WTF? What's going on here. Luigi in a launch title? Where's Mario? Apparently Marios gone missing, and its up to you, Luigi to find where he's gone.

It all starts with Luigi winning a mansion. I don't know how he won it. Perhaps he found it at the bottom of his cereal box. If he eats cereal. Well if he eats at all. Anywho. Luigi, who from here on in will be known only as "Weegee", wins a mansion. When Weegee turns up, its obvious something is wrong. Perhaps its the subtle amounts of dark and evil draped over everything, or perhaps the fact that the house has a green and black colour scheme. But something is definitely not right. Long story short (well actually its a short story, but I'm mindboggilingly lazy) Mario has fallen for the same trick and is trapped in a painting. Oh, did I mention the house is haunted with ghosts? No? Shit. Well it is.

So Weegee being the brother he is sets out to clean up the house with his vacuum cleaner and get his brother back. Its all a bit suspicious really. I mean, how do we know that Weegee didn't hit Mario with some chloroform and then nailed him to some canvas, thereby removing his greatest competition from the picture, and stealing the launch title limelight.

Anyway, there's a fair few things that need to be mentioned, so here we go.

Firstly, this game shakes up the whole mario shiznit a fair bit. One of the best examples is the money. In all the games up until now, its been a case of endlessly collecting coins. Now its still coins, but also cold hard gold bullion and some nice greenbacks. Needless to say its pretty amazing the first time you open a chest and it explodes with cash. The only possible explanation for this change is the fact that Nintendo are stepping up their subliminal capitalist messages a few more notches. Well maybe a few hundred notches. Your cash is kept tabs on through the game, and in the end you finish with $50,000,00 +! Then Weegee goes off and buys a small balkan nation and goes on the world domination path, using computer operating systems and a monopoly market to buy the world. Or something.

Secondly, we should mention that this game was hooked up to an old TV. Its pretty big, and good, but the speakers are very very pissant. "No Problems" we thought. "Its not like a Nintendo game is going to have good music". Oh how wrong we were. Upon entering the training area, a huge bass drop instantly raped the speakers. All 4 of us were on the ground in laughter. 4 minutes later the good speaker were wired in.

Bass. Nintendo.

The two words still look wrong within close proximity if each other.

Let me try again.

Bass. Nintendo.

Nope, still doesn't work.

Ah well. The long and short of it is that this game has some kickass music, that actually makes use of your subbies, rather than hogging the tweeters.

What else? Oh right the ghosts. The way to capture a ghost is easy. Stun it with your spotlight, then get sucking. No not like that, get your mind out of the gutter. This is NINTENDO. I mean with the vacuum cleaner. The controls for doing this are beautiful. You have to keep you vacuum trained on the ghost, using the C-Stick, while at the same time fighting against the ghosts direction with your control stick. And it isn't always easy. For something made of nothing, ghosts sure have a shit load of inertia.

I could write all about the rest of the game, but I wont. You think I'm joking but I'm not.

Summary-

Graphics: 9.5 - Beautiful. Light, physics and interaction with everything is spot on
Sound: 9 - NINTENDO! BASS! ARGH!
Gameplay: 8 - Fun but a bit too much key collecting. Short too.
Overall: 8.5 - Good game that feels a little too much like a tech demo more than anything at times.


Reviewer: MrP