MaWhat I love most about Luigi’s Mansion are the little details: the way Mario’s timid little brother nervously hums along to the music as he stumbles through the spooky mansion; the slapstick animations when he falls into a fireplace or gets blasted into a secret room on a foldout bed; the laughs and goofy expressions on his face as the ghosts start to play tricks on you. As you use Luigi’s trusty ghost vacuum to flip up carpets to reveal secret trap doors (or secret spiders) and suck up bills and gold coins hidden throughout, you can’t help but notice how every little sound, scene and secret has been carefully placed to give you little moments of joy.
This ghost-busting puzzle game was a very welcome surprise sequel when it launched for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013. Its diorama-like mini-mansions and peepholes gave Nintendo’s artists ample opportunity to show off the console’s stereoscopic 3D effects, enabled by a small slider on the side of the screen. But now, 11 years later, the game has launched on the Switch and two things have changed. First, the 3D effect it was designed around is no longer there, and second, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is here and it’s vastly improved.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. Photo: Nintendo
Considering Luigi hasn’t made a single spooky film in a decade now, it’s hard to begrudge him a graphically improved remake. But Nintendo has priced Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD at almost £50, which is especially infuriating when you consider it wasn’t much more expensive to begin with. It looks better – the interiors of all five mansions have been revamped, with impeccable detail on everything from sofas and spider webs to armour – but it plays exactly the same, broken up into mini-missions that interrupt the flow of the game and take Luigi out of the creepy abode he’s exploring at 10-minute intervals, and back to paranormal investigator E. Gadd’s laboratory.
Gadd is constantly calling Luigi on his little flip phone, which is very cute, but also distracts from the gameplay. While many Nintendo games suffer from too many tutorials for the first hour or two, this game has these interruptions from start to finish, making it hard to enjoy leisurely exploration. It’s not a scary game, but it would be better without the constant chatter. Maybe the levels needed to be broken down like this to fit the game on the tiny 3DS cartridge, but it feels dated now. Another irritation is the multiplayer, where two people can’t play together on the same console. Unlike Luigi’s Mansion 3, you can’t play with your child or partner.
Structural quibbles aside, there’s no disputing Luigi’s Mansion 2’s design is sound: the puzzles are great, the ghost combat is fun and clever, and the attention to detail creates an abundance of endearing moments, but Luigi’s Mansion 3 delivers on all of that. and For the same price, you get even more attractions: you can explore a haunted hotel without being interrupted by anything but poltergeist activity;
Source: www.theguardian.com
