2Super4Me
User Rating: 9 | Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon 3DS
One man. One valley where the night is eternal. Five abandoned places, occupied by extremely hostile ghosts. Does that sound scary? Don't worry, it's just Luigi's Mansion 2. Now, for a more detailed description of the storyline: The game starts with the Dark Moon being broken into 6 pieces by a mysterious entity. (Actually it's pretty obvious, but let's go on) You will then see Professor E. Gadd doing scientifical stuff in the lab in Gloomy Manor, helped by a few friendly ghosts. But suddenly, the ghosts become hostile and start wtecking the place. E. Gadd has to flee, and he goes to a bunker, where he gets Luigi to him. He explains that the Dark Moon would usually calm the ghosts down, but now that it isn't there anymore, Luigi will have to find its fragments and capture some ghosts on the way and, well, you get it. There's nothing really special about the storyline, but hey, it takes place in the Mario universe, so who cares? After that, time for the gameplay. The game is divided into five mansions, each of which having five missions, (except the fourth) a boss battle, and an extra mission that can be unlocked by capturing all ofvthe Boos in the mansion. (I'll get to those later) During a mission, you will be given a certain objective, such as finding a compass or getting to and capturing a powerful ghost. That gets us to capturing ghosts. Every now and then, youwill meet a group of undead assaulters. You will then have to capture the guys by first flashing them with your light and then, you suck them up with your Poltergust 5000 by pulling in the direction opposite to the one they're trying to fly away to. Between these action-packed face-offs, you have to solve various puzzles wigh the same vacuum, and the Dark-Light device, whichbis used to break illusions. At the end of each mission, you will be shown how many ghosts you've captured, how much time the mission took etc. Based on these statistics, the game will give you a bronze, silver, or gold rank. A good moment to talk about replay value. You'll of course be motivated to get a gold ranknon each mission, but there's even more to it. Each mansion has a collection of hidden gems. Finding those requires you to crack your brain. Don't worry if you're not to good at puzzling, though, because they are completely optional. The best extra has to be the Boos. There's one hiding in each mission, and capturing them all in a mansion will unlock an extra mission for that building. Luigi's Mansion 2 has a lot of atmosphere. The visuals are beautiful and each of the five mansions has a different feel to it. The calm, dark-toned music also helps a lot in this. One completely other aspect of the game is its humour. Professor E. Gadd explains each mission and often calls you during the missions to help you, and, he likes to tell younall kinds of jokes, but they are so bad. And I don't mean that the creators fail in making you laugh, but they intentionally made the jokes bad, which is very funny. The jokes, however, are the visual ones, like a ghost taking a shower. Getting back to gameplay, I just have to tell you about 2 special types of missions. In the first one, you have to escort a Toad to a screen where he can be sent to E. Gadd's bunker. The second one has you chasing a ghost dog, the Polterpup. To find it, you have to reveal its footprints with the Dark-light device. Finally, there's an extremely addicting multiplayer mode. In this mode, you can team up with up to three other players to either track down all ghosts, discover a hatch, or locate and capture a bunch of Polterpups. The mode can be played both local and online. The bad thing is that a short round lasts like 15 minutes, and your friends may be not interested in such a long game. This last thing also goes for the Single-player mode. You can't save during missions and each one takes about 20 minutes. This makes the game not suitable for short play sessions. +Fun puzzles +Exciting face-offs against ghosts +Great atmosphere, nice visuals, good music +Lots of replay value +Humour +Addicting multiplayer mode -Not good for short sessions
