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?
"Having ghosts as helpers was a bad idea!" |
Teleporting people through any screen; that sounds like technology that could be rerouted easily for evil purposes. |
And it’s not like there’s anyone else out there who can do the job; it’s not Mario’s jam, and Peter, Ray, Egon and Winston live in a different universe altogether. Good news, E. Gadd already has a shard of the Dark Moon. He also created a new model of the Poltergust, one that can do even better against ghosts. Bad news, he left it in the Gloomy Manor. Before Luigi gets a chance to say no, he’s pixelated to the Manor. The troubles of being a hero: You always get volunteered.
I would describe the game as a combination of action, puzzle and exploration. Ghost-hunting makes up the greater part of the action. Luigi explores each mansion in order to fulfill the task given to him by the Professor, and he has to solve puzzles in order to progress. There’s always something in the way. The mansions are split into missions, and some rooms will be locked away due to not being necessary to finish the current quest.
After he finds the Poltergust 5000 hidden in a car in the garage, Luigi is all geared up. As is expected of a vacuum, the Poltergust can suck and blow, which is useful not only to catch ghosts, but also to carry things around without Luigi using his hands. The suck ability can take in drapes, clothes and spider webs, and some items sucked in can be tossed back with force afterwards. Next, Luigi has a Strobulb, an item that charges up and then emits a powerful blast of light that will stun ghosts for a moment, and only then will Luigi be able to catch them. Last but not least, ghosts have the ability to turn items invisible, like dressers, pipes, platforms, or even doors and windows; the Poltergust 5000 is equipped in a later mission with a tool called the Dark-Light, which can make these items appear again. Flashing an invisible object with it will make spirit balls show up, which Luigi must then suck in to make the item reappear. Thanks to this, Luigi can find all kinds of secrets.
With gameplay that prioritizes the use of a special vacuum, I need to be really careful what I say before I make really inappropriate innuendos. I can’t help it the entire game is Luigi sucking and blowing his way through five mansions, while flashing rooms… God! Damn! It!
Okay, it’s out of my system now.
The first mission in the Gloomy Manor sets up all three of the game’s genres fairly well. The puzzle aspect is apparent from the start, with Luigi having to find keys to open doors, and look for ways to progress. For this, he needs to explore the rooms and discover their secrets. As an example, Luigi finds a secret passageway that leads to a bathroom. And last but not least, every mission has several ghosts roaming around.
How catching ghosts works: All ghosts have HP. To be caught, they first need to be stunned with the Strobulb, then sucked in using the L button on the Nintendo 3DS. The suck function of the Poltergust 5000 will whittle down their HP as Luigi pulls the ghost in, also filling a gauge and at every slice of 10 HP, pressing A will pull the ghost in a little more. Filling up the gauge and pressing A after 20 or 25 HP instead of 10 will yield better results. The ghost is sucked in when its HP hits 0. Some rooms have several ghosts, who'll help each other; also, many will use sunglasses, shovels, and other various items to protect themselves from the Strobulb.
"Hello. I have a spectral mall of 5. What does that mean? I don't know, I'm just a ghost." |
Throughout his journey, Luigi can find and suck in the coins, bills, and gold bars he finds. That money will allow E. Gadd to upgrade the Poltergust, giving it more power against ghosts and increasing the Dark-Light’s potential duration, among other things. The final upgrades are obtained at 20,000 G. Now, don’t come ask me why the Professor needs money to upgrade something when he looks like he’s able to do it on the spot… I’m starting to think the weird scientist is in it for the money.
Ghosts like to compare their steals, apparently. |
During that mission, Luigi will also encounter a Boo. If you like the Mario franchise, you know what these are. There’s one hidden in every main mission; time to act like a Trainer, gotta catch ‘em all. They work differently from other ghosts, though. They remain hidden and must be found using the Dark-Light, after which the Poltergust pulls them by their tongue (a fitting punishment if you ask me), and then Luigi catches them after they’ve lost their HP from being tossed around a bit.
Apparently we’re not just ghost catchers, we’re a home-cleaning service too, as the next mission E. Gadd sends Luigi on involves sucking into the vacuum all the spider webs in the Gloomy Manor. Some of these are… really, really large. I have a feeling arachnophobes won’t like this one. Sure enough, in the mission immediately afterwards, we’re told that odd noises are coming from the cellar. What we find down there is a ghost… taking possession of a giant goddamn spider. And this one sheds some sort of phantom skin the first two times instead of getting caught; this allows it to return into the spider. Come on now, you know it wasn’t going to be so easy.
After beating the spider and catching the powerful Possessor, Luigi recovers a piece of the Dark Moon. Two down, a few more to go. We can now move on to the Haunted Towers, two buildings that served as a botanical laboratory connected to a gigantic tree. Or, we can catch all the Boos in the Gloomy Manor, which unlocks an extra mission in which Luigi must attempt to catch several ghosts all over the place in the shortest possible time.
The Haunted Towers actually have a very easy access to the giant tree, it’s behind a barrier with a water-powered pinwheel lock system. Step 1: Repair the water system. Step 2: Blow the pinwheel to open the gate. Step 3: Climb up the tree. Step 4: Find the piece up there! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA yeah, no, that’s not even remotely what happens. Step 2 is interrupted when trickster spirits, named Hiders, show up and steal all but one of the pinwheel vanes. Must find them all, now! And they’re scattered around the many floors of the two towers. The mischievous phantoms are so annoying – you have to fight tooth and nail to move ahead an inch in this goddamned adventure.
There's a ghost behind the curtain. You might know it, you might have played this mission 5 times before, Luigi will still scream and the ghost wiull flee. |
Oh hey! Luigi, you have a fan! |
(No. No it does not.)
This fight was extremely annoying the first time I encountered the Three Sisters. The fight comes near the end of the mission, and I couldn’t figure out the strategy at first. Thankfully, the game is fairly generous when it comes to enemies dropping hearts at critical moments, that’s one good thing about it. If Luigi’s HP go down to 0, though? It’s complicated. In a normal situation, he loses and has to start the whole mission over from the beginning – and due to their exploration/puzzle aspects, missions can be pretty long to complete, and having to redo a mission from the start is demoralizing. That said, if Luigi found a golden bone earlier in the level and loses all his HP afterwards, a phantom dog called the Polterpup will show up, revive Luigi to full HP, and flee with the bone. You’re never told about that feature until you find out by yourself.
And of course, that doggone dog is watching from above. |
Reaching the top of the tree involves running up 20 rows of three sets of stairs. On each row, only one set of stairs allows Luigi to go up, the other two are traps set by ghosts, and if Luigi climbs them, that staircase will become a slide and the plumber will fall all the way down to the very bottom of the room. Yes, you can tell which staircase is the right one by looking at the lights around them, but the clues disappear quickly. And if you fall, you have to go up all the stairs, again, to go back to the top. Stairs, my worst enemy! I hated that section the first time I played it.
After this section, we get to the Treehouse, with another set of stairs taking Luigi to the Dark Moon shard. However, before he and go up to it, a Possessor appears and… takes possession of the staircase, then uses it to attack Luigi. OH, COME ON! Quote myself from 10 seconds ago:
Stairs, my worst enemy!
This ghostonce again requires some clever thinking to pull it out of the wooden staircase it’s locked itself into. It also needs to be sucked in three times to be defeated, just like the previous one. Once that’s done, Luigi accesses the shard and returns to the Bunker, where a new location has opened: The Old Clockworks.
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