New Super Luigi U

New Super Luigi U
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Original System: Wii U
System Played On: Wii U
Rating: 3 stars

On May 14, 2022, I beat Bowser, thus finishing New Super Luigi U on the Nintendo Wii U! In my playthrough, I did not collect all the star coins, not even for a single world, so I did not unlock any of the star road levels. I did find all the secret exits, so I at least unlocked all the secret levels. Between beating Bowser and playing every level (including the secret levels), I earned 2 stars on my profile. And I did it all in 7 1/3 gameplay hours over the span of about a month.

Way back when, I called New Super Luigi U an expansion pack to New super mario bros u, and after playing through the whole game, I still stand by it that. Nintendo would seem to agree with me, as New Super Luigi U would eventually come packaged with New Super Mario Bros U on the same disc, and they released the games together on the Nintendo Switch port. Therefore, going into this New Super Luigi U, I expected the same exact levels, except with the 100 second time limit for the extra challenge. While New Super Luigi U keeps the same worlds as New Super Mario Bros U, it did not keep the same levels. The developers of New Super Luigi U kept the 100 second time limit in the forefront of the brains when designing levels. The developers definitely shortened levels. They gave you plenty of time if the gamer merely wants to reach the flagpole at the end of the lee. If the player wants to fully complete the game by collecting all the star coins, he or she barely has enough time. Some of the levels probably need multiple playthroughs because the star coin needs all 100 seconds to reach, to grab and to make it to the flagpole at the end. This has its strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, it encourages multiple playthroughs of a level, giving the game replay value. On the other hand, this feels like padding, as the goal of every level should be to collect all 3 star coins and reach the flagpole. Then again, maybe I'm just a n00b who needs to "git gud."

As mentioned above, what separates New Super Luigi U from New Super Mario Bros U (or any New Super Mario Bros game or any Super Mario game, for that matter) is that every level has a 100 second time limit literally. If you ever paid close attention to a typical Super Mario game timer, you'll notice that the timer ticks fairly fast. That's because a tick off a Super Mario game timer last somewhere between 0.4 seconds and 0.7 seconds, depending on the game. In New Super Luigi U, a tick off the time literally takes 1 second. They are in perfect sync. I kind of like this better. Going into each level, I had a better sense of how much time I left if I needed to back track to attempt to get a star coin. I'm not saying all future 2D (2.5D?) Super Mario games need a 100 second time, but they should all keep the timer to real seconds, even if this means shorting the timer on average.

The only time the 100 second timer hurt the gameplay was with the Boo houses. In a traditional Boo house in a typical Super Mario game, the Boo house tries to get the gamer lost, and the gamer must find the way out of the Boo house. Since New Super Luigi U only gives the player 100 seconds to escape, the game really can't get the player lost. Therefore, Boo houses turn into just another level, just with a soft "horror" theme to it. Seriously, Boo houses feel just like another level, except the enemies are Boos instead of any other enemy. I guess it is technically harder because you can't jump on Boos, but that barely makes the level a bit harder to consider the Boo house a special level.

New Super Luigi U's worst weakness is the story. It's literally the exact same as New Super Mario Bros. U, except Mario is for some reason absent. I know so many people have already said it, but I will say it again. Why wasn't Luigi saving Daisy? Here, let me add a few more ideas, which are a bit more original. Perhaps Luigi could save Mario, like he does in the Luigi's Mansion trilogy. Maybe Bowser could have kidnapped both Mario and Peach at the same time, and Luigi has to rescue both of them. Either option would have been better than copy and paste from New Super Mario Bros U, except with Mario absent. Heck, New Super Luigi doesn't even provide a good answer for why Mario is absent!

Besides that, there is nothing much to say. Besides the 100 second timer and Luigi's loftier jumps, it's traditional Super Mario game, or more specifically, a typical New Super Mario Bros game. There are hidden 8-bit Luigi sprites in each level, but the game does not keep track of the ones you found, and it does not go towards completion. The one little thing I do appreciate is how Luigi responds to reaching the flagpole at the end of the level. Mario traditionally says, "Here we go!" or "I did it!" or "Let's Go!" When Luigi typically gets to the end of the level, he says, "Whew! Made it!" This little detail displays the less confident and more scaredy-cat nature of Luigi, as opposed to his brother Mario, who displays more confidence and less fear.

