Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon Review

Presentation

Dark Moon’s impressive graphics continue that attention to detail. The compact art style brings each of the five mansions to life. There’s a cartoonish aesthetic that leans heavily on Halloween and haunted house iconography. The mansions themselves are distinguished by interesting themes. Furthermore, the same level of commitment is reserved for individual rooms. Dusty basements feel suitably creepy and insulating. Meanwhile, the libraries appear to belong to Disney’s The beauty and the Beast.

Dark Moon’s implementation of the 3D slider adds some depth to the look of the game. So, if you’re the type of gamer who likes to activate that feature, then the game has you covered well.

However, I struggled slightly with the ghost designs. Their simplicity is iconic, but it feels repetitive after a while. Meanwhile, the spooky, though certainly humble soundtrack can fade into the background or get slightly jarring after a long play session.

The gameplay, or the vacuum cleaner is mightier than the sword

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon builds on the basics of the first game. Luigi, equipped with his handy flashlight and Pultergust 5000, must clear the five mansions of their haunted haunts in hopes of putting the Dark Moon back together. Developer Next Level Games draws on a truly compelling formula. It involves exploring these mansions while sucking in all the stray ghosts. There are also various objectives that need to be completed. These range from clearing webs to defeating a particularly powerful Boo.

Unearth hidden secrets within Dark Moon highly interactive levels have become my obsession. In fact, probing every room for money or well-hidden Gems took a good chunk of my time. However, I found the drive for exploration to be the main reason for making my way through the game. The evolving capabilities of the equipment have continued to open up new approaches to discovering potential goodies.

The actual act of the ghost catcher remains a frenzied dance of stunning and sucking in the undead who do not cooperate. And the creative ways in which different types of ghosts require certain approaches to defeat them mean that this act never gets stale.

I was worried that the controls might suffer from not having a second analog stick. However, the developers cleverly get around this limitation with dedicated buttons to point up and down. Hence, things never get unmanageable when the situation gets complicated.

Finally, the ScareScraper mode allows for cooperative multiplayer and represents a fun, if superficial, diversion from the main campaign. The different mini-games include a gauntlet-like ghost hunting mode and a quest to track down the adorable canine ghost Polterpup.