Boo! If that didn't scare you, neither will The Haunted Mansion. Well it may not be scary but it is a decent puzzle game. As you may or may not have been able to ascertain from the blurb to this review, The Haunted Mansion (THM) is a game based on the Disneyland amusement ride from which it takes its name. Just like Pirates of the Caribbean before it, THM does not follow the story of the Hollywood adaptation but instead is more faithful to the original ride. I assure you, Eddie Murphy's career will not make an appearance as a ghost in this haunted mansion. You play the character Zeke, a budding author who grew up in orphanages and has now applied for a caretakers job in the aforementioned mansion. Poor Zeke sets out to investigate his future workplace (in the middle of the night of course) and before too long is locked inside. Madame Leola, a once powerful fortune-teller now trapped in her crystal ball kindly fills you in on the grim situation. A great evil has consumed the mansion, and it has fallen on Zeke to rid it of the evil spirits and restore the good spirits to power.

To achieve this task Zeke is give a magic lantern called The Beacon of Souls which acts not only as a source of light but as a sparkly ghost busting weapon as well. The beacon has three fire types that are unlocked and upgraded by Soul Gems as the game progresses. Left Trigger locks onto the closest enemy (or so the theory goes) and Right Trigger fires. The length of time you depress the trigger determines the type of coloured sparkly it releases. The targeting system is not flawless and it can be quite difficult to lock onto the desired target when multiple enemies attack. Generally it does the job efficiently, but on occasion you will loose a life because you were attacked from behind or to the side of where you were aiming. Doesn't really matter though, as extra lives are very easy to obtain. Tarot cards litter the levels and on collection of 10 such cards Zeke is awarded with an extra life. At one stage late in the game I found myself with in excess of 15 lives! Every time Zeke is scared to the point of fainting, a life is subtracted from your total and Zeke is revived on the spot.

As THM is based on a Disney ride it is not surprising that it's light on scares. The packaging say 7 years plus, but I seriously doubt if a child of any age would be scared by this creation. It's just not spooky! Sure it's dark, but that's it. The graphics are very average and it's clear this multi-platform release hasn't received an Xbox worthy graphical makeover. The sound effects are bland and the music is very dull. The Haunted Mansion could have benefited greatly from a musical score reminiscent of a Tim Burton movie. Instead it suffers with an uninspired score that is not spooky, goofy or kooky. Lacking the colour and humour of Grabbed by the Ghoulies and the likeable *cough* main character of Nintendo's Luigie's Mansion, The Haunted Mansion seems to come up short in all areas...all except one.

The Haunted Mansion's one saving grace is its puzzles. High Voltage Software have done a fantastic job of populating the game with numerous original puzzles that never seem repetitive. These puzzles are guaranteed to tax the mind of child and adult alike, but are never too abstract or require the reflexes of a Preying Mantis on speed. Some of these puzzles look quite surreal; perhaps the game designers spent a lot of time hanging out with that Preying Mantis I mentioned earlier and reading Alice in Wonderland. Each room in the Mansion is sealed by Spirit Barriers that can only be opened by accumulating enough Shrivelled Souls in the Beacon. Shrivelled Souls hide in the dark, therefore the purpose of completing the many puzzles is to reach a light switch or to restore light to a room by other means. This in turn gives you an opportunity to search hiding places in order to capture more souls.

To finish the game you require 999 Shrivelled Souls, but don't worry as souls come in groups of 10 – 30, so you don't have to solve a thousand puzzles to beat the game. That said the game is a little on the easy side. Ok, a lot on the easy side if you're good with puzzles but not too hard for kids and of course it suffers the fate of all puzzle games; When you've solved them once, there is no challenge in solving them again. Beating the game on different difficulty levels does unlock certain cheats but this does nothing to wipe your memory of how each puzzle is beaten.