Hands-on With Luigi’s Mansion 2

Starting outside mansion gates, the Luigi’s Mansion 2 demo at E3 today began with Professor Gadd explaining how to use the Poltergust 5000. Hold R to make the ghost busting vacuum suck. Hit L to make it shoot a blast of air. Move the 3DS to aim. That’s right, you use tilt controls to look around. However, once Luigi turns the vacuum, on he’s stuck in a plane of motion. I noticed this early on when I tried to suck a row of coins around the fountain. After grabbing one row, I couldn’t turn to grab the other coins until I let go of R.

Coins in hand, I entered the mansion. No ghosts yet. Just suits of armor and jars to shake with more coins inside. The door in front of me was locked so I headed left into a room with an antique automobile. There must be something inside, I thought. I turned on the vacuum and grabbed some more coins. Tilting the 3DS allowed Luigi to grab coins in the rafters that weren’t in plain sight.

While vacuuming like a mad man I happened to suck up a blanket and revealed a treasure chest. What luck, a key was inside. I grabbed it and suddenly a skinny green ghost appeared inside the car. Gadd said to use the strobe light by pressing A to stun the ghost then suck it with the vacuum. As soon as the vacuum made contact, a 10 count appeared on the ghost’s head. I pulled back as the green guy tried to float away, but it was too late for him. A prompt came up to press A and strobe the ghost while drawing it in. I did it, and brought the ghost in before the meter reached zero.

Two ghosts appeared next, and one of them tried to punch Luigi. Since the green ghosts have limited range it was possible to dodge their attacks while vacuuming another ghost. I moved back to the foyer, unlocked the door and tried to walk up a staircase. A ghost with a mushroom like head popped out and taunted Luigi by turning the staircase into a slide!

 
I headed left again into a room with more ghosts to bust. A new enemy was added here, a portly red ghost. This specter took 30 count to defeat and had a "sonic clap" attack. This attack had more range so I tackled him first.

After defeating this group I tried to walk up the stairs a second time. The Braniac boss ghost popped up again and sent Luigi down the stairs on a slide. This time, I was locked in with green and red ghosts. Since they flew together it was possible to strobe and vacuum multiple ghosts.

Finally, I reached the boss. Set in a library, this ghost disappeared within the bookshelves. With a 75 count, the Braniac ghost escaped my grasp a few times by hitting Luigi with a book in the back of his head. I chased the Braniac ghost around the room, but he had a tendency of hiding in the same spot – behind a desk. Each time I lost him I walked back to the desk, strobed it, and found him sitting there like a teacher waiting for class to start. After defeating this ghost, the demo ended.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 is slated for release next year.