Although we had played thoroughly and completed the 3DS version, we repeated ourselves with this iteration on the current flagship of the Kyoto house, which already represents a clue regarding the overall quality and level of appreciation for the game.
However, if you want to know more, just keep reading, because today is the day of review!
Who are you gonna call?
Cupavalle it is a more unique than rare case: it is in fact the only place where ghosts and humans coexist peacefully – following the events recounted in the progenitor, which accompanied the launch of the GameCube way back in 2001 – and thanks to the mysterious power connected to the Dark Moon, which towers in the skies at night.
Thanks to it, ghosts lose their malevolence towards humans and, while remaining mischievous and unpredictable, manage to coexist with our fellow humans without major problems.
At least until the Dark Moon fragmentswithout any warning and at the hands of a no mean villain, into six different pieces, which disperse throughout Cupavalle: without his beneficial influence, the ghosts become a threat to humans again, and the first to pay the price he is Professor Strambic, Luigi’s old friend, forced to take refuge in an anti-spectrum bunker of his own invention in order to continue his research on ghosts without risking his skin.
And who do you call when you need to deal with ghosts? The Ghostbusters? Patrick Swayze? Of course not: the one, unique and inimitable Luigi Cuordileonewho is terrified at the mere idea of picking up the Poltergust again.
With a premise like this, which builds on the foundations laid by the first chapter but also allows those who haven’t played it to fully enjoy the adventure, laughter is the order of the day.
Thanks to a phenomenal set of animations, which accompanies Luigi in his movements even when he is left inactive for a few seconds, it is impossible not to identify with our fearful hero.
Luigi hums songs from the game’s soundtrack, literally jumps when he is the victim of sudden scares – and trembles from the knees up when he has to open a door behind which he fears there is trouble: observing his movements is almost a game within the game.
As with everything else, this re-release in high definition he did not change anything regarding the plot, dialogues and characters of the gamewhich remains focused on its slapstick comedy and Luigi’s irresistible charm – which, let’s face it, surpasses his older brother by at least a couple of inches.
I got to play Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD in the company of my children, who were not yet born when I finished the 3DS version, and both laughed out loud at various points thanks to Luigi’s comical nature, and I myself confess to having chuckled at least four or five times. Here, I believe one of the strengths of Nintendo products is right here.
Lots of irons in the fire
Like eleven years ago, the core of the gameplay of Luigi’s Mansion 2 is contained in the exploration phases, among the most pleasant proposals not only from the franchise but, more generally, from Nintendo’s first-party adventures over the last decade.
Each of the five explorable areasfrom the mechanical puzzles of the Clock Factory to the carts of the Secret Mine, it really is a hymn to level design and puzzle inventivenessyes simple, in line with the production target, but always satisfying and immediate in their resolution.
Every corner, every carpet, every door can hide surprises and optional puzzles, generous with coins that are useful when returning to the professor between one mission and another, and, as per Nintendo tradition, solutions to raise the quality level of the experience games that are only apparently simple and a level design that is less airy than that of the third episode but equally effective.
To overcome the lack of the 3DS’s second screen, the development team opted for the addition (however optional) of a mini-map always on the screenas an alternative to the possibility of taking a customized version of 3DS out of your pocket and using its navigator functions in a special screen: for most of our second adventure we left the mini-map in overlay, and this allowed us not to almost never interrupt the flow of the gameplay.
I played Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD in the company of my children, who laughed out loud, and I too confess to having laughed several times: one of the strengths of Nintendo products lies right here.
Similar discussion for the possibility of aim during combat (and not only) by using the gyroscopewhich makes many of the clashes with the most cheeky ghosts even more chaotic and fun – and for the presence of two analogue devices, which, unlike the original on 3DS, allows you to always have the most comfortable and intuitive solution at hand for the controls.
If the system combat it is delightful for the entire first half of the adventure, in the long run, and specifically during the exploration of the last two stages (Villa Villana in particular), there is a bit of repetitiveness due to the not excellent diversification of the types of enemies and the reiteration of the mechanics relating to the capture of ghostswhich must first be blinded by the flash, then weakened and finally sucked into the trusty Poltergust 5000.
To this small flaw – which was already noticeable at the time of the first publication and which probably derived from the lack of proportion between the increased longevity of the title compared to its predecessor and the too small number of new types of ghosts – this re-edition does not offer any real remedies, with the result that you arrive at the end of the journey perhaps experiencing a pinch of tiredness.
Few things done, but done well
The graphical changes probably won’t be enough to quell the criticism of those who accuse Nintendo of overpricing its remakes (whether remakes or remasters), yet the work done on the cosmetics of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD it is more than satisfactory: the total cleansing of the aliasing that prevailed on 3DS, together with the increase in native resolution, have made the image much more pleasant, almost to the point of placing it alongside that of the third episode, designed for Switch.
Impossible not to mention too the excellent lighting systemwhich updates in real time and embellishes the exploration phases, between intermittent and colored lights, and the aforementioned, Luigi’s amazing array of animationswho never stands still (literally) and always produces hilarious and extremely fluid movements.
Frame rate stability has benefited greatly from the move to Switchand this despite Next Level Games having redesigned many polygonal models, enriching them and increasing the level of detail and the quantity of moving parts: the uncertainties seen on 3DS are a distant memory, and in the twenty hours dedicated to the title for this review have we ever encountered significant performance drops.
We also point out a Brilliant use of the Joy-Con’s HD rumble featureswhich make the phases of ghost capture much more engaging and those in which, to solve one of the thousand puzzles scattered throughout the locations, it is necessary to pull in the opposite direction or apply force.
The technical work done is more than satisfactory and the animations are beautiful and hilarious.
Another peculiarity of the title, just as we remembered, is inherent in proposing a level of challenge yes soft but never too condescending: if the veterans will have no problem getting to the end without ever seeing the game over screen, the younger ones will be encouraged to carefully observe everything around the protagonist, to memorize the scenarios and, during the boss fights, to work hard to prevail.
It’s a shame, then, that Nintendo didn’t think to put their hands on the save systemcompletely automatic, which is activated at the end of a mission: dying halfway through one of them will force you to repeat it all from the beginning and, despite the pleasantness of the gameplay, repetition is never too welcome.
It would have been enough to implement the possibility of manually saving as desired or inserting checkpoints to avoid this small frustration, and we hope that a post-launch patch will correct this choice, which in our opinion is not a happy one.
In any case, while reporting this problem, it must also be said that it does not ruin the enjoyment of the game, especially in relation to the short duration of the missions, which range from a minimum of ten minutes for the quickest ones up to half an hour for the longest and most complex ones.
Moreover, the evaluation systemwhich takes into account elements such as the amount of life lost and the time taken to complete the mission, and therefore we are sure that the most perfectionists among our readers, or perhaps those who had already completed the title on 3DS but without obtaining the maximum rating in all the stages, they will have a hard time for much more than the scarce fifteen hours needed to reach the final credits.
