Luigi's Mansion is exactly what it sounds like, a "kiddy" game. However, its a lot of fun, and it's one of the two best adventure games currently out for Gamecube.

Story:
The game's plot is very simple, Luigi has won a mansion from a contest he didn't enter and he goes to explore it. After he goes inside he finds out he can't get inside anywhere because it's filled with ghosts. Professor E. Gad finds you inside and says he can help you out. He's been studying ghosts all his life and he knows how to catch them. Professor E. Gad tells Luigi that his brother Mario heard that he had won a mansion and came to it before him. Some of the ghosts caught him and now Luigi must save his brother. Then,He shows you his Poltergeist 3000 that is basically a modified vacuum cleaner. He then teaches you how to freeze ghosts with you flashlight then suck them up.

Gameplay:
The game is very simple, you walk around the mansion and suck up ghosts. Although it may seem simple and boring, it's actually a lot of fun. Once in a while you will meet one of the bigger ghosts or I guess you could call them a boss. It's much harder to freeze them with your flashlight and they have a lot more HP than the other regular ghosts do. About a quarter of the way through the game you go into a room and you open a door in the floor, it turns out 50 Boos were hiding in it and they fly out to get you. Then they realize you're holding the Poltergeist 3000 and they all run away. That adds another part to the game, that after you defeat all the ghosts in a room and the lights come on, you have to go around shaking chests to find Boos that are hiding in the room. To help you to find the boos E. Gad has given you a Gameboy Horror that indicates when you're near a Boo. Your Gameboy Horror also shows your inventory and all the Boss ghosts you have caught. To beat the game you have to beat every room in the mansion, catch 45 Boos, then finally beat and capture King Boo. Although this may seem like it would take a while, the game takes about 6-8 hours to beat. Once you beat it, you're rewarded with your own mansion, the size and grandeur of it, depends on how much money you collected throughout the game. Also, you unlock the "Hidden Mansion", which turns out is the exact same mansion that you just beat except you can suck up ghosts about twice as fast. This is pretty stupid, and all it shows is that the developers had about 10 minutes to waste.

Graphics:
The graphics are some of Gamecube's best, the textures are smooth and rounded, and I never saw a sharp edge (where it shouldn't be) throughout the whole game. There are short movie clips when Luigi slowly and cautiously opens a door and they look great, just like a movie. The characters, rooms, and objects in the rooms all look a little cartoony, but it's nothing different from a Mario game. Any different would not be accepted as a game that's part of the Mario series.

Control:
The camera view is a third-person view that always looks the the same direction, it doesn't stay over his shoulder or anything like that. This may seem awkward, but I never had a problem with it, and it never got stuck behind walls and I never saw blank space behind the walls. Two thumbs up to the developers for this. You control Luigi with the control stick and aim your vacuum with the c-stick. The left trigger shoots out either ice, fire, or water, depending on which one you have, and the right trigger sucks up stuff with the vacuum. The A button takes pictures, the B button turns your flashlight off, and the Z button shows your inventory. The A and Z are rarely used, but the B buttons and triggers are used all the time.

Sound:
Thank god there is not much music in this game, because typically Mario music gets pretty annoying after a while. The only time there's music is when you go into battle mode with a ghost, otherwise when you're just exploring around there isn't any. The other sounds fit well, chilling ghost shrieks and screams, door hinges squeaking, and ghostly laughs. Although it's not really scary or anything, since it's aimed at a younger generation of gamers, it still portrays ghost sounds well.

Luigi's Mansion is a fun game, but since it's extremely short it definitely deserves nothing more than a rent from Hollywood Video over the weekend.