Luigi's Mansion 3

Luigi's Mansion 3
Developer: Next Level Games
Publisher: Nintendo
Original System: Switch
System Played On: Switch
Rating: 4 stars 

On April 16, 2022, I beat all 16 boss ghosts and defeated King Boo, thus finishing Luigi's Mansion 3 on the Nintendo Switch! In my playthrough, I captured all 16 Boos, and I also collected 32,600G (in-game currency), which earned me a rank B (improvement from Luigi's Mansion 1, which gave me a rank E). And I did it all in a matter 17 1/4 gameplay hours over a span of 1 1/2 months.

I finished Luigi's Mansion 3 and did not complete it because Nintendo made Luigi's Mansion 3 a nightmare to complete (no pun intended). On top of collecting all the Boos and all the gems, which is par for Luigi's Mansion games, Nintendo gave this game achievements. Now some of the game's achievements overlap with the Boo collecting and gem collecting, but for the rest, it can get quite ridiculous. On top of collecting boos and gems, you have to collect a certain number of each ghost (there's 6 types of ghosts), collect a certain amount of each currency (currency comes in coins, bills, bars and pearls) and collect a special collectable on each floor. Furthermore, each floor has a random achievement, which the gamer won't know until he does it, either by accident or on purpose. With all these achievements required for completion, it's not worth completion. It's a shame because Luigi's Mansion 3 has created a world in which the player wants to explore every nook and cranny. If it weren't for those achievements, and it was just the collectables (for which the game provides help), I probably would have gone for completing the game.

Luigi's Mansion 3 should have been named Luigi's Hotel (or at least Luigi's Mansion 3: Luigi's Hotel). Instead of doing multiple mansions, like Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, Luigi's Mansion 3 goes back to a single building, like Luigi's Mansion 1. Fortunately, it does bring over the themes of Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, one of the highlights of that game. The hotel has 15 floors plus 2 basement floors, and each floor has its own theme. Some of the floors make sense for a hotel, like boilerworks, a basement, a lobby, a mezzanine, a shopping mall, a theatre, a garden, a dance hall and a fitness center. I would expect those all in a hotel, especially a fancy hotel. Other floors do not make sense for a hotel. Would a hotel have a castle arena (unless they are going for a Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament kind of thing), a movie making studio, a museum, an Egyptian pyramid and a pirate ship? Unless it was a themed hotel, I would not imagine any of these in a hotel, and even in the case of a themed hotel, it would have 1 of these themes, not all of them. I get Nintendo did this to have more floors and expand game time, but it really lacks that universal theme, even for a hotel. Furthermore, all these floors are somewhat lacking balance. On some floors, the gamer has to explore a multi-level maze to get to the boss ghost. On other floors, the player just has to go down the hall to a single room, and the boss ghost is there.  Sometimes a floor can take hours, while at other times, a floor just takes minutes.

Luigi's Mansion 3 does boss ghosts right this time by leaning away from what Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon did and learning towards what Luigi's Mansion 1 did. Each boss ghost as his or her own character and personality...well, kind of sort of. Each ghost boss fits the theme of its room. Garden room has a gardener, dance hall has a DJ, fitness center has a bodybuilder, Egyptian pyramid has a mummy, movie studio has a director, pirate ship has a pirate shark, etc. That's it. Furthermore, in Luigi's Mansion 1, upon capturing the boss ghost, the gamer could read a description of the boss ghost. Despite Luigi's Mansion 3 having a ghost gallery, the player has no description to read. This creates a 1-dimension character and personality for the ghost. Again, better than Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, but it still feels like a long shot from Luigi's Mansion 1.

