Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire may have been a box office flop, but thankfully there’s another ghost-hunting adventure to enjoy this year – albeit a very familiar one. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD – a remake of the 2013 Nintendo 3DS original, which was also known as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon in the US – has arrived on the Nintendo Switch looking better than ever, but as far as its fun ghost-hunting gameplay goes, it’s almost entirely unchanged. It’s therefore the best way to experience Luigi’s second foray into hunting down the naughty Caspers, but it’s no longer the best entry in the series, as this Dark Moon-based adventure was overshadowed by Luigi’s Mansion 3 in 2019.
Here’s what our reviewer said in her review of the 2013 original:
That sentiment still holds, and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD remains a fun journey that’s as spooky as it is silly. The dual-screen setup has been seamlessly squashed into a single panel and sharpened to a visual standard that falls just short of Luigi’s Mansion 3. The team at developer Tantalus, who were also responsible for 2021’s The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, have not only upped the resolution for this remaster, but also added significantly more detailed textures, right down to the reflective sheen of armor and the threads on Luigi’s overalls. What’s more, this Switch version’s haunted dioramas have been given enough depth thanks to drastically improved lighting that I didn’t really regret the lack of the original’s stereoscopic 3D. (Though, to be honest, I’m not sure I even used stereoscopic 3D.)
It’s unlikely to win a Best Visual Design award in 2024, but compared to the 2013 original, the difference is like night and day. I remember Luigi’s Mansion 2 having a charismatic cast of characters and entertainingly spooky locations to explore, but it was a shock to replay the 3DS original 11 years after its release and see my eyeballs assaulted by so many jagged edges you could grate cheese with them. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, however, has been polished to a level that really lets the playful nature of its phantom menaces and its many superbly designed corridors shine on screen.
Those enemies and environments, however, are still virtually the same as they were a decade ago. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD features no additional ghosts to hunt, no levels to search, and no bosses to point your Poltergust 5000 at. None of Luigi’s moves from Luigi’s Mansion 3, like his suction cup or his ability to summon the gummy bear-like Gooigi, have been retrofitted into this adventure, making for a ghost-hunting and puzzle-solving experience that retains the clever level design of the 3DS original but noticeably lacks the expanded variety of interactions that the third entry in the series offered.
It does, however, feature twin-stick controls similar to those of the third game. For some reason, the original didn’t support the use of the Circle Pad Pro, the clunky Nintendo 3DS peripheral that added a second stick to the system while increasing the chances of popping a seam in your pocket. This meant that in Luigi’s Mansion 2 on the 3DS, the bigger Mario brother would stare in one direction when you needed to aim at him with his flashlight or vacuum up a startled soul. That’s no longer the case in this remaster, which lets you change Luigi’s aim with the right stick. That definitely feels a lot more flexible and intuitive, and while the difficulty curve remains fairly gentle here – the goofy ghost enemies are more dork souls than grim – I was relieved that the control system never frustrated me as much as it did in the original.
I do wish more had been done with Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD’s multiplayer, though. Unlike Luigi’s Mansion 3, where two people could play on the same system, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is strictly one player per console, whether you’re playing online or locally on a LAN. The multi-stage Scarescraper multiplayer mode (known as Thrill Tower in the original release) still offers plenty of wild phantom-fueled fun, but it’s the kind of fun I’d happily share with my kids without having to buy multiple additional Switches and copies of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD to have fun. Unfortunately, there’s no split-screen support here.
Still, I definitely had a spooky time in the twelve hours or so I spent with Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. While I prefer the sprawling, single structure of the third game’s hotel setting, I appreciate that the more compartmentalized levels of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD’s five distinct environments make it easier to narrow down the search for missed collectibles once you’ve completed the main story. Plus, there are some fantastically spooky moments that I’d forgotten about in the decade since I first played it, from the wonderfully enigmatic first boss fight with an oversized spider to the fall down a long, haunted staircase later on that feels like a more R-rated version of the climax of John Wick: Chapter 4.