Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon has no shortage of charm, but difficulty spikes and a lack of checkpoints weigh heavily on the experience.
Poor Luigi. His biggest claim to fame is that he's constantly overshadowed by the exploits of his brother. It's not often that Luigi gets a chance to stop following in Mario's trailblazing footsteps and prove his mettle on his own terms, but Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon gives him the opportunity. And at first, this ghostbusting adventure seems like a success for gaming's most well-known second fiddle. Luigi is an endearing hero; fantastic animations provide some great moments of physical comedy; and exploring the game's haunted mansions is a spooky delight. But alas, before all is said and done, things take a turn for the grim that casts a pall on Dark Moon's lively charm.
Dark Moon's greatest asset is its atmosphere. The game perfectly captures the sort of genteel spookiness typified by Disneyland's Haunted Mansion attraction. The five mansions you explore are the sorts of shadowy places children (and young-at-heart adults) can venture into and conquer, feeling all the braver for it, not the sorts that are going to cause any nightmares. Creaky old suits of armor covered in cobwebs line stately hallways. Flashes of lightning cast huge shadows on the walls. Contraptions that look like the work of mad scientists clutter old laboratories. Luigi may be afraid to discover what's behind each new door, but you'll be eager to uncover each mansion's mysteries.
Luigi is a reluctant hero, more or less forced into once again taking up the mantle of ghost wrangler by professor E. Gadd. The kooky professor's docile spectral assistants turn hostile when the magical dark moon vanishes from the sky over Evershade Valley, and old Elvin Gadd conscripts Luigi into service, sending him into the valley's creepy old domiciles to retrieve the artifact's scattered pieces. The professor's idea of humor is so groan-worthy that it may elicit a few reluctant chuckles--in a self-proclaimed moment of genius, for instance, he decides to start referring to the modified DS he gives Luigi as the Dual Scream--but for the most part, the game's humor comes not from its writing, but from its animation. You observe ghosts getting up to all sorts of amusing mischief, and Luigi's encounters with traps often result in him getting knocked about in ways that Buster Keaton might have approved of. The sound design supports the game's silly spookiness, as Luigi often inexplicably hums along with the gently foreboding music.
Making your way through the mansions is enjoyable not just because of the expertly crafted atmosphere, but also because of the wealth of objects you can interact with. Often, nudging an object or manipulating it with the force of your PolterGust 5000 vacuum cleaner/ghost-catching machine has no effect, but opening that dusty nightstand or making that rickety old merry-go-round spin rewards you often enough with coins, cash, and gold bars that you feel compelled to leave no stone unturned. Even when your reward is just a visual gag--vacuuming up a painting of a cheese circle to reveal a painting of a partially consumed cheese circle, for instance--you feel like your time interacting with anything and everything is time well spent.
With the aid of his not-so-trusty pixelator device, E. Gadd transports Luigi into the game's mansions, always with a specific goal or set of goals to accomplish. Whether these goals involve recovering pieces of a machine ghosts have made off with or rescuing one of E. Gadd's familiar-looking assistants, accomplishing your task always involves a combination of solving puzzles and catching ghosts. Any lever, painting, fountain, plant, or other object might be crucial to your progress, so solving puzzles often requires both careful observation and the use of your darklight, which can reveal objects that pesky ghosts have turned invisible, as well as do things like illuminate the paw prints of playful ghost pooches, called polterpups. The layouts of the mansions can make it tricky to figure out how to get from where you are to where you need to be, and working out the solution often brings with it a pleasant "aha!" moment as things click into place.
Carolyn Petit has been reading GameSpot since 2000 and writing for it since 2008. She has a particular fondness for games of the 1980s, and intends to leave the field of games journalism as soon as she hears that her local Ghostbusters franchise is hiring.
1 Like This game has incredible production value and sharp controls. Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation even likes Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon for christ sake. If you liked Luigi's Mansion or just Nintendo games, then buy it!
P.S. I have actually played the game on my 3DS XL.
More and more reviews of Gamespot make me believe that there simply are just idiots left here .... This game is a clear 9.0 , as ZombiU is a clear 9.0 too if not better ... Go and play your retarded Iphone games u bunch of morons or watch your future in a movie , called Idiocracy .
