The Haunted Mansion

"Good Game, But Could Have Done Better"

The Haunted Mansion game is a good game, but I do think that many features could be improved.

Graphics 6/10 - The graphics in the game in some cases are really good. The actual rooms themselves look absolutely brilliant. However, as you get closer to some objects, eg. paintings, they tend to blur. The ghosts themselves look quite good, however the evil-spirits look like a skull with fog following them. I find that the stronger the ghost is, the more detail in graphics it has. However if you look outside the windows, the graphics are awful. It looks like some black things painted onto blue wallpaper. Apart from the occasional moving fly, the graphics outside are not good at all.

Story 5/10 - The way the story is told is unusual. At the beginning, it tells you about how a person called 'Zeke', is seeking employment at the mansion. Instead, he has to rid the Mansion of evil. After this, the story is completely left behind, apart form the odd version of the book written by Atticus Thorn.

Game Play 7/10 - The game is set out in quite an ingenious way. For each room, there is a number of souls for Zeke to collect. After Zeke has collected this number of souls, he can then use them to access another room in the mansion. This makes the rooms more like levels. In each room, there is a challenge or puzzle that Zeke must complete in order to put the lights on. This, however, makes the game mostly solving puzzles, with little action.

Replayability 3/10 - For this game, unless you want to get the codes from Nightmare or Normal modes, it is pretty pointless playing it again. When you have completed each puzzle, you know how to do it again, so whats the point?

Rent or Buy - For this game, if you are a big fan of puzzle solving, and don't like lots of action, buy it. However, if puzzles aren't your thing, rent it. You will probably be able to complete it on Normal mode in 2 nights.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/18/07