Review #702: Luigi's Mansion - Dark Moon

 Legend has it, you may even reach the dark side of the dark moon.

 With Luigi's Mansion 3 right around the corner, I felt it was appropriate to completely skip the first game and give the series a try with the second game, Luigi's Mansion - Dark Moon. Not your average Mario game that much is clear, there isn't even a jump button, no, this is a much slower-paced puzzle-adventure game that sees you take the role of Luigi and his trusty vacuum-cleaner-turned-ghost-hunting-device as you help Dr. E. Gadd capture all the ghosts gone rogue and find all the pieces of the Dark Moon.

 The game is divided into 5 Mansions/stages, each one being made up of up to 5 missions, a boss and a bonus mission. For whatever reason, the third mansion, the ice one, only has 3 missions instead of five. Each mission is made up of a main objective, but you're free to explore at your leisure, and you should, as finding money helps upgrade your tools and each mission has a hidden Boo, collect them all and you'll unlock the bonus missions. Having every mansion divided into separate objectives is a bit... questionable. After you fulfill your goal, E. Gadd teleports you back into his lab, only to send you back into the entrance of the mansion for the next objective. It kills the pacing, and sometimes the mansion changes very little between objectives, not that it matters since re-exploring the entire thing again for each mission is encouraged if you're looking for money, hidden gems or the hidden boo. It's not long before it starts getting a bit tedious

 Luigi, ghost-hunter extraordinaire, will equip three main tools throughout the course of the first mansion: The ever-useful Poltergust, a Vacuum-Cleaner that is used to grapple ghosts into submission, clean mounds of dust/ice, suck in objects in order to carry them, stick Luigi on-to a rope, or even shoot-out certain solid objects. There really is no shortage of stuff to do with it, you'll find yourself sucking-in fake walls and curtains, carrying flaming logs in order to melt ice or burn webs, turn valves or even use it to rappel through ropes. Luigi's second tool is his flashlight, necessary in order to stun ghosts before you can start vacuuming them as well as interacting with a few objects in order to activate them. Luigi's last tool is his dark-light flashlight, this one is used to reveal invisible objects and reveal the ever-elusive Boos in order to capture them.

 Each Mansion has 13 different jewels to collect, which are pretty much useless, a ton of money, which unlocks upgrades for your dark-light flashlight and vacuum cleaner, but it's not too soon before you get all the upgrades and money becomes useless as well. It's a shame that collectibles feel so superfluous, because this is mainly a puzzle game, but after you've maxed all your upgrades there's very little incentive to do so besides finding the hidden Boos in order to unlock the bonus missions. Plus, since finding Boos, gems and money usually means aimlessly backtracking.... it becomes quite boring early on. Luckily, your main objectives keep it fresh, so it doesn't feel like unnecessary backtracking.

 Controls in the game can take a bit getting used to, heck, even 6 hours in I was sometimes mixing up my vacuuming controls with the flashlight, remember, in order to aim up you need to hold X, and to aim downward you need to hold B, so it's easy to get confused at first. But by the end of the game, it'll feel pretty natural. That said, the game has mandatory gyroscopic controls whenever you have to walk on rails and narrow boards, which is 100% idiotic. There are a few first-person segments that also have gyroscopic controls in addition to the analogue stick, so during the fourth mansion's boss you might find that your aiming can't keep still... it's because the 3DS itself also moves the camera. Dumb.

 One last gripe with the game is how much E. Gadd calls Luigi mid-mission. Luckily, you can skip them by pressing the Start Button, but it doesn't matter, since every single time he calls it'll root you on the spot until you touch the touchscreen and then, and only then, you can press the start button in order to skip him telling you the obvious. I had hoped that when replaying a level he wouldn't call you, but he does anyways. Luigi's Mansion is already a slow-paced game, and I can deal with that, but these annoying calls really kill the mood.

 Lastly, the game has a simple multiplayer mode, which you can play by yourself, called Scarescrapper. You can set the number of floors, you can unlock 'Infinite' as well, as well as different goals such as capturing every ghost or simply sprinting to the exit. These floors are randomly generated which is actually rather neat.

 Luigi's Mansion - Dark Moon is a bit of a mixed bag. I think the basic gameplay is pretty dope, exploring the Mansions is fun, the puzzles are fun to solve and the game is quite rewarding... at first. Sadly, it's also very repetitive, and I'm not quite fond of having to re-explore the entire mansion if I want to find the collectibles, nor of having to deal with E. Gadd's calls. Regardless, Luigi's Mansion 2 is a fun time, but it's probably better if played in bursts.
 7.0 out of 10