Luigi's Mansion 2 3DS: E3 Hands-On Preview

By BlueZero
26 Jul 2011 03:01

It was about time I finally posted some of our uploaded E3 footage. After successfully predicting the existence of the sequel to Luigi’s Mansion some two years ago, it felt downright eerie to play it on 3DS at the Nintendo Booth. Luigi likes to take his time as evidenced by the long development time and by the very liberal no time-limit demo from E3. Sit back and watch as we play more than 15 minutes of Luigi’s Mansion 2:

The Sound:
The first thing you will notice from our video is there is no game sound due to one of us listening to it through headphones. Instead you get to hear the booth sounds which include trailers, ambient music and easily recognizable jingles. I can tell you Luigi is just as vocal as ever as his voice wavers as he enters locked key doors. A only downside from the sequel is I couldn’t find a button to yell phrases such as “Mario!” I guess this is because Mario is no longer missing and Luigi is just going into mansions for fun.

The Story:
I’m not sure what the story is for the second game. Based off our recorded introduction with Professor Egadd, he is studying ghosts. Perhaps the kooky professor has conscripted Luigi to capture the boss ghosts because they could have special properties. For this level, Luigi must capture the Librarian ghost who some has compared to Roger from American Dad.

Gameplay:

When I was playing the game, I didn’t focus on collecting money/gold since I knew it wouldn’t matter in the demo. I was more interested in using the suck/blow dynamic on different objects. Most objects did not seem to respond to being blown with air from the vacuum. Luigi can also tilt his vacuum up and down to target out of reach money.

New features include Luigi being able to recover his heart health like Master Chief. He also can charge his flashlight for an overpowered stun attack which hits the entire room. As one of our staff mentioned, you can flash gold spiders with your flashlight charge to turn them into gold bars.

If you played the original, then the control and gameplay will be second nature. The bottom screen conveniently shows the mansion map for rooms which you have explored. It also shows your money and keys.

Graphics:
Luigi’s Mansion 2 has some wonderful lighting effects. From the flash of lightning to the flashlight appearing to shine in your face when Luigi looks towards the screen, sheer outstanding visuals. The game slightly suffers from a framerate which I would estimate to be around 25 FPS due to some minor jerkiness in Luigi’s animation. Considering the visuals Nintendo is pushing on the 3DS, it’s a minor gripe. The 3D effect when we later played with the 3D slider set to max was very effective in creating depth and immersion.