PS : A 85 metascore says it all .
1 Like My 12 year old Nephew loved this game but he wished it was longer but I got him covered as I just found out Fatal Frame 2 for the Xbox is backward compatible with his 360. Plenty more ghost hunting fun for him there.
3 Like I just beat the game and honestly dont understand such low score. Hasn't anyone else on the gamespot team played the game to give some reasonable input on the final score? Please be more professional guys! I only died 2 or 3 times during the whole game, and from the design perspective, that is why the "golden bone" exist, to reward your exploration in case you die! For me the game deserves a 8.7.
1 Like I just finished this game. To each their own but I have to say, I NEVER saw these so called "difficulty spikes". For me it was never too hard. Hard enough, but never too hard. Great game, you should play it if you enjoy fun and challenging games that makes you think in order to get through them.
7 Like This game is at least an 8.5...at least. When you knock a score down this low because you suck at the game and/or get frustrated by its inherent difficulty - well thats a glaring sign to me that you shouldnt write reviews for this site. You should be fired for this review Carolyn. Every f***ing review I read from this woman pisses me off to no end. Go over to IGN and read Keza McDonald's review - she scored it a 9.3 btw - you can feel her inherent joy for it in her writing and I appreciate that she didnt let a bad experience affect her overall score. You need to stop being so negatively subjective because it reflects poorly in your reviews and it shows I'm sorry to say. I'm still shocked that you had the balls to give a game this good and polished a 6.5 - its not opinion - it's unprofessional and judging from the comments below me I'm putting this nicely and I don't expect to see any reviews from you in future.
@SNESNOSTALGIA2 maybe this dumb bitch is too dumb to play serious games ... IPHONE IPHONE IPHONE . Goats ... thats what most people like her are today ... BURGER KING gogogo make them to Big Goat XXL .
10 Like This has GOT to be one of the WORST reviews I have read in my entire life... I knew there was a reason why I stopped visiting Gamepot and it's because of retarded reviews like this.
I've just completed the game and I can honestly say it's one of the BEST games I've ever played in recent years, so fresh and original, every puzzle is as inventive as the first and the entire game just oozes charm!
Gamespot, you guys are a freaking disgrace... This site has been doing nothing but going downhill over the past 7 years and what have you done to improve it? Hire people like this Carolyn who immediately declare a masterful game "fair" at best just because they find the game a little to difficult? While a game like Dark Souls, NOTORIOUS for it's xxxtreme difficulty from the get go gets a 9.5... Absolute disgrace...
I only returned to this site after a 7 year hiatus to post this comment and I will never return... You guys should just rename yourselves:
GAMETROLL.
14 Like Let me see if I get this right. Nintendo is critized for being too casual, they make a -relatively- difficult game, and that's bad too? And "no checkpoints" is a problem in a videogame played by short episodes? The longest ones are 15 minutes at i's best, so.. really, did we play the same game?
Horrible review.
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@Citan22 Yeesh,..... what an incredibly immature attitude shines through your comment!
1 Like I agree with every comment made by Carolyn. Her review is very thorough, honest and spot on!
Do I agree with the score? I'll let you know if I can ever finish the game!
Checkpoints are definitely needed throughout this 12 wave battle, at the very least a midlevel one and one at the start so you don't have to repeat the intro cut scenes and collecting all the treasure over and over and then another cut scene before the battle begins. I am stuck at the exact spot she mentions because of a huge difficulty spike and a severe lack of checkpoints and no extra life (bone) being available for this battle. I honestly don't know whether I will be able to progress past this point and get to experience the rest of the game, it is very disheartening and frustrating to say the least.
The game also needs a single checkpoint just before every boss in every level. It is ludicrous that you have to repeat the whole level again and lose all your hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars worth of collecting after falling in a boss battle. This defeats the purpose of the game as it just makes you want to rush through levels without collecting and exploring thoroughly, as honestly, what is the point, when you lose all your treasure collected and progress made throughout the level after dying. (Also, those who die in a battle probably need the cash for upgrqades more than those who don't die, but no, you lose it all).
