Completion Time: 3h:49m:00s
Rating: 7/10

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Happy Haunts

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Happy scary-month everyone! And what better way to celebrate than once again completing 4 horror-adjacent GameCube games for this little blog I have going. Today's entry is a bit slighter when it comes to horror, but there were moments I could see freaking me out as a little baby child playing through this. And the GameCube doesn't have too many non-Resident Evil horror games to speak of, so I'm picking my battles here! But Disney's The Haunted Mansion, a game based more on the ride than something like the Eddie Murphy movie, is the topic of discussion today. Come along, and be sure to bring your death certificate.

Me emerging from the grave, as is the spirit of the season

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Dying to Meet You

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Much like "Luigi's Mansion", the game has you entering a mansion, and you're tasked with clearing the ghosts from the matter. Or at least, that's the base element of the game. Because not all ghosts are freed, just the spirits you can find residing in furniture and boss battles across the unlockable rooms of the manor. The biggest distinction here is that you have to get the lights on BEFORE you can start hunting for spirits in a room, which is a godsend because the furniture they hide in can be extremely hard to see. If there's a piece of furniture or a plant or something that spirits are residing within, you can see it wobble when you get close to it. But this can be hard to see as is, and I cannot imagine doing that in utter darkness.

I spent no less than 7 minutes hunting for this one barrel, because I'm not good at paying attention

Progressing through, you'll find pieces of death certificates for various helpful ghosts, and once one is complete, they'll provide you with a gem to upgrade the power of your lantern. The lantern is how you defeat the enemies that are creeping around the place, and they range from small crawling ghouls to large knights to spiders... I guess. It should be mentioned that I completed the game here on the highest difficulty (Nightmare Mode), and didn't have too much trouble, I think the main distinction of difficulty in the game comes from just how many enemies swarm you, and maybe the bosses have a bit more health I don't know.

Remember this from the ride? I do!

The crux of each room in the mansion is puzzle solving. Push this thing here so you can climb up there and flip the light switch, things like that. One of the more confusing was the spiral staircase, which had paintings you could climb into and would lead to a separate section of the staircase where you could then move previous stair locations around... yeah, there's a lot going on here. But it's fun to solve these and flex your brain muscles to get that illumination going. Need to find the spirits, after all. The biggest complaint I have are the platforming sections. There aren't many. But occasionally you've gotta jump from section to section either across a spanning dining room or in an endless void representing an observatory, but the results are always the same: pure annoyance. It's rigid to jump and the shadows of your player character don't show up properly so I fell A LOT. The only time this was sort of enjoyable was when I had to roll around on this ball, that's more so because it was at least varied in how I was platforming. But as I said, these only come about ever now and then, and are far from the main engagement of the game.

I... am FINE art

Every now and again, the primary antagonist of the game, Atticus Thorn, appears to taunt you and claim that you'll never get out and blah blah blah. He's intimidating for a kids' game, and he flies around and shoots fireballs at you, but that's mostly it. Not too much of a hassle to defeat him at least, though that doesn't account for the end game. He turns into a huge worm and launches more fireballs at you. Interesting that I recently played another GameCube game that I wrote a blog about, Vexx, in which the final boss turned into some large insect and shot fireballs at you. They both came out in 2003, so I guess it's just kismet.

Nothing says "The Haunted Mansion" like a big ole worm

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Completing the Game

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So how do you go about completing a game like this? The aforementioned souls are the easiest part, just go through the game as normal and be sure to engage with every facet of the environment to see the wobbly signs of a collection of souls. There are 999 total, but they'll add up pretty quickly over time. Especially because there are bosses that, upon defeat, will just give you up to a hundred souls on their own. It's not as daunting as it seems, they really just kept the number to keep in theme with the ride.

Don't mind me, just sucking up spirits!

You can also find small voodoo dolls that will help to increase your... sanity meter, I think? This acts as your health bar, but sometimes it just depletes when you're in the dark so I believe it's meant to represent sanity. Well, in any case I guess it doesn't matter, because it's ultimately both health AND sanity. But these small figurines can be found most anywhere. In vaults, behind paintings, on top of chandeliers. Just search around and you'll come across them, and it will only help you out. But aside from that, the real completion is just finishing the game. You'll likely manage to do all of this anyways as you play, so once you get to the final boss you'll be golden.

Oh, "Mumbo" doll and "Bravery" meter, my mistake

Another instance here of a game that's better than it has any right to be, primarily due to the game's leaning towards ACTUAL horror elements and the variation in puzzles to be solved. The platforming leaves much to be desired, as with many games of this ilk that aren't actually designed for platforming. But it gives me hope that I'll enjoy the other titles this month just as month, when Spooktober continues next week!

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 26/652