Ah, Luigi's Mansion. This game I remember well from my childhood, because it was a game that actually scared the cuss out of me when I was a kid. I'm still a little scared of it today. I could never play the original Luigi's Mansion myself, and I never played that game all the way through; I watched my dad play it instead. But when Dark Moon came out, I figured it would have to be a game I got because it looked fun and because I'm an adult and shouldn't be scared of video game ghosts anymore.
Even if I was scared of the game as a child, I've always loved the Luigi's Mansion games for having King Boo as the main villain and Luigi's nemesis a la Mario and Bowser. Boos have always been my favorite Mario enemy and King Boo is an awesome bad guy. Whereas lately Bowser has been reduced to more of a comic villain, King Boo gets eviler in this new incarnation and it's great. Just look at him in that official art. He's cunning and sneaky and scary, and he feels legitimately threatening.
I like the fact that this game has a bit more of a plot than the first Luigi's Mansion, and the missions make it easy to remember what you're supposed to do next. In the original game I'd play for a bit, come back, and completely forget what I was supposed to do next. Having gameplay broken up into discrete missions removes that, but I do not like not being able to save in the middle of a mission, which means I have to play the whole thing through at once, which I sometimes don't have time for. If I can't finish an entire mission at once, I can't just turn it off and play something else without losing all my progress. This can be annoying, especially if I'm stuck on a puzzle and want to stop for a bit.
The mechanics themselves are pretty easy to get a handle on, and some new elements have been introduced that make ghost hunting a lot easier, such as being able to get a power boost to the vacuum, or being able to dodge enemy attacks while sucking. That last one in particular is a life-saver, since in the original you were completely at the mercy of the other ghosts that would gang up on you as you sucked another up. However, you still can't change directions when charging the flashlight, which is a major annoyance to me.
The puzzles are also pretty inventive, so far I've played through one and a half mansions and very rarely are the puzzles exactly the same. That's an impressive feat considering there are only three main gimmicks in the game, the vacuum, flashligh, and dark light. Each mansion is an individual and very distinctive, which adds to the inventiveness of the gameplay.
So far I haven't had any major frustrations with the game, which is great, but for some reason it's not really grabbing me like Fire Emblem did. However, that's not to say that it's not a fun game. It's great for passing time, but I don't find myself wanting to play more than a few missions at a time. At the moment I just play one mission per day, which is enough for me; some of them can take really long if you don't figure out the puzzles right away. Without saying too much more, this game is a good time killer, a nice step up from the original, and a cute, quirky addition to the Mario games.
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