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Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon Preview for Nintendo 3DS

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon Preview for Nintendo 3DS

Handheld Mansions

Nintendo’s E3 presentation this year was mostly focused on the Wii U. In fact, their booth only had Wii U setups available for play to the public. However, if you were waiting in line for a Wii U game and had some extra time to kill, one of the Nintendo booth babes might have walked up to you with a 3DS strapped to her waist. This was the only way you could play one of the only 3DS games available to demo at the Nintendo booth, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. Luckily, I was looking rather bored while waiting on line for Pikmin 3 demo, and so I got a chance to give Dark Moon a whirl.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon Screenshot

I’ll admit, I wasn’t a big fan of the original Luigi’s Mansion—or at least I thought I wasn’t. Truth be told, I had no idea how much I missed the game. Once I got my hands on Dark Moon, memories of the early GameCube years started flooding back. This game is almost identical to the original Luigi’s Mansion, but not in a bad way. In fact, if you didn’t know any better, you might mistake Dark Moon for a handheld remake rather than a sequel.

Luigi has the same tools of the ghostbusting trade this time around. Once again, your job is to immobilize ghosts by using your flashlight before sucking them up with your Poltergust. You’ll have a lot of smaller ghosts to deal with while you continue on your hunt for the boss of any particular sequence, which generally has to be combated in a puzzle-like style before you can give him the suction treatment. Lather, rinse, repeat until Luigi has cleaned whatever mansion he is in of all its spectral pests.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon Screenshot

As nostalgic as this is, there is a certain problem with a sequel being nearly exactly the same as its predecessor. E3 tends to be a place to show off the newest video game tech, but Luigi’s Mansion 2 didn’t really have new tech to show. In fact, my nostalgia eventually wore off as I stood in line, and I slowly got bored of the same old ghost hunting grind.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon Screenshot

The Nintendo reps said that the game was going to introduce a lot of variety including new enemy types, new ghost hunting tools, new levels, and more. They even said that Luigi will actually be visiting multiple mansions this time around. That’s all pretty cool, in theory, but the demo didn’t show these new gameplay elements off. I guess we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope Nintendo delivers on their promises.

The 3D in the game is both a blessing and a curse. With the 3D turned up, the dark atmospheres of the mansions Luigi explores are magnified. Long, foreboding hallways have a sense of depth to them, and sudden power outages cause a shock to your depth perception. In addition, 3D is always great for a jump scare or two, and considering that this is a game whose whole premise revolves around hunting ghosts, we are sure to get a lot of those. Unlike a lot of 3DS games, the 3D didn’t hurt my eyes in Luigi’s Mansion 2, nor did it randomly cause the game to go into double vision. If Nintendo is good at anything, it’s utilizing their own 3D tech.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon Screenshot

However, as graphically sound as the game is, it feels like it’s pushing the 3DS to do too much. The demo was marred by some horrible frame rate issues, slowing the game to a veritable crawl during some sequences. You’d think the game was being played on a computer with VRAM issues at points, with the graphics skipping and stuttering enough to jostle you out of the whole experience, especially when the 3D is turned on. The good news: Nintendo seems to be aware of this issue and is planning to fix it sometime in the near future.

Overall, I enjoyed the Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon demo. It was very simply a portable version of Luigi’s Mansion on new hardware. Right now, it doesn’t look like there’s much new to brag about, but the nostalgia factor was enough for me. It will be interesting to see how this game develops in the coming months. It sure isn’t a 3DS killer app, but would be a great buy for any fans of the original that want to rekindle the flame of GameCube nostalgia still burning in their hearts.

Game Features:

  • Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon’s 3D display brings a huge amount of depth to the backgrounds.
  • The Poltergust features both a vacuum and a blow feature, both of which will be used to solve many of the game’s puzzling challenges.
  • While the original release features some of these types of interactions, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon’s entire gameplay system is built around the various puzzles that come along with pushing, pulling, and moving around objects and items strung throughout the various rooms of the mansions.

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