Luigi’s Mansion

One thing I really enjoy with this game, that the sequels don’t have, is the little things that give it charm like the cut away to Luigi trying to open doors or unlocking one and slowly entering. It feels like a nod to Resident Evil which makes sense given the time was when the first three RE games were huge so this was definitely Nintendo’s attempt to go after that market.

Also it’s cool to think of how much it makes sense that this is the next step up for challenges in the Mario franchise in terms of lore because in the Mario games the ghosts were generally invincible unless you had a star. So it makes sense when Gadd says Mario can’t stand a chance against the ghosts without the Poltergust 3000.

One thing that makes going back to this game more difficult after playing the second game recently, is how there’s no incentive or reward for collecting gold. In the second game being able to power up different aspects with the gold serving more like experience points to leveling up makes collecting as much as possible feel worth while. In this one it just feels pointless while playing the game. After finishing the game I learned that you get a different ending depending on how much money and treasure you get during the playthrough but nothing really tells you this in the game which it would be cool if there was. At least I didn’t see anything like this.

One of the random things that bugged me was how the explosive mice have a long hang time with their explosive residue. Meaning that after they explode if you run into the area where they exploded Luigi will get hurt as if they exploded near him but this happens even if you give it a couple seconds to clear and the explosion is already going away. Minor complaint but makes me appreciate the polish in the sequels more as it feels like an annoying glitch that needed to be ironed out of this one.

But in the end I can see why this one would be revisited as I hear from content creators quite a bit. If you know what you’re doing the game is pretty short and certainly has a charm that the sequels don’t quite come close to. The series is fun and if they made a fourth game it would be a pre order for me but it would interesting to see if they can ever bring back that same vibe as the first. But I’d say for how I feel playing through the game, the third one is the one I feel I enjoyed the most. So far.