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First wave of games on a new system are seldomly very graphical or rich in gameplay content. Rarely do you find a first wave game that lacks both. This is the case with Nintendo Gamecube's Luigi's Mansion.
The main purpose of playing a game is to have fun and kill time. None of which Luigi's Mansion accomplishes. I found Luigi's Mansion to be no fun at all. Although, it wasn't completely boring, it didn't give me the urge to hold on the controller to keep playing.
Let me start with the general goal of the game which is to catch ghosts. That's it! It doesn't change throughout the game nor does the types of ghosts.
Second, the challenge of the game disappears the moment you become accustomed to the Gamecube's controller. Unlike, Super Mario World 64 where the difficulty steadily increased to match the players' adaptation with the controller, Luigi's Mansion's difficulty level never left zero.
Third, the music in Luigi's Mansion wasn't great either. It sounded like it was composed using the system's General MIDI feature. Which is terrible considering the massive storage capabilities of compact discs. What really put the final nail in the coffin music wise was that the musical theme repeated throughout the whole game dispite changing floors of the mansion. This might have worked had this game been released on the NES or SNES but for the CD based Gamecube is unacceptable.
Graphically, Luigi's Mansion is at the bottom of the barrel among first wave games. Yes, the lighting, mist, dust, water, and fire effects are nice. However, I've seen the same things on a lessor scale accomplished on the N64. It seems as if all the graphical attention was paid to the ghosts and Luigi and not to the rest of the mansion. Certain background objects that needed to be three dimensional were left in one. Another graphical slip in Luigi's Mansion is the details paid to the walls. The details of the walls within the mansion don't increase as the distance between them Luigi decreases. This factor might've helped the realism. I thought the days of playstation bitmap layered walls were over. I guess I was wrong.
Overall, Luigi's Mansion is not a bad game, it's just a bad game to buy. The good thing about Luigi's Mansion is that seemed to be a protype testing the systems capabilities. Perhaps, this game was just a stepping stone for greater games yet to come. It's sad that Luigi had to be the one to suffer through it. Nintendo really should've created a character to play through this game and not tarnish the rep of Mario's bro.

Save your money and buy one of the other games like Rogue Squadron and Tony Hawk or even John Madden.

This game is awesome. True, I got a little spooked at times, but it was totally worth it. I could not put this game down! You just keep going and going! It's tricky because it makes you think. It was so fun, I played it for almost 3 days straight! It's not as fun the second time you try to beat it because you already know how to catch the ghosts, but it still is fun to catch them! I really hope that you buy this game!

This is a good game, and is the perfect starter game if you just bought a gamecube but once you beat it ... you don't play it again (at least for me). This and Super Smash Bros. Melee were the first games I got with the cube and it didn't take very long to beat it. It's a fun game featuring Luigi who rarely gets the credit he deserves but it's just not hard enough. If it took longer to beat or if it were as fun and innovative as the Zelda or Mario series, I might want to play this more. The main reason I got sick of this game is that the whole thing takes place in the manshion, there really is no worlds or temples. Really, it's not as good because it doesn't take that long to explore the whole place. In all, this game is more worth renting once or twice until you beat it then buying it. Unless you are a cube or Mario series fanatic like me, this isn't really worth your money just for the fact that it's too easy to beat.