I'm more skeptical of this now than I was when it was announced. When I think about it, I loved
Luigi's Mansion because it was something completely fresh and new at the time, it was highly atmospheric and immersive (and, while keeping a classic Mario sense of humor, could actually be rather creepy), and it was short, sweet, and elegant.
Dark Moon is a sequel, which right away is going to make it less fresh; it looks like it's going to be tilting more toward funny than scary (though that could just be the way they're portraying it for E3); it's going to be less immersive simply by virtue of being on a handheld rather than a console (less comfortable controller, lower resolution, smaller screen, have to worry about the battery running out, etc.); and most of all, because it's a sequel and because they've gotta do something new (or "new") and add content (or "content"), it's looking much more videogamey.
• Shining a light on the ghosts is no longer enough to stun them into immobility. Players
need to activate a strobe function and release it to stun the ghosts before sucking them
up with the Poltergust.
• Different types of ghosts haunt the different mansions. Luigi must figure out how to defeat
each one of them and find hidden secrets to unlock new areas and treasure chests.
These new elements add more variety and introduce new puzzle-solving mechanics.
• Players can use the Poltergust to help Luigi remove wallpaper to reveal hidden areas,
clean up piles of treasure-hiding leaves or suck up stacks of coins and bills. But in reality,
the nervous and reluctant Luigi just wants to get as far away from these ghosts as
possible.
(
from this press release)
Luigi's Mansion was a short game. So short that, if it were released today for $40, some people would complain. "Puzzle-solving mechanics", especially in recent Nintendo flagship titles, tends to be code for "filler." Think modern Zelda games. And those bullet points up there positively scream "generic videogamey filler BS."
They mentioned in the conference that there's going to be a flashlight upgrade that gives it a rainbow beam. Why are there flashlight upgrades? So they can have ghosts that arbitrarily only respond to a Lvl. 2 Flashlight.
Admittedly, if you're making a sequel to
Luigi's Mansion -- especially on a handheld -- you pretty much have to go in the direction of "Like
Luigi's Mansion, only moreso." But that's really just an argument for not making a sequel in the first place, letting the original stand on its own, and doing something else new and creative and completely different again.
Luigi's Mansion isn't
Age of Empires or
Gears of War or some other type of game where you can make a sequel where you just do all the same things again but better, plus more things, plus lots and lots of things. It's not the kind of game to have an Endless Mode. This is why so many people hated
Metroid Prime 2 -- it was a sequelly sequel that took an elegantly-crafted
experience and turned it into a
video game with arbitrary locks and keys everywhere to make it feel more like a video game. Making
Luigi's Mansion 2 feels like if Jason Rohrer had made
Passage 2: Now with optional polygamy! Now with the ability to go left! Now with weekly DLC outfits for your character! Now with unlockable radar to help find the treasures! Now with colored keys and doors -- solve the puzzle by matching the colors!
Some of the new elements of
Dark Moon would have been good as a second quest-type thing for the original game, but I'm not convinced this can work as a standalone game eleven years after the fact. Why not make it a second quest, actually? Why not an HD remake of the original game for Wii U, playable with the Pro Controller, or with the uPad as the Game Boy Horror, and then add some new features for a New Game Plus mode (and also add analog triggers to the Wii U for crying out loud)? Why is this even a handheld game at all? I mean, making Paper Mario handheld, okay, that's understandable, you want to show off the 3DS's better graphics and the 3D effects and all, but
Luigi's Mansion of all things? That is not a handheld game.
