Luigi’s Mansion 2 Makes Up For Nintendo’s Recent Blah, Will Make You Feel Like A Giddy Child Again
All it took was Mario's dorky brother, his special vacuum cleaner, and a few more ghosts.
Mario was and will always be my best-est video game bud
It was the early ‘90s. My friends down the road had a big new TV and a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (the cutting-edge in 16-bit entertainment) to plug into it. The most exciting part, though, was the cartridge that came with the console: Super Mario World. In it, moustachioed hero Mario and his dinosaur pal Yoshi were tasked with rescuing Princess Peach from the clutches of the evil Koopa King, Bowser, while braving the various forests, ghost houses and underwater caverns of Dinosaur Land to get to her. Needless to say, the game blew my young mind.
The graphics, the sound effects and the gameplay in Super Mario World were like nothing I’d ever experienced before. The ominous, booming music that played as Mario jumped the lava pits and avoided the spikes in the island’s fortresses actually gave me the shivers. The bosses he fought along the way, like the crazy, blue-haired Ludwig Von Koopa, took many, many tries to overcome. The power-ups, like the cape that allowed Mario to fly, were awesome. The hidden areas in Dinosaur Land felt limitless, and my friends and I spent hours exploring them.
I’ve loved Mario ever since and played the games across numerous consoles and handheld devices. When a new one comes out, I dutifully plough through it, hoping some of that early magic will rub off. I’m a Mario fanboy through and through, but there comes a time to face facts: the series really hasn’t been at its best these last few years.
Mario games haven’t been at their best lately
The statement ‘Mario games’ needs qualifying, because there are so damn many of them. Since his first appearance in 1981, the portly plumber has starred in an RPG, driven karts and played sports like golf and tennis; there was even a period when he tried practicing medicine. The quality of the spin-offs varies wildly, but there was a time when you could rely on the games in the main Mario series for a good time.
The formula behind them was simple — they were bright and colourful platform adventures — but each new title brought something fun and original to the table. Think back to the classic NES titles, released between 1985 and 1988: each of the three was wildly different from the one before, the third introducing a world map and added levels of challenge. In 1995, Super Mario World 2 booted Mario from his own game and made dinosaur sidekick Yoshi the star.
The last time the Mario series tried something truly original was all the way back in 2007, with Super Mario Galaxy. The game took the key elements of the series, like the big, lumbering bosses and the sprawling, colourful worlds, and adapted them for the Wii’s motion-sensitive controller. The game launched Mario into outer space, where he explored beautifully-rendered worlds, performed gravity-defying jumps and encountered new power-ups like the bee suit in his quest to save the princess from the evil Bowser.
The newer ones aren’t bad, they’re just a bit… blah
Three years later, Super Mario Galaxy 2 presented more of the same; hard to fault, really, since the original was so good. The problem is that around this point, slapping a new coat of paint on the same old game became standard practice for the Mario series. For a while now, each new title has been more of the same. The Wii title New Super Mario Bros introduced a co-op element, but it was still hard to shake the feeling that this was the same game Nintendo had been releasing for years.
The DS version of New Super Mario Bros was essentially a remake of the Wii title, with much of the challenge and difficulty removed, while New Super Mario Bros 2 was the same thing all over again, this time with lots and lots of coins flying at you to distract from the similarity. Super Mario 3D Land was the definition of a handsome-but-bland game; it was easy enough to plough through, but left little to no impression when it was done.
The newer games were well-made, but felt soulless, lacking the spine-tingling moments of the originals. I figured this might have been subjective on my part. Having lived with the games for so many years, there’s no way a new one could ever be as exciting. But then Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (aka Luigi’s Mansion 2) came along.
The series feels cool and exciting again
Rather like last year’s excellent Kid Icarus: Uprising, the new Luigi’s Mansion game is a sequel nobody really expected. The first instalment came out in 2001 on GameCube, casting Mario’s dorky but still very endearing brother as a ghost buster. It pitted him against a mansion full of spooks, arming him with a flashlight and a high-powered vacuum. It was a fun, rollicking and very weird title, and the sequel expands and builds upon it in all the right ways, making for a new and exciting experience.
Without getting too far into specifics, the game drops Luigi in a ghostly valley, and requires him to clear its various mansions of ghosts and other undesirables. He’s still armed with his trusty flashlight and vacuum, but the controls are vastly improved. The process of stunning ghosts and then sucking them up is more complex — requiring you to time your moves just right, then pull back on the circle pad in order to finish the job — but makes victory far more satisfying.
Mario games have long-featured secrets and hidden areas, but Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is positively stuffed with them, making it a delight for ‘gotta catch ‘em all’ gamers and the obsessive-compulsive. Almost every element of the game world is interactive: Luigi can aim his vacuum at wallpaper and carpets, tearing them up to find hidden caches of coins and power-ups; silverware rattles on tables when he passes with the ghost-vac and stacks of paper fly off shelves. The attention to detail is incredible, making for a game world that feels real and tactile.
The game also makes great use of the graphics capabilities of the Nintendo 3DS. 3D graphics can feel like a gimmick or an afterthought, but here, they’re used to impressive effect. When spiders appear from the ceiling and chase Luigi down narrow hallways, it’s enough to get your heart pounding, and battles against multiple ghosts induce a similar feeling. Even in the quieter moments, the 3D is well-used; it’s fun to just walk around the different mansions, exploring their various nooks and crannies and taking in the visuals.
Okay, so the game isn’t perfect…
For one, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is not super portable. It pushes the 3DS to its limit and chews through battery power pretty quickly. With a fully charged-up system, it takes no more than about two hours for the battery light to start flashing red, so if you fancy a lengthy session you’re going to want an outlet nearby.
For another, the game’s mission-based structure can get a little infuriating at times. In each level, Luigi is sent into a mansion with a specific task to perform, and you won’t be able to save your game until the mission is completed. If you’re the type of gamer who likes to collect every little extra and bonus, this can be annoying, as dying half an hour into a level erases all of your progress and rips all those cool secrets away from you.
These complaints are pretty minor, though, given that Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is the most fresh and original the Mario series has been in years. If it’s successful, there may be a copycat sequel on the way very soon… Nintendo may even rush out a console version to bolster their flagging Wii-U system. What I can say as a dedicated Mario fan, though, is that I haven’t been this excited about the series in quite a while.