E311 Hands-on: Luigi’s Mansion 2 (3DS)


Luigi’s Mansion 2 was a bit of a surprise reveal during Nintendo’s presser, so I took the chance to check it out at the Nintendo booth later this afternoon. As the demo begins, Professor E. Gaad is back and greets you briefly to give some explanation as to why you, Luigi, the petrified second banana, is going to venture into a haunted mansion… again.

Frankly, I skipped through this intro to get right into the game. Once starting, the Professor again pops up to explain the controls and “remind” you of how to use the glorified 1950’s floor vacuum. There are plenty of coins and money to suck up to get familiar with the mechanic, as it plays very much like its bigger brother (pun intended) that launched with the Game Cube in 2001.

What does not play the same, however, is aiming the ghost vacuum using motion controls. You move the 3DS up or down to have Luigi aim the same, but unless you are trying really hard to keep it stable the 3D effect will be completely lost. That’s a shame because the 3D looks good, as the “action” moves at a controlled pace and the camera up close and personal as I traveled through very small rooms to get further in the mansion.

Again, aside from some of the new motion controls, the basic game play has the same core as the original. You will find yourself stunning the ghosts with your flashlight, then using the ghost-vacuum while moving Luigi with the circle pad in the opposite direction that the ghost is, “pulling” you as he tries to escape the power of the suction.

Luigi is expressive and well animated when the lights go out or when he is especially frightened, and the style of animation matches very close to the original. There were a few graphical hiccups though, as in one example a bunch of coins busted out of a chest and Luigi inexplicably walking up them as if they were stairs.  Again, this is clearly an early demo and not the final build, and we know there will be issues like this, but it happened a couple of times during my play through.

The demo lasted a total of 15 minutes. I am not sure if my time just expired or if I got to the end of the section by the time the 15 minutes was up, but the demo ended in a good spot. With this Luigi’s Mansion 2 demo serving Nintendo hors d’ oeuvres, my appetite is wet for the main course.