Luigi's Mansion 3 brings back many features from Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, such as the strobe light and the dark light. Luigi's Mansion 3 also includes Gooigi, a goo clone of Luigi. Technically, Gooigi originated in the 3DS remake of Luigi's Mansion 1 to give that game co-op multiplayer, although I remember Nintendo advertising Gooigi as brand new for Luigi's Mansion 3. That could be due to the criticism that Gooigi did not work for Luigi's Mansion 1 because the game was never intended to have co-op multiplayer. Well, Luigi's Mansion 3 did intend for co-op multiplayer, and I would even say it encourages it. Luigi's Mansion 3 has some puzzles which require both Luigi and Gooigi to solve it. A single player can hop back and forth between Luigi and Gooigi to solve these puzzles by himself or herself. At best, this slows down game play, and at worse it makes game play harder. While I appreciate Nintendo thought of how co-op multiplayer could change up the game, I wish they would have made single player and co-op multiplayer into 2 different game modes. Luigi's Mansion 3 adds some new poltergust features. The poltergust G-00 comes with a plunger rope, which can be used grab ahold of things and throw them or tear them down, which can reveal new paths. It's another layer of gameplay, which contributes to new and innovative puzzles. In some rooms, Luigi can plug in poltergust G-00 into a socket to activate super suction, which tears down walls and other fixtures to reveal a new path. Unfortunately, this is its only use, and it's only used in some rooms on some floors. By pressing both ZL and ZR, Luigi has an air boost, which kind of acts as a jump. It does not go high, but it has good use for dodging floor attacks, and again, opening up new paths. In Luigi's Mansion 3, when Luigi has sucked in a ghost for long enough, Luigi can now slam the ghost onto the floor for extra damage. I like this over the "extra suction" in Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon. This attack has further application when facing a wave of ghosts, for Luigi can slam ghosts into other ghosts, which does damage to both the slammer and the slammee. Again, a big improvement from the last game. The only thing that does not return are the elemental medals from the first game. Such a shame because those elemental medals added another level of gameplay for puzzles.

Just like in the previous Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, in-game currency in Luigi's Mansion 3 has more use than just ranking the gamer at the end of the game. In Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, the in-game currency just upgraded the poltergust, but in Luigi's Mansion 3, the poltergust comes updated. In Luigi's Mansion 3, in-game currency goes towards 3 things: gold bones, boo finders and gem finders. Gold bones serves as extra continues. When Luigi loses all 99 hearts, a gold bone gives Luigi an extra continue, so Luigi can pick up right where he left off, as opposed to a game over (which Luigi's Mansion games calls "good night"), which requires Luigi to start at the last saved checkpoint.  At first, the game only allows 5 golden bones at once, but later on in the game, it allows you to hold 10 golden. As if this game wasn't generous enough with its auto-saves (auto-saves happen every time Luigi enters or exits a room), the golden bones make it even more generous. Seriously, I went into the final boss with 9 gold bones, and I defeated with 3. I prefer the method in Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, with only 1 golden bone per mission (I know that doesn't exactly work for Luigi's Mansion 3, but they could have done something similar, like find 1 golden bone per floor). Boo finders and gem finders are cartridges installed into poltergust G-00, which causes poltergust (and the controller) to vibrate when close to a boo or gem. The closet Luigi, the strong the vibration. This aids greatly in collecting both boos and gems. Like I said before, if it wasn't for the achievements, the boo finders and the gem finders would make collecting easy. The catch with the boo and gem finders, as well as the golden bones, is that money spent does not go towards your grand total for your ranking, so you lose money (and possibly rank) by spending it on finders and bones. It causes the player to stop and weigh out his or her options before purchasing finders and bones.

Overall, a good game. Luigi's Mansion 3 has created a world in which the gamer wants to explore. The mansion/hotel has character, its ghosts (especially boss ghosts) have personality, and even Luigi feels relatable. Luigi's Mansion 3 has added new gameplay features, which puts new players and seasoned veterans on the same level. Money has more of a purpose than just ranking the player and losing that money to purchase it in the shop has the player weighing the pros and cons to determine whether rank or completion is more important to the player. Ultimately, though, I still miss Luigi's Mansion 1. Luigi's Mansion 1 feels like "baby's first horror." Although not too scary, Luigi's Mansion 1 still felt like a horror game with other horror game tropes, like slowly unlocking a haunted building. Luigi's Mansion 3 feels less like a horror game and more like an action/adventure game that just so happens to have ghosts in it. While the gamer needs to beat a boss ghost on one floor in order to unlock the next floor, it does not feel like the same level of exploration as Luigi's Mansion 1. With so many opportunities for continues and saves, Luigi's Mansion 3 does not even have the horror trope of worrying about your life. While the ghosts have more character and personality than the second, it still falls short in comparison to the first game. One step forward and one step back.

