You don’t need all the Boos to beat the game, so you could always disengage before the end if those final ghosts are trying your patience a bit too much.

The final ghost “breed” so to speak is perhaps the most interesting type, the Portrait Ghost. Each Portrait Ghost is unique, these spirits having much more solid identities as they directly parallel the appearances of humans for the most part. They have the most health of any spirit on average, with each one having a name and small history to them you learn once you’ve captured the malevolent specters to hang in E. Gadd’s ghost gallery. Besides their more interesting and varied appearances, the Portrait Ghosts also stand out for requiring more complex means to capture them. It could be said each one has a small puzzle associated with them to make them vulnerable in the first place, meaning that even if you encounter a Portrait Ghost, it’s not immediately busting time. You have to figure out what about their defining traits can be used against them, with cases like a gluttonous ghost you must get to stop eating and a forlorn butler’s spirit that will roam the halls until you can figure out what will spur him to retreat to his room. If you can’t figure out what exactly the game is going for, you can even take a look at the hearts of the spirits to get a clue at their personality and what might help open them up for capture. The rooms they reside in often factor into the puzzle as well. Each room in the game is almost as well-defined as the Portrait Ghosts whether one resides in it or not, and while the arena for ghost-busting is often not challenging, the visuals of the locations are distinct and help the mansion develop its own identity, from expected mansion rooms like the study and bedrooms to more interesting choices like an exercise room, a freezer, and a room decorated in safari trophies. Most Portrait Ghosts could almost be thought of as mini-bosses despite their abundance, and it’s quite telling that the actual bosses, even when they don’t fit the typical Portrait Ghost design, are put in the same category. For the boss battles, the game often does construct a unique arena with more dangers than the give and take of a ghost catching battle, their moments of vulnerability much more conditional than even the regular Portrait Ghosts.

While the rooms can often enhance the visual design of the mansion and some have special secrets or relationships with the ghosts fought in them, the interconnected design does come with a small drawback. Luigi’s progress through the mansion will lead to him doubling back on areas as the keys he collects will sometimes be for an area you passed by earlier. It does give the mansion a more complete feel, with optional areas supplementing that as well, but the need to go up and down stairs and walk through the same halls to get between areas does start to get old as you near the end of a game that isn’t very long on the whole. It fills its runtime well enough, but the running back and forth, especially when you’re trying to locate the last hidden Boo or two and have no idea where it could be, wear down the appeal of the twisting design of the mansion. You do have a map as well as the ability to use any mirror as a teleport back to the mansion’s entrance, but there is still quite a bit of legwork in getting about. It can also take a bit to get used to the controls, aiming your vacuum nozzle controlled by the C stick but also influenced by how you move Luigi about with the regular control stick. Outside of the flightier Boos though, you can easily get to the point that they do the job as well as they need to, with mistakes during the learning process being easy to recover from.

While most of the game is about catching certain required ghosts, you can go the extra mile to collect them all, the game rewarding you for it with an end-of-story ranking based on the money you’ve collected along the way. Portrait Ghosts drop pearls based on how well you’re able to suck them up, coins, bills, and gems are hidden throughout the rooms to reward you for scouring their drawers and cabinets, and the Boos pay off with a big gem if you grab all 50 before the final boss fight. You can engage this secondary goal as much or as little as you like to, but it’s hard to resist the satisfying sound of your vacuum pulling in a bunch of dollar bills that just came from rattling the room’s furniture. With a catchy but appropriate main theme and some solid sound design backing up every single thing that enters your vacuum, Luigi’s Mansion makes itself a mansion that’s not all that bad to get a bit lost in.

THE VERDICT: Luigi suddenly being thrust into the ghostbusting business may have been an odd angle for him to take, but Luigi’s Mansion pulls it off surprisingly well. Catching ghosts is quick to learn but augmented over the course of the game with the scavenger hunt of finding Boos and the Portrait Ghosts having puzzles tied to their personal quirks. The task of pulling in ghosts is technically simple but made more intriguing by the variety expressed through your many targets, and while the mansion’s design can be a bit too wide and drag down the traversal, the building also has its own character and tone to contribute to the experience. That mix of delightful cartoon visuals with the trappings of subdued horror helps to motivate the player to keep moving to see what might be in the next uniquely styled room, even if that might lead to a ghost fight that lasts a touch too long.

And so, I give Luigi’s Mansion for the GameCube…

A GREAT rating. The most common criticism levied against Luigi’s Mansion is actually it’s length, something that it manages to actually fill pretty well but doesn’t quite match up to the playtimes people were expecting in the sixth generation of gaming consoles. What’s important though is for as long as the game lasts, Luigi’s Mansion manages to stay interesting. Luigi’s Mansion makes sucking up ghosts enjoyable by having so many different approaches to it present throughout the game, and tying puzzle solutions to the personality quirks of some of your quarries is a delightful bit of game design that asks for some more imaginative thinking then just identifying what object in the environment looks interactive. The elemental medals are somewhat underutilized due to their limitations, but while Luigi’s Mansion would be more interesting if it continued to evolve the ghost catching process, it only flirts with odd gimmicks, keeping a strong focus on exploring the central mechanic about as far as it could reasonably go. Pulling back on the more tedious moments of walking about or tracking Boos would allow it to be a more consistently strong experience, but the niggling late game factors don’t leave too harsh a mark on it, allowing the player to bust ghosts in an easily understood but not brainless manner from start to finish.

By a strange bit of coincidence, I had this review lined up to coincide with the 3DS remake of Luigi’s Mansion, which appears to be a faithful conversion to the portable platform with a few new features added.  Whether you choose to see Luigi’s breakout role on the newer system or go back to look at the original release, a visit to Luigi’s Mansion comes with plenty to appreciate and enjoy.