2013 Game Review Haiku, #20 – Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

Mansion to mansion
Ghost to ghost, Luigi sucks
‘Em up, shivering

–

These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon took me for a chilly ride

Some two months after getting it, I’m almost done with Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, which is good seeing that Animal Crossing: New Leaf drops in just a few days and will continue to take up most of my portable gaming time for both the near and far-flung future, but I came very, very close to taking the cartridge out of my 3DS and never looking back. Why? Let’s blame the possessor ghost boss fight from the Secret Mine mansion, and let’s blame it coldly.

While the main levels within a mansion all follow a formula of slowing making progress to the house’s final area, ghost by ghost, piece by piece, there’s definitely not one tied to the boss fights at the end. Each has been drastically different, and the one hoarding the dark moon fragment in Chilly Ride took me by surprise for its difficulty and unrealistic expectations.

For starters, the game switches to a first-person shooter perspective, having you toss bombs at a looming monster face covered in slabs of ice while you race down a slippery ice tunnel. Once you break away each slab, you then have two chances to toss a flaming bomb into the monster’s open mouth; do that, and you return to more traditional grounds, sucking up the possessor ghost as usual in third-person perspective before being thrown back into the shooting formula two more times. Each subsequent time adds more slabs around the monster’s face, and you only have so much time to clear them off the boss before your sledding/shooting machine malfunctions. If that happens, you have to redo the entire fight from the beginning. Which sucks.

Trust me, I know. It took me eight attempts to finally beat this boss, roughly around 40 minutes. That’s the equivalent of two missions in Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, wherein you are collecting ghosts, finding gems, earning money for unlocks, and seeing story beats unfold. I definitely have more fun exploring rooms than tossing bombs down ice tunnels and hoping for the best. Luck and a lot of timing played into this boss fight, which is what makes it so frustrating. When I finally did take down the possessor ghost, I didn’t feel like it was through genuine skill, just something I managed to sneak by.

But whatevs. I beat the Chilly Ride boss–cue Luigi’s adorable line, “I do it!”–collected the fourth Dark Moon fragment, and moved on to the final mansion to see this story to a close. Which I hope to do tonight or tomorrow. No really. I’m almost there, and I’ll probably have some final thoughts on the game, as there is, just like with Paper Mario: Sticker Star, a lot to enjoy here, but the frustrations are truly that, and this boss fight was almost bad enough to drive me away. Hopefully the final boss fight won’t kick me out for good.

A videogames rundown in honor of Barristan the Bold

Right now, I don’t have any particular thoughts on a particular game, so I figured I could use a post to sum up what’s going on with the games I’m playing currently. As usual, I am juggling several, which does not bode well for efficiency and completing many of ’em, but it does allow me to see a wee bit of each thing. Let me break this out into a little list:

• BioShock Infinite – I am really close to the end on this even though I only just posted my impressions about it recently. Its pacing is such that you keep playing, unaware of how much time has passed. A part of me wanted to just soldier through it last night, but it was getting late, and I suspect there’s an hour or two left to unfold. Regardless, I’ll finish it up tonight and then probably lock myself in a small room, crying over what brain-twisting revelations are revealed. Or spoiling myself via the Internet on all the stuff I missed.
• Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon – Just managed to beat the first mansion’s boss, a particularly crafty ghost-controlled spider, which has now opened up the multiplayer aspect, as well as the next mansion. Have not moved on to either of those yet, but I will soon. Seems you can also hop back into the mansion levels to track down hidden Boos. Where you at, Boos?
• Fire Emblem: Awakening – No one has died since my last post about losing Miriel. Granted, I haven’t played since then, but I’ll take my accomplishments with this brutal SRPG where I can.
• Phantasmaburbia – Haven’t touched it since my last post, but I do plan to get back to it, especially since I know I just need to do some light grinding to get the two boys strong enough to take down the progress-blocking boss.
• Kingdom Rush – I play this during my lunchbreak as I slowly sip down vegetable juice as part of my 10-day juicing fast. I got stuck on the first snowly level and had to drop the difficulty to easy to make it through with a pitiful two-star rating.
• Patchwork – Cannot figure out how to appease the fire spirit (wants something to eat), and since this game is so small and indie and unknown, any online guide or clues are nowhere to be found. Curses, as I really like its art style and music a lot.
• Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – Stuck fighting Moltaan, the Lord of Lava, at the top of Old Smokey. Probably gotta grind more, especially since I evolved a few familiars, which drops them back down to level 1. Basically, my party is now a tad unbalanced. Oops.
• El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron – Umm, I don’t know. Stopped at Chapter Two. Ha.

