Today in Boston was day two of PAX East, and Nintendo had plenty of offerings on the floor for us in terms of 3DS titles to get our hands on!
Super fans were able to purchase Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon one day early from the booth, so we made sure to grab a demo 3DS and give this anticipated title a shot.
As you’d expect, the game is a lot of cartoony fun—not scary by any stretch, but what else can you expect from a game featuring one of the Italian plumber brothers? In this game, Luigi is on a mission to remove a bunch of stubborn ghosts from a spoooooky mansion… using his Poltergust vacuum cleaner, of course.
Luigi is a fun hero to play, and a refreshing change from his other, red-suited brother. The atmosphere of the demo was dark but cute, almost Disney-like in its attempt to be creepy and entertaining for the younger set at the same time.
Creaky suits of armor, shadowy corners, and lightning flashes all add to the tone, and Luigi acts appropriately fearful at the scary bits. The ghosts we see tend to be up to silly tricks, rather than gruesome ones (no nightmares for your kids here, parents), and the music is haunted-house lite.
The demo we played involved collecting the right pieces for the vacuum, a puzzle in itself, to solve another puzzle—the task involved careful observation, a lot of darklight use, and some backtracking into places where our search hadn’t been as thorough as we’d thought.
Our demo for the game was short, but entertaining enough to make the Nintendo Fire team agree that it’s something we’d like to play more of… which means that the demo did its job!
Stay tuned for a full review of Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon sometime soon!
