Nintendo has now officially confirmed that the Switch has entered the final stage of its life, with the Switch successor set to be unveiled and released in the relatively near future. And though Nintendo will be unveiling the final batch of major titles that are set to release for the Switch in the final leg of its active lifecycle, it’s safe to say that Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which is due out in June, is going to be among the system’s final notable first-party releases one way or another.
The acclaimed action-adventure title originally launched for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013, and though it wasn’t quite as well received or as much of a whopping commercial success as Luigi’s Mansion 3 turned out to be, it was an impressive critical and commercial success in its own right. How long it’ll be before we get to see the next mainline Luigi’s Mansion game remains to be seen, but just as Nintendo remade the first game for the 3DS in its final stages before Luigi’s Mansion 3 came out, the company is preparing to remaster and re-release Luigi’s Mansion 2 for the Switch in its final leg before the series’ next mainline instalment launches, whenever that is.
Here, then, we’re going to take a look at a few key details you should know about the looming launch of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD.
STORY DETAILS
Unsurprisingly, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD doesn’t put an awful amount of emphasis on storytelling, though it does have plenty of narrative elements in place that fans of the series will find familiar. The game’s story kicks off with the arrival of the notorious King Boo in the Evershade Valley, which causes the Dark Moon to shatter, which in turn causes all of the ghosts that reside within the valley to go berserk and lose control of themselves. Amidst the crisis, good old Professor E. Gadd summons everyone’s favourite ghost hunter Luigi to the valley, where it once again falls to him to deal with all of the ghosts and put things right.
EVERSHADE VALLEY’S MANSIONS
Back when it came out, the core hook for Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon was that it allowed players to traverse not one, not two, but five whole haunted mansions, each bringing their own unique themes, challenges, enemies, and more. In the upcoming remaster, all five mansions will obvious be returning. There’s Gloomy Manor, your regular, starter haunted mansion; Haunted Towers, towering structures built around a massive tree, with out-of-control plantlife wreaking havoc everywhere; Old Clockworks, a factory that once used to produce clocks; Secret Mines, which are mines built inside of snowcapped mountains; and Treacherous Mansion, a huge and exotic mansion teeming with wondrous exhibits, terrifying ghosts, and more.
MISSIONS AND BOSSES
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD adopts a mission-based structure, tasking you with completing series of missions as you make your way deeper and deeper into each mansion. Of the five mansions in the game, four of them have five missions on offer each, with the remaining mansions coming with three missions. On top of that, each mansion also comes with its own optional, bonus mission, while the main missions of each mansion also culminate in a boss fight, from a terrifying, large spider in Gloomy Manor to a possessed staircase in the Haunter Towers.
POLTERGUST AND STROBULB
If you’ve played a Luigi’s Mansion game in the past, you’re going to be very familiar with its core, momento-to-moment gameplay loop, but for all the uninitiated, here’s a brief primer. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD will see Luigi dealing with ghosts primarily with his trusty weapon, the Poltergust 5000, which is a vacuum cleaner that sucks up ghosts. No, really, that’s literally what it is. Also returning is the Strobulb, which is a flashlight-esque device that you first need to use to stun ghosts with, after which they become vulnerable enough to be sucked up using the Poltergust.
PUZZLES AND ENVIRONMENTS
Sucking up ghosts is a huge part of the Luigi’s Mansion core gameplay loop, but just as crucial is exploring environments and solving puzzles. Hidden everywhere in Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD’s mansions, you’ll find environmental puzzles that will task you with using your toolset of items, from using the Poltergust’s functions to manipular and carry objects to using the Strobulb to interact with things such as lights and switches, to even using the Dark Light device, which you can use to find objects otherwise hidden in environments, such as secret doors leading to hidden rooms.
SCARSCRAPER
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD’s 15-20 hour single player campaign is obviously going to be its primary attraction, but the game will also bring back the 3DS original’s fan-favourite multiplayer mode, ScareScraper. For those not aware, ScareScraper is a co-op mode where four players player as differently coloured Luigis and team up to progress through randomly generated floors of a haunted tower, finding different items, layouts, ghosts, and challenges on each floor. Whether the tower has a limited number of floors or designed as an endless gauntlet where you go as far as your skill will take you is something the game lets you decide, as well.
SCARESCRAPER OBJECTIVES
When you play ScareScraper, you and your squad will find one of four different kinds of challenges on each randomly generated floor, each throwing different hurdles your way. Hunter will task players with defeating all ghosts on the current floor of the tower, while Polterpup will have you chasing around and dealing with a very specific enemy type in ghost dogs, as its name suggests. There’s also Rush, in which players race each other to be the first to find the floor’s exit. Finally, Surprise randomly selects one of the other three objective types.
CO-OP
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD’s ScareScraper is, of course, all about capturing the quintessential co-op experience, as as you’d expect, it’s also going to let you decide how you want to play, too. Local co-op and online co-op will both be supported, so you can pair up with a player over the internet using Nintendo Switch Online as well.
VISUAL ENHANCEMENTS
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD isn’t a full-fledged remake like the first instalment received on he 3DS, but in making the transition from the 3DS to the Nintendo Switch, the game’s remaster is still making some noticeable technical upgrades. Based on what Nintendo has shown of the remaster so far, we can clearly expect a significant jump in visual quality on the Nintendo Switch, entailing everything from improved character models and animations to more detailed environments, sharper lighting and shadows, and more.
FILE SIZE
Games on the Nintendo Switch tend to be pretty small in size, especially compared to the overwhelming majority of most AAA (and even AA) console and PC releases Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, as a remaster of a decade-old 3DS game, is going to be even smaller. As per the game’s eShop listing, it will have a file size of just 3 GB. In comparison, 2019’s Luigi’s Mansion 3 has a file size of 7.4 GB. Then again, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a significantly better looking game than the upcoming remaster of its predecessor, so that gap doesn’t necessarily come as a huge surprise.
