Ghost Mania (WiiWare) Review

Story:  The story is a cheap childish knock-off of Ghostbusters.It tries to be funny, but the jokes fall flat.


There are two characters, a boy and a girl, who are trying to round-up ghosts. The player chooses whom to play as, but there are no real differences, and there is no development to the characters at all. None of this would be a problem since a story is not important to a falling block puzzler; however, the story and characters are so obnoxious that no story would have been better.

Gameplay: It takes a while to wrap your head around the concept of Ghost Mania. There are no helpful instructions detailing the unintuitive rules. When blocks fall on like color blocks they combine but will only disappear when a shiny, ghost-containing block of the same color falls on it.  These shiny blocks generate randomly, so each puzzle can become frustrating quickly if a certain color never appears. I lost numerous times because a shiny blue or red block would never appear.  At first, this creates an exhilarating experience as you frantically try to finish a puzzle; however, on later levels, any motivation you have to continue will quickly evaporate. To select the blocks to fall the player holds the Wiimote sideways and can change the arrangement of the row of blocks on the top of the screen. This timed process controls well, never frustrating the player. The effort to distinguish it from Tetris and other falling block puzzlers sours the experience.

Graphics: There is a clash between the character models and the backgrounds of each puzzle. The characters have a slightly more realistic look to them that lacks personality. Whereas the backgrounds are cartoonish and have a light-hearted personality, the character models come across cheaply made and have no appeal to sentimentality. There is a decent amount of variation to look of the backgrounds. After each stage, the game switches to a completely different location via a dizzying warp zone, and this keeps the stages interesting to the eye because each location has a cute appearance.

Audio: The characters speak only via text. This is not a huge problem, but it would have been nice to have a little voice acting. Music in the game serves its purpose; it is not great, but it is thematic and blends well with the personalities of the backgrounds.

Replayability: Four modes are present in Ghost Mania: Arcade, Puzzle, Endless, and 2-player. Arcade mode struggles under the weight of the problems with this title, but puzzle mode offers a nice change of pace. You have to rid the screen of blocks given a set number of moves. Since the random block generator is not present in this mode, it is a great deal of fun. Endless mode is Arcade mode without an established goal, so the problems with the game are most pronounced here. 2-player mode does offer a reason to replay the game; there are different game types, and it is more fun competing against a friend than achieving arbitrary goals. Enough puzzles are present to keep people playing for a while; however, there is just not enough different about Ghost Mania, and what is different hurts the overall experience, to see anyone playing this game for very long.

Pros:

• Varied backgrounds are cute
• Music is appealing
• 2-player mode is executed well

Cons:

• Obnoxious story and characters
• Unintuitive gameplay
• Many games come down to luck not skill

 Editor: Zach Felling

3/10 Poor

Value: Don’t Buy no matter the Price