For: Nintendo Switch
Rating: ★★★★
REVIWED BY MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is a level-based action adventure game; a remaster of the original game released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013.
You play as overshadowed and loveable coward Luigi, being called back to the ghost hunting service by his eccentric ally, Professor E. Gadd. Turns out all the ghosts captured in the last game aren’t as friendly as the Professor thought, thanks to King Boo blowing up the Dark Moon and sending all of the ghosts haywire. Its up to Luigi to wield the Poltergust 5000 (read: special vacuum cleaner), recapture the ghosts, reassemble the Dark Moon, and search for King Boo.
While moving from point A to B, you’ll probably be using the "Poltergust" to systemically steal every coin you can. The amount of stuff that the vacuum can interact with is impressive, even today. Carpets will roll up, drawers will open and fans will spin as it passes over them. You can inflate balloons to fly, carry buckets to fill water, and so much more. You’re encouraged to ransack the place like this for coins. Coins are useful for upgrading the Poltergust and other equipment gains over the course of his adventure, and you can never have enough.
The ghosts aren’t going to let you carry on like that however, and have a tendency to ambush you. Combat is simple but very fun. Ghosts are stunned by the flash of the flashlight that Luigi carries around and can then be damaged by pulling them with the vacuum. It plays a bit like fishing, where you hold back on the stick to deal damage to the ghost. This also fills up a meter, and you can spend it to do a quick burst of damage.
Doing this gives you some extra gold on capture, so its always worth it to go for it. Of course, other ghosts aren’t happy about you taking their friends and can stop you — you can dodge, but you will lose your charge. Thankfully, you can capture more than one ghost at the same time if you line up the flashlight well.
The ghosts are the highlight of the game. Overflowing with personality and charm, your antagonists are delightful. From the common garden variety green ghosts who cover their vulnerable eyes with sunglasses or the classic bucket on a head, to the mischievous blue poltergeists who require you to find them hiding in the environment, the ghosts are the best part of exploring.
There are also collectables aplenty; hidden gems for finding strange spots or solving puzzles, and Boos, hidden ghosts which are harder to capture and unlock a separate level after you have captured all of them in a mansion.
While exploring around and in combat, you should take a moment to listen to the music. Its great, with a kind of fun horror house vibe that sets the tone of the mansion you are in. Even Luigi will hum the main melody to himself after a while.
And now the bad things. While the controls are fairly well set up, the flashlight is one I always had a problem with. You can’t aim easily with the flashlight, as the button to activate and stick to move the flashlight beam are on the same side of the controller. This is very annoying, especially considering that you need to be quick and accurate with the flashlight due to it being needed for ghost capture. While you can use motion controls for it, it only works for up and down movement.
Some of the puzzles can also be pretty frustrating, as you are expected to use the Poltergust on a fan or out of the way object to activate something in order to obtain a key to unlock a door you found 10 minutes ago. Gadd does chime in if you are forgetting something obvious, like not using an item that allows you to see invisible objects, but he can be awfully unhelpful when he just asks why you haven’t completed the objective yet, which feels like the game kicking you for being stupid.
And then there’s the price - a standard Switch game amount of $90. That’s ... a lot for what this is. The upgraded visuals are nice but not worth this much, especially for an over-10-year-old game.
I would be remiss to mention there’s a separate multiplayer mode but I was unable to test this, but I believe it was well received back in the 3DS days.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is a charming adventure with one of gaming’s biggest cowards, full of technicolour ghosts, puzzles, and fun. It’s well worth a go, but it’s hard to see a reason for anyone to come back to it if they’ve played it already. If you never got around to playing this though, and the price doesn’t bother you, it’s worth your time.