Since my last musings on PlayStation Plus, I’ve gone and downloaded several more games I won’t ever have the time to eat up, like The Cave and Demon’s Souls. Unless I clear a few of the above off my plate. Which may or may not happen soon. But hey, with me, you never know, as something entirely new (or old) will grab my attention. Looking ahead, I can’t really see anything that looks enticing, but that’s the magic of the videogames industry; there are always a few well-kept secrets.

Miriel died as fast as lagging fowls before the northern blast

Before moving on to the next story-based mission, I played the second Paralogue last night in Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is called The Secret Seller. In this one, a bunch of enemy soldiers are trying to destroy a village at the top of the map, but are opposed by an ally character named Anna. You basically need to get a single unit to visit the village and warn them off the incoming attack, as well as protect Anna and then rout the enemy. The difficulty in this map comes from a small bridge connecting the mass of land your units are on and the land with Anna and the village–it makes moving fast a slower process. Thankfully, Anna can hold her own for a few turns.

Now, since I’ve lost so many units so far, I was forced to use Miriel for the very first time, and that meant she was low level and underprepared. For awhile, I had her paired up with the newly acquired Nyna, but then I separated them, hoping Miriel could finish an enemy for some good XP. Alas, no. A man with an axe chopped her to pieces, and down she went. I should note that she technically “retired” so I guess I’ll still see her pop up in cutscenes now and again.

On the flipside, looks like I was able to get in good with Anna, a sword-swinging beast of a woman. Hopefully she’ll do more than just give me a discount at the store down the line, as I’d like to basically replace one redhead for another.

After all this, I took an emotional break and played some more Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon before passing out for the night, and I’m happy to report that no one has died yet in that game.

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon tasks you to ghost hunt like a pro

During my junior and senior years of college, I dated a girl called the Giraffe. Relationship stuff notwithstanding, she played videogames in a fairly casual manner, except for a few specific titles like Crash Team Racing and Pikmin, which she ate up with glee. In fact, I was there the day she bought her Nintendo GameCube, slyly suggesting she also pick up Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, an RPG I knew she’d never like, but one that I was most definitely curious over; to sum up that game, not so good. As we dated, her GameCube collection grew, and one game we ended up enjoying together was the original Luigi’s Mansion, but for altogether different reasons.

In Luigi’s first ghost-hunting adventure, he ends up in a haunted mansion after winning a contest that he never entered. He told his brother Mario to meet him there to celebrate his…uh, victory. Upon arrival, Luigi realizes that Mario arrived before him, but is now missing somewhere within the mansion. To help Luigi find his red-coloring sibling, an old professor named Elvin Gadd equips him with the Poltergust 3000, a vacuum cleaner used for capturing ghosts, and a Game Boy Horror, a device used for communicating with Gadd. You then explore the mansion room by room, sucking up ghosts and looking for any clues related to Mario’s disappearance. It’s a very charming game, with a lot of style and cartoonish sense of horror, and that’s what the Giraffe ate up the most. She would literally spend fifteen minutes just walking around a room pressing the “Call out to Mario” button, eating up Luigi’s uncertain, shivering tone. Me, I actually liked playing the game, though I never got too far into it.

Some ten-plus years later, and we now have a sequel with Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for the Nintendo 3DS. This time, the adventure is set in a region called Evershade Valley, which is where Professor E. Gadd lives in his laboratory and studies friendly ghosts. The Dark Moon, which hangs above Evershade Valley, shatters thanks to a nefarious Boo, which causes all the local ghosts to suddenly become hostile. Luigi is summoned by E. Gadd to re-collect the five pieces of the Dark Moon, scattered in different mansions, to restore peace.

Currently, I’m still in the first mansion, and it’s been a lot of light-hearted, ghost-sucking-up fun, hampered by all things Professor E. Gadd. Firstly, he talks way too much, calling you constantly on your Nintendo DS phone device thingy. And this isn’t helped by the fact that he sounds completely like an Ewok. I’ve been rushing through his dialogue as quickly as possible, even though there are some great zingers to be read. I really enjoy sucking in ghastly ghosts via the enhanced Poltergust 5000, which can be likened to many fishing mini-games, where once you have a ghost “hooked” you need to pull in the opposite direction its moving to “reel” it in. And every new room feels like an unopened present, especially since there is so much that Luigi can interact with–blowing ceiling fans to reveal hidden floors, sucking up window curtains, moving rugs, exploring vases and desk drawers. My gaming OCD doesn’t allow me to leave a room until I’ve fully explored every crevice and interactive set piece, and that’s just fine by me.

Luigi may be all shivers and quivering words, reluctant to see what’s behind the next door, but I’m pretty excited to explore onwards. Will report back later if anything else surprises me about Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon though I suspect it’s going to kind of be a lot like the first mansion, but four more times until the end credits roll. Have not been able to unlock the online multiplayer stuff yet though my non-love for online multiplayer experiences tells me to try it once and then promptly ignore it. We’ll see.