Luigi’s Mansion 2 was the one real surprise announcement from Nintendo concerning their 3DS hardware. I had some requests from friends to check the game out, but there was one problem: I had never played nor did I know anything about Luigi’s Mansion. Fortunately, the pal I was staying with owned the game, and I gave myself a brief tutorial in it the night before to have a basis for comparison. What new horrors await the timid, second Mario Bro?

Best I can tell, the premise is roughly the same as the original Luigi’s Mansion. Instead of exploring one big mansion in search of Mario, Luigi is now sent to various mansions to gather metaphysical research for Professor E. Gadd, who is hands down the dumbest Mario character ever conceived (yes, even dumber than Waluigi). He’s obviously just written in as an excuse to introduce some kind of technical device the gameplay centers around, and he’s never fit in as a Mario series character in my eyes. Fortunately, he’s been relegated mostly to extraneous games like this, but I still wish they’d stuff him already.

The demonstration level was roughly fifteen minutes, and tasked Luigi with tracking down a brainy ghost that enjoys loitering the mansion’s library. It was a pretty basic level, consisting of only five or six rooms to explore. Stashed around the area were plenty of coins and cash (???) for Luigi to suck up with his vacuum. There were also various surprise stingers, pretty much only frightening to the man in green.

I can’t say I got really involved into the mechanics when playing Luigi’s Mansion, but nevertheless the play control in Luigi’s Mansion 2 feels a bit more streamlined. This perhaps owes to not having to use the Game Cube controller, which I’ve never liked. Rather than turning the flashlight on and off now, it’s always on and you hit A to pulse it and stun a ghost. Vacuuming is handled with the R button, and curiously L will make the vacuum blow. I don’t know that the original Luigi’s Mansion had this feature, and I never found a use for it in the demo. The vacuum can also suck up the ends of curtains and table cloths and the like, and pressing A tugged them off. Moving Luigi’s aim up and down can be handled either with the 3DS’s gyroscope, or by using the X and B buttons. I found both to have their strengths and weaknesses.

Ghost combat also seems unchanged for the most part. You stun the ghosts then whittle down their resistance as you suck them up. The one difference here is occasionally you’ll see the A marker briefly appear while ghost busting. Hitting A while it’s up will give Luigi a boost and knock a few points off of the ghost’s resistance immediately. I still don’t quite understand the mechanic or, I guess more appropriately, the skill for beating ghosts. While wrangling them I’d seemingly get knocked back for no reason and lose some coins. I believe it depends on holding the analog pad away from the direction the ghost is tugging, but I never really got a feel for it.

Although Luigi’s Mansion 2 is definitely more along the lines of an adventure and puzzle game, I couldn’t help but be charmed by Luigi’s characterization and the game’s theme, ridiculous as it is when you really consider it. I’m not usually into this sort of game, but I’m interested in checking out more of it. I think this probably has to do with having no previous experience with it; the same thing occurred with Animal Crossing. Many of my friends bemoaned that Animal Crossing: City Folk rehashed too much content from Animal Crossing: Wild World. However, never having played one previously, I enjoyed City Folk a bit. (And that could change if the 3DS Animal Crossing suffers the same fate.)

Luigi’s Mansion 2 is slated for a 2012 release. The name is still technically temporary, so there’s always a chance it’ll end up being called Luigi’s Mansion 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Tags: 3DS, adventure, E3 2011, hands-on impressions, Luigi's Mansion 2, Nintendo, preview, puzzle

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