If you can believe it, it has been ten years since Luigi “won” a new mansion and had to rescue his brother from the clutches of the nefarious spirits within using a modified vacuum cleaner, a Game Boy Horror and a flashlight. Luigi’s Mansion for the GameCube earned promising remarks and scores from critics; so much so that it almost begged for a sequel, but word of one never came, until E3 this year. Amid hushed murmurs and stifled surprise, Nintendo announced at its E3 press show that the tentatively-titled Luigi’s Mansion 2 will be coming out for the Nintendo 3DS sometime next year at a to-be-announced price.
For your viewing pleasure–and voracious E3 trailer appetite of course–here is the trailer of Luigi’s Mansion 2 that was shown as E3 this year.
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The premise of Luigi’s Mansion 2 is pretty straightforward: Luigi is tasked with catching some pesky phantasms once again; only this time he isn’t doing it in his newly-built, spirit-free home, he’s cleaning out other mansions throughout the land. Evidence of that could be seen in the video, as some mansions had different themes to them: such as a classic mansion complete with “empty” suits of armor or a nice Egyptian theme with mummies, sarcophagi and even fine-grain sand! Not much is known regarding why Luigi is doing this–be it charity or otherwise–but things are not going to be so easy for the overshadowed Green Plumber this time around.
The core mechanics of the game still appear to be stun and vacuum, but this time Luigi’s enemies have set out to not make things so easy for him. For one thing, spirits are no longer stunned by the simple waggling of a flashlight in their faces, so Luigi has upgraded to a strobe light. The strobe light emits a quick burst of light which is enough to stun even the most hardy of specters. Also–making his appearance as a sidekick and not a captive–Mario enters the ghost-busting fray and can help Luigi put away the spirits in the trusty Poltergust spirit vacuum. It is unknown what assistance Mario will give to his less-popular brother at this time, but it will be interesting to see Mario step out of the spotlight for once to help his brother out. Of course, Professor E. Gadd also makes a return to the series to help Luigi from the sidelines.
It’s a good thing Luigi’s got the new equipment and help this time around, because with all the new locations and new enemies, he may very well need it. All of the different mansions in Luigi’s Mansion 2 will feature unique enemies each with their own special weakness and tactic needed to take them out. Additionally, all of the new mansions will offer new puzzles for players to figure out and secret areas to discover (which may or may not be linked to the Poltergust). This is a change in the more linear “defeat enemies to obtain a key to open the next room” method that was prevalent in Luigi’s Mansion.
The video showed a lot of Luigi’s terrified cries and shrieks, which is a great touch to the character development Nintendo started off in the original. It’s nice to see that scoring one victory over the ghosts–temporary thought it was–didn’t get Luigi over his fear of ghosts and that he still shrieks in terror when he spots one. Whether you get a chuckle out of it, or cringe because you want to see a stronger Luigi, it’s still the small details that count when the game hits the shelves (be they good or bad).
We’ll be following the details of Luigi’s Mansion 2 as more becomes available, so keep your vacuum-switch-flipping fingers at the ready. In the meantime, take a gander at the gallery of screenshots of the game. Please note that these are 2D images of a 3DS game, so don’t expect to get the 3D effect just by viewing them here.
