Yet another game I played as a kid, I remember really enjoying this back then, like collecting solution for the puzzles made me feel really smart as a kid.

But now, the puzzles are extremely simple and even easy to brute force. Movement is clunky, capturing ghost is kinda like Luigi's Mansion, but worse, I imagine (I never played Luigi's Mansion).
Boss fights are really just capturing the smaller ghost until you can capture the big guy, with exception of the 2nd chapter boss which is the most memorable to me.

I had this game as a kid and I thought it was so hard so I never got anywhere but found it cool that you had these characters in a mansion environment, if only I could actually play it.

Those feelings of "it's too hard" kind of turned into "it's a cheap licensed game" after I figured out what that is over time so I just never tried playing it again. I even looked up some reviews of all the Scooby games at one point which none really seemed all that savory. Then one day, I was looking for some Scooby related clothes I could buy and couldn't find what I was looking for, nothing that said "medieval" or "ghost" and nothing said that more than the cover of this game, it always struck me as a kid. Like something out of a Goosebumps book.
So I went back to the source, this game. I got all three Gamecube games, starting with Night of 100 Frights because that cover always interested me since Charlie was on it but I never got to play it but ugh were the controls annoying, going too slow with walking speed, too fast with running and the sound effects repeated constantly. I ended up shutting it off and trying a different one first, because why not.

One thing I saw consistent in the reviews was that the opening cutscene is always a really nice homage but it seemed like all the Scooby games did that so it lost its novelty. With that said, with how cheesy the story and cutscenes are, it does feel like a Scooby Doo game, even the movements. There can be some overly long animations like climbing up on a crate but all in all it controls better than Night...why is that though?

It's not perfect but I think part of it is the mansion itself and how it's laid out. You're in close quarters but with enough variety and obstacles to not seem bland. Night wasn't bland, it was just more open so you can collect Scooby-Snacks so its faults were a lot more noticeable. In fact, the whole gameplay style has changed, rather than being a copy and paste, your goal isn't to collect Scooby Snacks, it's to, well, I'll let Velma explain it-

Sneaking is something that took me a long time to get over in games and it was Metal Gear Solid that made me finally get there but this isn't really a stealth game because you get this book that lets you absorb enemies into it using rapid presses of whatever button comes on screen.

So, no, it's not as hard as it was as a kid but that's because I made it harder than it had to be, I didn't understand that type of game yet or that you "could" be spotted by ghosts, just had to bypass them. I won't spoil the level variety but they just get longer from there. There are different sections of them and it does decent enough with pointing you in the right direction so you don't get lost and there are frequent save points but they're just longer winded is all. I'm convinced I never could've done those vehicle sections as a kid though, those gave me a run NOW.

It still falls for licensed game traps, especially using the same voice actors, hearing the same voice lines and sound effects over and over. They switch some up for the specific level you're on but like I said, those levels get longer. Sometimes they play over cutscene dialogue too. But all in all a decent experience that was never boring, I'm convinced enough to check out Night again and Unmasked now too.

Not the best Scooby Doo game...

This was my 2nd Scooby Doo game that I had on the GameCube back in 2004-2005, it was fun and easy (for the most part) as a kid but coming back to it now as an adult man it kinda sucks. The game is much more story based than SD: night of 100 frights and is set up to be a 5 part episodic adventure. It follows Scooby and the gang as they find a real book of the dead that allows Scooby and Shaggy to capture real ghosts with the final boss of each episode being a real person in disguise. Having real ghosts was a weird concept for Scooby doo but not super abnormal considering some of the movies went into this concept. Most of the gameplay is repetitive and basically involves you capturing ghosts with the book and tapping a button till they are absorbed into the book. The game has different collectibles (Clues and sandwich foods) which were usually easy to find but some of them were crazy difficult to get and would most definitely be missed. There are like 2 mini game sections where you can super easily miss collectibles in a mine car ride and on a motorcycle race, which the motor cycle part was probably the most awkward, annoying, frustrating and difficult parts to play as a kid and an adult especially trying to find the collectibles. Considering this game was made for kids I’m not sure what they were thinking here, these parts feel crazy out of place with the rest of the game. Each episode goes to different locations like a library, movie set, desert town, bayou and a lab facility. There is a wear costumes mechanic where you can disguise yourself as ghosts or other people to fool people but for the most part I didn’t use it unless I needed too. There are a lot of different enemy types in this game from different ghosts to even mummies and zombies, along with people enemies that you can only avoid as well. Most of this game is repetitive and boring and I think its largely due to the book mechanic and how that works. The story is goofy and doesn’t make any sense, I feel like they have real little kids write these games sometimes with how dumb they are but its ok considering this is of course Scooby doo and a kids game, I’ll admit I didn’t think much about it as a kid. A lot of the voice acting it alright and most of the characters look weird and make unsettling facial expressions half the time. Overall, it was fun revisiting this game again and I’m sure if you have a young kid, they may enjoy this game but really there are so many other better Scooby doo games worth checking out.

You go around finding clues and capturing monsters. To capture monsters you use the need to use the “tome of doom.” The book will suck up any monsters you have the pages for. You’ll collect more pages as you play the game.

To suck up the monsters you’ll have to spam the designated button shown on screen while occasion dodging the enemy. I’m not really a fan of spamming buttons to capture monsters, but I suppose it does work.

I am not particularly fond of the minecart and bike mini game. They took me way too many tries to get through. I will admit I should have probably turned my brightness up on my TV, as I had a hard time seeing certain obstacles that were in the distance. Not sure if that would have helped at all, but many only minimal.

This game is nothing special but I feel like the developers put a lot of care into making it. Stuff like remaking the intro and making animations (like when you wait too long and fall asleep or different animations based on your health).