Luigi's Mansion - Nintendo 3DS

What a great game. Originally released as a GameCube launch title, Luigi's Mansion is a classic that's always fun to revisit. It's also the only GameCube game that was designed to be played in 3D, which makes a 3DS rerelease fitting. Yes, this version is in 3D! There is a lazy trend recently of releasing 3DS games that only play in 2D, for some bizarre reason. It makes sense for some games, but for others, it's just inexcusable. Thankfully, the developers of this one didn't stoop to that level and gave us a legitimate 3D game.The graphics are slightly improved over the original, although obviously they now feature the 3DS' signature pronounced edge aliasing. Everything feels more crisp and nuanced, and the lighting is much more vivid and haunting. The flashlight effects are particularly pleasing.I haven't played the original recently enough to notice any difference in music and sound, but they're pretty great in this version regardless.The controls...eh. (For background: I have a New 3DS XL and chose the Original flashlight.) The circle pad for moving Luigi feels ok, but using the d-pad to aim the flashlight\vacuum is pointless, since by virtue of having only one left thumb, you can't do it while moving. The Circle Pad Pro can also be used, but if you have the N3DS instead of the big accessory, it's pretty terrible. The N3DS circle nub is ok for minor, unimportant things like secondary menus or minor camera adjustments in other games, but for something critically important that also requires strong and precise movement like aiming the vacuum, it really sucks. Of course, it's really the only thing it makes any sense to map it to, so this is really more a flaw with the design of the system. To compensate for this, you can also move the flashlight\vacuum up and down by tilting the system accordingly, which works well sometimes but is far from perfect. For this reason, hitting certain ghosts with the light or vacuuming\freezing Boos is often much harder than it really should be.On the bright side, the motion controls for viewing things with the Game Boy Horror feel excellent. There's also a button to center it, which is smart, and you can also use the circle pad to move the camera instead in case you have limited space around you (or are lazy). It works best standing up with the system about 8-12 inches away from your face, otherwise you can get "overtilt" (game screen doesn't move enough to keep up with actual movement of system). It makes it feel real somehow. Also, the rest of the GB Horror extends onto the bottom screen, so you can see the buttons and stuff, which doesn't have any function but feels like a nice touch.The GB Horror's map and other info are now all on the bottom screen, as might be expected of a DS remake, although the Boo indicator is on the top screen so you can see it better.A few things have changed form the original:The gallery layout is different: it's kind of a bleacher layout, with different 'levels' of portraits corresponding to areas of the game, rather than looking like a spooky gallery hall. It's a little more convenient to navigate, especially if you're looking for a certain portrait, but it's not as cool-looking as the original.Supposedly the Clockwork room is new? And the preceding Telephone Room has changed from being an austere attic to a full-on room with 3 telephones instead of one. Other than that, I'm not familiar enough with the original to know of other changes.New features:-Portrait Battles: after you beat a portrait ghost, you can go to the Gallery and battle them again to try for a better time or portrait frame (if you only got bronze or silver the first time around). It saves your best time\health.-You can play locally with someone else, them accompanying you as Gooigi, a slimey clone of Luigi invented by a future Prof. E. Gadd. If they have a copy of the game, you can play Portrait Battles together, go through the Training mode, or just play through the normal Mansion\story mode together. If they don't have another copy of the game, you can unfortunately only do the first two, but that's still something, I suppose. (Also: your co-op Portrait Battle records are saved separately from your solo records, so each portrait has a best solo score and a best co-op score.) I'm really glad they allow for at least some gameplay if the other person doesn't have the game. Have you ever found another person in real life that had a 3DS and the same game as you? (I suppose this isn't *that* rare for games like Pokemon and Legend of Zelda, but somehow I doubt it'll be easy to find fellow Luigi's Mansion players.)Overall, Luigi's Mansion is still an excellent game brimming with fun, and picking up this new and improved 3DS version is well worth it, despite some less-than-ideal controls.

Overall, the gameplay was a new and fun concept. I've heard Luigi's Mansion called "baby's first horror game" because it has all the horror tropes (haunted house, ghosts, etc.) without the game feeling too scary. Well, as an adult, I did not feel too scared. I have friends, who played this game as a child, and they said it did scare them at points, so I guess the game ultimately succeeded at being a horror game for kids. In all seriousness, though, in a way, it succeeds as a horror game in general, even if it does not scare adults. At some points, Luigi's Mansion did give me some Silent Hill vibes. Like Silent Hill, the mansion had plenty of locked doors, which needed unlocking. Like Silent Hill, to unlock those doors, the gamer has to explore the unlocked rooms to find keys. Like Silent Hill, the player sometimes has to defeat the horrors in the room to get to the keys (with Luigi's Mansion, that's sucking them up with the Poltergust, unlike Silent Hill, which is attacking them with a weapon). Also, because Luigi's weapon is the Poltergust, the game gives off some serious Ghostbuster vibes. I imagine that was done on purpose.I don't want to complain too much about the controls since I played on the 3DS, not the GameCube. I imagine the GameCube controllers are much more intuitive with the 2 joysticks. Nintendo did try to remedy this. They gave gamers 2 possible options, one of which Luigi always points the Poltergust in the direction the joystick moves and the other has Luigi move while facing the same direction. Players will have their own preference, but both still fail in comparison to 2 joysticks. The best way to play is to get the 2nd circle pad extension or play on a New 3DS that came with a second circle pad built into it. Without it, you'll have to learn to strafe by holding down the B button or use that D-pad to readjust the aim, but the game was originally made with 2 joysticks in mind, so the game isn't intending the gamer to take his hand off the circle pad (movement) to put it on the D-pad (aim). It expects players to move and aim at the same time, and the 3DS port doesn't calculate it. This is my biggest complaint, and possibly, my only complaint.The game also felt a little short. Truth be told, it wasn't short. 9 1/10 hour is just slightly below average from what I expect for game (I expect on average 10 hours to finish the main story). It just felt short. It could be the Metroidvania-like aspect that there is only 1 area, which gamers unlock as play progresses. It could also be the fact that the players knows the end goal from the start, and the game does not to really add to it. Locked doors merely keep the player from marching down to the final boss and defeating it.[SPOILER ALERT!] Speaking of final boss, the game had me a bit worried there. At first, when I heard of a King Boo, I actually didn't mind. Yeah, it's Nintendo typical "make common enemy bigger to make him a boss," but at least it wasn't Nintendo's typical Bowser as the final boss. Then I started hearing the name Bowser thrown around, and I thought Nintendo did make Bowser the final boss! To my relief, it was a faked out fake out. King Boo was indeed the final boss, even if he did wear a Bowser costume. Oh, and speaking of the final boss battle, I found my surprised that I missed Nintendo's typical 3 phases of the final boss. Once I figured out how to defeat King Boo, all I had to do was do it, and I was done. A little anticlimactic [/END SPOILERS]In the end, I appreciate how Nintendo figured out a way to enter the horror genre and keep it family friendly. I also like that they did not simply make it another Mario game (in the sense that Mario is a main character), but rather, they handed it off to another character. It worked out well, too, as now Mario needed rescuing, not Princess Peach.

Great game and awesome fun to play this in 3d since the GameCube. Plays well for travel 😀

Fun game

Very fun!!!!