Luigi's Mansion (2): Dark Moon

Luigi's Mansion (2): Dark Moon
Developer: Next Level Games
Publisher: Nintendo
Original System: 3DS
System Played On: 3DS
Rating: 3 stars 

On February 26, 2022, I defeated King Boo and rescued Mario, thus finishing Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon for the Nintendo 3DS! In my playthrough, I fully upgraded the poltergust & dark light, captured 18 Boos and collected 20,600G (the in-game currency). And I did it all 14 gameplay hours over a span of about 1 1/2 months.

Nintendo must have heard the complaints about the first Luigi's Manson game being too short, for they definitely fixed that. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon took 5 hours longer than the original Luigi's Mansion. Unfortunately, their approach to expanding Dark Moon's gameplay time wasn't exactly the best. Their solution to adding more gameplay time? Add more mansions! Dark Moon has a total of 5 mansions that need exploring. Give or take, that means I averaged 3 hours per mansion. The problem with that is, in the previous game, I spent 9 hours in 1 mansion. More mansions mean less things to do in each mansion. Each mansion has a set of missions. Nintendo laid out these missions on a monitor in E. Gadd's lab, so the gamer selects each mission, pretty much on a home screen. I'm not sure if this was to pad gameplay time, make the game more accessible to casual players or to make smaller gaming sessions for a handheld system (as opposed to a console, in which gaming sessions last longer), but either way, it definitely robs the game of a unified world (mansion?) that was ever-so-present in Luigi's Mansion 1. Clearly the emphasis has gone from exploring (a) mansion(s) to hunting ghosts, and technically, Nintendo fails on that one, too. Portrait ghosts no longer exist. While I continue to praise Nintendo for not making the Boos the only ghosts of the game, the ghosts in this game seem generic, besides their different colors and abilities. It's such a shame because with all these different mansions having different themes, they could have easily matched mansion themes with portrait ghost personalities. [SPOILER ALERT!] At least the final boss battle was actually against Boo instead of a pseudo-Bowser boss battle. And I'm actually glad they revealed near the end of the game that Luigi is rescuing Mario again. Yes, it's not really a plot twist (quite predictable, actually), but it gave Luigi more motivation than just "E. Gadd's ghost assistants went haywire, and E. Gadd thinks Luigi is the best solution to this problem." [/END SPOILER]

Overall, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon succeeds as another "baby's first horror game." I even recognized some spots that may be considered "jump scares" for children. Ultimately, though, I liked Luigi's Mansion 1 better. Like I said in my review of that, Luigi's Mansion has more of the feel of "baby's first horror game," as I could make more parallels to traditional horror games, like Silent Hill. At times, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon felt more like a typical action/adventure game, just with ghosts.

Luigi’s Mansion (1)

Luigi's Mansion (1)
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Original System: GameCube
System Played On: 3DS
Rating: 5 stars 

On January 15, 2022, I defeated King Boo and rescued Mario, thus finishing Luigi's Mansion, originally on the Nintendo GameCube (I played the 3DS port)! In my play, not only did I defeat King Boo, I captured 21/22 ghosts (I think I glitched the game because I failed to capture 1 ghost, the lights turned on, and I could not find the ghost again), I captured 46/50 boos (that's over 90%!), I collected over 4 1/2 million G (the in-game currency), and I accomplished all beginner and easy achievements. All this, however, only got me a Rank E. And I did it all in 9 1/10 gameplay hours over a span of 2 weeks/half month (more like 3 weekends because I only played it on the weekends).

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.