Checkpoints would make absolutely NO difference to those players who boast they can breeze through the game without dying, BUT they would make the game much less frustrating and much more enjoyable to those players who need them. If only Nintendo had included this simple feature they could have made an utterly gorgeous, perhaps even perfect, game that catered to all levels of players, both those with perfect hand-eye co-ordination and the rest of us mere mortals, without changing the actual gameplay experience. Instead they made a game only suited to those highly coordinated gamers or those who enjoy an absolute tortuous time of repetition.
Nintendo overlooking such a simple feature that could easily have made it one of the all-time favourite handheld games to another one that goes in the too-hard basket, really is a great shame and a serious oversight, when the ability to cater to every level of player (more sales!), was so easily within their grasp.
@GiddyPrincess Then you are just as dumb ... Yeah make checkpoints after every single trash mob so that idiots cant fail CHEEEEEEEEEERS .... WTF
3 Like @GiddyPrincess I never knew what the bone was used for until after I beat the game, that's how fucking easy it was. -_-
8 Like This review is a huge joke,almost as if it's written to troll people. Game definitely deserves no less than a 9/10 as a score.
It's a huge fun from the start to end,has an amazing atmosphere;lovely and adorable at every inch,absolutely one of the best games of 3DS. Multiplayer has a nice and long lifespan of fun.
Please erase this review and get it reviewed by someone who's more of an experienced player for Gamespot's sake...
~Berker Tali
9 Like This is one of the worse reviews gamespot has had. Ever since Jeff got fired and everyone left in 2006 this site has gone down to sh.it. The only good reviewers are Tom Mcshea and Kevin Van Ord.
@DkandDiddyKongf They gave Super Mario Bros. an 8.3 and Legend of Zelda a 7.0. Scoring classics so low should be a criminal offense.
@DkandDiddyKongf I'd include Heidi Kemps (which should be hired pronto, and that's from someone who doesn't agree with *all* of her reviews) and Peter Brown... Both don't get the deserved attention because they usually review lesser-known games.
Considering that Chris Watters is not a bad reviewer, it's clear that the real problems are Carolyn and Mark Walton. And it's not a coincidence that the worst reviewers in all of Gamespot are those that are always trying to see gaming through the lens of a personal agenda. Kevin, Tom and others may share the same political or social views as Carolyn, but they're way more grounded when it comes to where such matters really apply and where they do not.
@DkandDiddyKongf Their worst review, yes. IGN has a worse one, though. Have you ever played Shadow Hearts? They gave it a 5, if I remember right. 5/10. That game deserves at least an 8, though I would actually give it a 9 or 10. That was the worst review. Ever.
4 Like this review is fake man, I can't see why so much was taken away from the game just because of the difficulty. I mean it's like people can only enjoy game when they're easy. I'm seeing more and more triple A titles that come out that are unbearably easy and just ruins the experience for me. Damn, I wish games were hard again like back in the 80s-90s.
What I like about Gamespot is that they tend not to get swept up by the latest craze and they don't end up compulsively giving mediocre games ridiculously high scores. However, because they know this, they tend to overvalue their own opinion which is often influenced by personal gripes that do not reflect how the vast majority will feel about a particular game. This makes many of their reviews, such as this one, more of a biased and il-informed user review, rather than a quality review we expect from somebody whose job it is to more objectively survey new titles, and convey whether or not they are worth the time of their prospective audiences. Nowhere is this more true than with Nintendo titles, by which Gamespot, for some odd reason, holds a particular grudge.
1 Like This needs to re reviewed this was reviewed buy unqualified gamer.. This game is without a doubt a modern look at an older thinking generation of games. This review seems to biased . This game is a challenge just like the latter. Please look into your hearts to re-count your votes.
3 Like lol, is this what I sounded like when I whined about Twilight Princess' review all those years ago? Thank god I grew up. One day you'll all look back at this and realize how stupidly biased you all were. I love how everyone brings up metacritic in their arguments, as if the reviewer is confined to giving a score around the metacritic range.
Also I love when people post "FCK THIS I'M DONE WITH GAMESPOT," as if anyone cares. I mean where will you go, IGN? lol.
