Genre: Adventure
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

Luigi's Mansion opens with a sequence that shows you exactly what the graphics are going to look like all the way through the end- very average. The textures are blurry, the lighting is static, and the beams from Luigi's flashlight clip right through the walls, stairs, furniture, and anything else that's around. The transparency effects for the ghosts look nice, and the player models, while not particularily detailed, are smooth enough. The game also features some nice physics effects, such as the bouncing cord to Luigi's vacuum. Also, one wall in the mansion is even bump-mapped! As a whole, the game looks very average, but has some decent special effects that make up for the rest of the game's visuals.

Mechanically, the sound in the game isn't anything special- it's how it's used that's innovative. First off, the game has only one song during gameplay. This may sound alarming, but the song has a very good melody, and changes dynamically depending on the situation. Also, Luigi will start to hum the song every so often, which adds to the charm of the game. The sound effects are well done and are very cutesy and Nintendo-esque, although the clarity is not the best.

Luigi's Mansion is perhaps the most creative game of 2001. Luigi wins a haunted mansion in a contest, but Mario ends up being captured by the ghosts inside. Luigi must traverse the insides of the mansion room-by-room, capture all of the ghosts with the Poltergust 3000 vacuum cleaner, attain a key, then move on to the next room. Some of the marquee ghosts involve solving some sort of puzzle to capture, and the bosses are exceptionally creative. If there is any beef with the controls, it's that sometimes aiming the vacuum vertically is difficult, and it's tough to judge your depth along the z-axis due to the angle the camera sits at. Despite those complaints, Luigi's Mansion has very creative gameplay dynamics.

The biggest fault with Luigi's Mansion lies with its premise, which is a double-edged sword: on one hand, it's a very original, well-implemented idea. On the other hand, the game would become extremely boring and tedious if it were a long game. As a result, Luigi's Mansion takes roughly 4 hours to completely master. Adding to this is the fact that the game has absolutely no replay value at all, and you're looking at a game that will eat a lot of dust sitting on your shelf untouched after the first 4 hours of gameplay. An original title that's worth a rent, but I can't recomend buying it due to its extremely short gameplay life.