Luigi's Mansion is a good game with fun gameplay and unique ideas.
Luigi's Mansion has Luigi winning a haunted mansion, surprise, surprise! The ghost and boos of the mansion have kidnapped Mario so Luigi has to rescue him. And what better way then to use the almighty Poltergust 3,000 to suck those ghosts right into oblivion?
All Luigi is equipped with in the game is a flashlight and the Poltergust 3,000. Catching ghosts is quite a simple thing; first you must flash the flashlight at the ghost to expose their heart. Then you must use the Poltergust 3,000 to suck all their health away and catch the ghosts. It sounds simple enough, but of course the game can't let you off that easily. The main thing that sets each of the main ghosts apart is how you expose their heart. There are many different ways the game ways to expose the hearts of the many dozens of ghost you'll find in the game.
The controls work quite well for Luigi's Mansion. You use the control stick to move Luigi while you use the C stick to control the direction Luigi is facing so he can suck up some ghosts. :P You hold the R button to use the Poltergust 3,000. And later in the game you get elements such as fire that will shoot out of the Poltergust 3,000 by holding L. Another key control is switching between the flash light and the Poltergust. You can only have one on at a time. Thankfully the developers let you hold the B button to turn off the flash light so you can sneak up on ghost to get to their heart. And you can use the Z, Y, and X buttons to bring up the Gameboy Horror which has a lot of useful stuff like a map and you current status. The premise of Luigi's Mansion is a simple one; one that many lead you to think the game will get a bit stale after a while. But thankfully Luigi's Mansion addresses this issue nicely. The game throws out all sorts of ghost that keeps the game from getting to repetitive. The ghost all fit into their surroundings and have fun and ingenious ways of dealing with them. The variety of different ghost and surroundings make the game fun to play through it entirely. And another tatic to make you play through the game more is the money system. As you progress through the game you will find lots and lots of money in forms of dollars, coins, diamond, and more. At the end of the game you get a grade, aka house size, based upon how much money you got. So if you want the huge ass mansion you need to get as much dinero as possible.
And to go along with the great gameplay and environments the game also packs a good musical score. While it's not the most extravagant score ever it has a nice ring to it and will get stuck in your head for a while. And it's also cool that Luigi will whistle the tune if there are no ghost around. The game also has some good sound effects that do the rest of the game justice. Now we get to the graphics, and this is where the game is a little iffy by today's standards. Granted this game is a very early GC game so it shouldn't have the greatest graphics around. But sadly the graphics haven't aged that well so they will look a bit bland compared to other games. But they do work and the game has a nice art style for the most part so now worries there.
Overall Luigi's Mansion is a great game that you should try out at least once. It has good gameplay and is unique in its own right. It's not a megaton but it's a fun game with catchy music and decent graphics. So yeah check you bargain bin.