Anyway enough condescension, here's the lesson for all you youngns, take the review with a grain of salt. The reviewer's opinion is not going to prevent you from buying the game. People have different opinions, just because a reviewer doesn't conform to the 'normal' doesn't make it a bad review. Sometimes negative reviews intrigue me if they make good points, it's why I found the Skyward Sword review so interesting when it got a 7.5.
2 Like As a Luigi's mansion fan I found this review spot on, some features are wonderful and fun and very cute and others really stunt progression. It is highly demotivating to do a whole stage again after a death and the lack of mobility while using the flash light does often end in death during a high ghost fight. I think it is this factor that attributes difficulty spikes in the sense that the game inputs aren't designed to adapt to a large number of ghosts in many locations. I have and still enjoy this game and when it's flowing nicely or is challenging in a good sense it is very fun but some of the features have not been designed well and the forceful method of returning you to the lab not only makes you go but often causes you to miss out on cash or drops.
3 Like umm.. your just flat out terrible at the game, just because you can't play the game and it kicks your ass does not give you the right to score the game a 6.5 its an amazing 3DS Game that all owners should check out. Every Stage in game is a checkpoint! the checkpoints are after the mission, so you have no valid reasons besides your terrible at the game and now you gotta vent on this review.. Look i tore through this entire game with no troubles at all... only dying once on a boss, Its very easy game actually,
Your a Joke, How did you get paid to reviews games when your this bad at them!?!
@NBAmaster30 It's not even a hard game. I only died on the Three Sisters, the icy possessor guy, and the last level and two bosses. But it's not even that hard of a game. If it were any easier, it would take away from the quality of the game. If she made good points, I might think about this review, but she didn't. She said it was a good game, other than the fact that she sucked at it, and then she proceeded to give it a bad rating.
86-90 on literally every other review site. I really am just... done with Gamespot. http://www.gamerankings.com/3ds/632930-luigis-mansion-dark-moon/articles.html
Huh... So the *average* of 62 reviewers is 86, and 130+ users average it at 87, and yet for the gamespot reviewr its a 65... How long do,we have to wait until her comment ismswithed to become just one more user review? Cause that is what it finally is it seems....
4 Like Spikes in difficulty, are you fucking kidding me?! I only died once in this game, but just because she sucks at this game that she's gonna give it a 6.5? Also, I like the fact that there's more checkpoints, it gives it more challenge. Games today are too damn easy, anyway. Seriously, who the guy who hires these assholes to give these shitty reviews?
IGN generally oveerrates games but that metacritic score is the punch in the face for this review
@pengouin360 I think that's what someone did with Mortal Kombat for the Xbox360. Brilliant game but someone gave it a 5/10 coz they couldn't fight for crap.
1 Like Bought game, haven't played, yet. But, what a difference in reviews--IGN - 9.3, GameSpot - 6.5. Just reading the "bad" elements of the game section (above), combined with the enthusiasm in the summary of the game by the IGN reviewer, I cannot believe this game is that bad. Or, you fail to quickly explain why this game may deserve such a low score. I could only suspect a personal dislike of the game, or some element of the game, by the GameSpot editor. I'M GOING TO PLAY THIS GAME.
1 Like I just beat the boss she was complaining about, and it was not even hard at all. It's ashame to see the game score lower just because the reviewer couldn't figure it out and blamed the game for her own lack of skill.
5 Like I can no longer get my reviews from this site. The people you have reviewing games have no clue. I just added IGN to my favorites. I'll give them a try, Bye Bye Gamespot.
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@greycorky If you don't like a review on a gaming website just ignore it. Personally attacking someone's physical attributes is as pathetic as it gets.
5 Like this review is so unfair ,this is a really rich game... and this game is a real handheld masterpiece... bravo nintendo and next level games.
9 Like This review reeks of "I couldn't beat one hard level so I'm going to write an angry review". The entire review is spent praising the game, then it ends with one paragraph about a tough boss fight...and the score is a 6.5? This just isn't a professionally written review, grow up
@anonymousicko I think gamespot hate Nintendo nowadays. I remember them giving out 8s and 9s but they only give 5s and 6s to Nintendo games now....
Luigi comes to the fore in a game that is simultaneously funny and scary but also vastly improves on its predecessor.
