Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (Part 2)

Continuing from Part 1, we still have three mansions to explore – and since I’ve gone through most of the gameplay mechanics, I’ll focus mainly on the plot.

Also known as: Creepy-Ass House #3.

"Friend?"

"N̖̯̠̤̯̣͙͌ͥ̀O̳̟̲͆͒̂͒͜T̳̳͕̭̘͕̻̍̂̇̕ ͗ͫ̈̊͌F̬̼̜̻̗͕̖̀ͪ̄̇R̃̋̀Ỉ̡̅̅̈́Ė̘̩͔̻̟̘ͬ̐̈̓͐̈́͜Ñ̥̦͉̾̒̄̽D̠̘ͩ͑̆"

Mansion #3, the Old Clockworks, has a theme that combines desert and sand with gears. Two things that usually don’t mix well. It should be pretty easy to get the Dark Moon shard this time; just gotta reach the big clock, then climb up the building, and get the shard at the top. But once again, that’s not even remotely what happens. Ghosts fly away with the two clock hands and the rotor, forcing Luigi to explore the entire building to retrieve them. First he needs a compass that can tell him where the items are; then he can start to look for them.

The ghosts have gotten smarter; Greenies disguise as mummies by wrapping themselves in tape and holding fake limbs. Good, the regular ghosts weren’t creepy enough. Then there’s that one, who’s not only figured out telekinesis, but also loves to summon wave after wave of enemies. A gauntlet of ghosts!

If Toads annoy you and make you want to hurt them, in this
game you an stun them, toss them around, and scare them.
They're still more tolerable than the ghosts.

After getting the clock hands, on his way to find the rotor, Luigi comes across a Toad once again trapped in a painting. He was captured when the ghosts went rogue, and Luigi frees him. The good thing is that Toad might come in handy to find what we need. The bad thing: That Toad is afraid of gears. Yes, really. E. Gadd sent a Toad who’s afraid of gears… into a place called the Old Clockworks, which is a building-sized mechanical clock. Bit of an asshole, aren’t you, E. Gadd? This makes the adventure a little more difficult as Toad will refuse to enter particular rooms, forcing Luigi to look for workarounds.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (Part 1)

This year’s pandemic has led to pretty unusual situations. For one, at the end of March and for most of April, I’ve had very few customers at work, and several of my tasks had been cut – which meant that I had a ton of free time, waiting lazily behind the cash register until I had someone to ring up, or something else to do. Even reading the newspapers took little time, and besides, 90% of the news are related to that damned virus. So what did I do? I started carrying a novel and my Nintendo 3DS to work. Quebec has come out of lockdown since and activities have resumed, so I’m back to having the amount of customers and workload I had in early March.

For the duration of that month, I’ve mostly played Pokémon UltraSun, raising Pokémon, using them against the Elite 4, and breeding them. I didn’t see much of a point in carrying more games than that one, as the cartridge was already in the console. However, there is another game in the console’s memory. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon came out on March 24th, 2013, as part of the celebrations on the Year of Luigi. I don’t own the cartridge; the game was preinstalled in the Nintendo 3DS I purchased back in 2014. And, to be entirely honest… I hardly ever played it. I had heard of Luigi’s Mansion for the Nintendo Gamecube, and thought it was interesting to see Luigi take centerstage for once, but I never played it. And while I was busy with Pokémon and other Mario games, I never bothered to play this one much.

Well, until April, that is! Bored after making three dozen eggs in Pokémon and unwilling to start the umpteenth Stephen King novella, I booted up Dark Moon. Hey, I gotta finish that one eventually, right? I had already started, going through the first mansion, and I got some progress done on the game throughout these weeks. Now things are in the process of going back to normal in Quebec, so I no longer carry games to work, but I decided to finish this one. So, what's the story?