In 2001, the original Luigi’s Mansion served as a glorified tech demo to show off what the Nintendo GameCube’s hardware was capable of. It was billed as one of the flagship titles for the launch of the GameCube, in place of a Super Mario title that all of Nintendo’s consoles had launched with up until that time. While Luigi’s Mansion on GameCube never reached the heights of any of Mario’s launch titles, it was a strong game for being Luigi’s first starring role.
After that, there was a long 12-year wait before Luigi would get his second starring role in a game, until Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for Nintendo 3DS in 2013. Nintendo declared 2013 to be the official Year of Luigi. Luigi’s first game in 12 years was a major part of that celebration. While Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon wasn’t a launch game for the 3DS, it came out early in the system’s life and went on to sell over six million copies.
The 3DS went on to have a much larger install base than the GameCube. So much so that Nintendo eventually ported the original Luigi’s Mansion to the 3DS, which gave Luigi two games starring himself on the 3DS – a system with a user base of over 75 million. That was more solo exposure than he’d ever had.
DISCLAIMER: This review is strictly for the single-player mode in Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. The game has a multiplayer mode as well that is supposed to be quite good, but I didn’t have the chance to play it.
There’s a saying about courage that goes: Courage isn’t being fearless. It’s being afraid and moving forward anyway.
Or something to that effect.
That describes Luigi in the Luigi’s Mansion games perfectly. In the original game, Luigi is almost always terrified. In Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, he starts off terrified, but he becomes less so the farther you get in the game. However, in both games, he never wilts under the fear and the pressure. He gets the job done.
It’s good that Luigi has that level of perseverance because he gets put through the ringer in Dark Moon. Professor E. Gadd sends him on all sorts of missions as Luigi tries to restore peace to Evershade Valley after the Dark Moon is shattered, causing the normally friendly local specters to run wild and wreak havoc.
The Luigi’s Mansion games are somewhat like Resident Evil for kids, although you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy them. All the ghosts are silly, humorous, and mischievous. Dark Moon’s humor adds a lot to the experience. The behavior of the ghosts Luigi has to hunt down are funny all throughout the game.
Luigi is constantly battling his own fear as he explores a spooky mansion filled with ghosts. His job is to catch as many of the ghosts as possible, with a good amount of puzzle-solving as well. Dark Moon does a great job of replicating the formula of the original game.
However, instead of one giant mansion like in the original, Luigi explores five somewhat smaller manors in Dark Moon – and instead of being left mostly on his own like in the original game, Luigi gets mission objectives from Prof. E. Gadd. The story of the game is to recover the Dark Moon pieces that the good professor was using to keep the local ghosts pacified. So once again, he recruits Luigi to accomplish this, who is a very unwilling recruit at first, but somewhat finds his courage as the game progresses.
Dark Moon’s mission objective format has its pros and cons. It makes the game a better fit for handheld gaming since it’s easier to play and complete an objective in a short session. Also, when you pick the game up, you don’t have to worry about what you were doing last, or what you’re supposed to do next.
However, the trade-off is that you don’t have as much freedom as you do in the original game. Prof. E. Gadd interrupts you a lot (too much) to tell you what to do and where to go next. If you’re replaying a mission for some of the game’s hidden extras, and you accidentally complete the mission objective, he’ll call you back to his hideout – which means you have to start the mission over if you want to keep exploring and searching.
The interruptions detract from the game’s atmosphere and pacing. Whether it’s animated cutscenes interrupting gameplay, constant calls from the Professor, or Luigi going into a funny ten-second animation to go through a secret door, it adds up and makes the experience more tedious and taxing on the player’s patience than it needs to be on repeated playthroughs. Granted, the cutscenes and calls from the Professor are skippable, but it still makes the flow of the gameplay feel more stilted.
Professor E. Gadd will call you and talk at you any time you make progress. However, if you’re stuck and not making progress and don’t know where to go, he’s strangely MIA with no clues to help you and nothing to say.
Every mission has a Boo hidden somewhere for Luigi to catch. If you catch all the Boos in that mansion, a bonus level unlocks. Some of the Boos are not easy to track down, and you’ll likely need to use a guide to get them all – but if you want to experience everything Dark Moon has to offer, you have to find every Boo, which forces you to replay missions you may not want to replay just to find them – which can make the game more tedious and frustrating than fun.
I wanted to be done with the game after I finished all the missions, but I felt like I hadn’t fully experienced the game since I had five bonus levels that I hadn’t unlocked and played yet. That meant I had to replay some of the missions to get the Boos, which was not nearly as fun as playing them the first time. The Boo can be anywhere in the mission. If you don’t have access to a guide, you’ll have to get lucky to find some of them. If you can’t find all the Boos on your own, and don’t have access to a guide, you won’t get to play those levels. The original Luigi’s Mansion has a Boo sensor that alerts you the closer you are to a Boo. Dark Moon has nothing like that, although it should since you can’t play all of the game unless you find them all.
Luigi can upgrade his Poltergust 5000 and Dark-Light he uses to catch ghosts with the money and treasure he finds on his missions, but it would’ve been nice if there were uses for all the money and gold after you completely upgrade your equipment. Once Luigi’s tools are fully upgraded, there’s no point in searching for valuables anymore, which is a big part of the exploration of the game. In the original Luigi’s Mansion, you received a grade based partly on how much treasure and money you had found throughout your adventure. Dark Moon doesn’t do that. There are gems to collect as well, but they’re strictly for show.
Dark Moon’s visuals are adequate, but the game is far from the showpiece the original Luigi’s Mansion was on GameCube. Graphically, Dark Moon isn’t going to drop any jaws, even for an older 3DS game.
The use of lighting in the original Luigi’s Mansion was a big feature at the time, and it still looks good on the GameCube today – but you don’t see that in Dark Moon. Luigi’s character model, his reactions to what’s going on around him, and his animations are probably the most visually pleasing aspect of the game. The art style and animation are strong and save it from being a somewhat ugly game.
The rest of the game has an animation style consistent with a game set in the world of Mario and Luigi, but the game shows its age with a fair amount of aliasing on objects with rounded edges, especially the ghost character models. The framerate runs mostly at 30, but noticeably chugs at times. Overall, Dark Moon doesn’t wow on the technical side.
VERDICT:
Overall, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is an adequate follow up to the GameCube original. It’s at its best when Luigi is catching ghosts, but gets in its own way a lot with too many interruptions, instead of just letting you explore and play. It significantly detracts from the flow of the game.
However, in spite of its gameplay structure and pacing issues, Dark Moon does what it sets out to do, even though it doesn’t excel in any single category. It’s a fun, light-hearted romp through cartoon-spooky mansions, catching ghosts and solving puzzles with a lot of humor. I look forward to seeing what Nintendo and Next Level Games did with Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the Nintendo Switch.
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