Nintendo loves to release (and resell) old games on new consoles.
Usually, they're cheaper to buy or packed with extra features to justify paying full price.
Metroid Prime Remastered arrived in 2023 at $59.
Pikmin 1 + 2 HD were sold together for just $65.
Nintendo even bundled together HD versions of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy for just $79 to celebrate the plumber's 35th birthday.
Unfortunately, Nintendo has a few exceptions to this rule.
And we'll get another when Luigi's Mansion 2 HD hits the Nintendo Switch this week for $69.
Originally released on the Nintendo 3DS as Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, Luigi's Mansion 2 HD has received a dramatic visual upgrade. Everything from the character models to the lighting has been improved but the game itself is exactly as it was in 2013.
More than a decade ago, reviews of Dark Moon were full of praise. IGN called it "a loveably comedic, surprisingly varied adventure that wins over your heart with its playful characterisation and your mind with its intelligent, challenging nature."
As a fan of the GameCube original, I gleefully picked up my brother's 3DS to play Dark Moon for myself in 2013 but never made it past the second mansion. I never gelled with the stop-start nature of the game's mission structure which prevents you from fully exploring a mansion at your own pace. Rather than push through, I just stopped playing.
With Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, I persisted.
And while I'm still not a fan of the game's mission structure, I'm glad I pushed through.
Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is both charmingly simple and devilishly puzzling.
The game begins when the world's dark moon shatters. Ghosts start running wild and Luigi is reluctantly recruited by Professor E Gadd. to save the day with a flashlight, a ghost-capturing vacuum (the Poltergust 5000) and a dark light to reveal hidden objects.
It's remarkable how much mileage Nintendo squeezes out of these simple and satisfying game-play mechanics. Stunning ghosts with your flashlight and sucking them up never gets old and there are plenty of environmental challenges that demand the player use surrounding elements to their advantage.
Attaching a balloon to the end of your vacuum allows you to float to new heights. Fire burns through spiderwebs and ice. You can carry buckets of water to revive plants and use the spikes they produce to shoot down enemies.
Each of the game's five mansions builds on the mechanics that came before and while everyone will have a favourite (I loved the abandoned clock tower), all are wonderfully designed and unique. I'm happy to be corrected but I don't think a single room is copy-pasted.
Every mansion bar one is divided into five missions and depending on how quickly you complete them, the ghosts you captured and the money you collected along the way, you'll be rewarded with a one, two or three-star ranking. There's also a hidden Boo to find and a bunch of gems to collect in every mansion which is a great incentive to play the levels again and again.
However, there is a downside to this mission structure.
Regardless of the level you select, exploring every corner of a mansion in a single mission is almost impossible. Certain areas are inaccessible in earlier missions, and in later missions, Luigi will often spawn at different points making backtracking a chore.
It also means you're constantly being pulled in and out of a mansion every 20-30 minutes for a chat with Professor E. Gadd. And don't even get me started on how often he calls! I get that inexperienced players need extra guidance - especially early in a game - but the Professor is relentless.
Found a key? He calls. Captured a ghost? He calls. Wandering off to explore? He calls.
It's frustratingly overbearing. I know the game was designed in a different era, for a different system and it's intended to be played in short bursts but the frequency of those breaks in the action hurt my experience in 2013 and again in 2024.
Unfortunately, it's not the only 3DS design choice that doesn't quite work on Switch.
Locking onto targets while shooting projectiles was far too difficult for a grown man who's been gaming for 25+ years.
And as someone who generally champions the subtle use of motion controls, I really disliked them in Luigi's Mansion 2 HD. Tilting the controller backward to lift objects overhead was frustratingly inconsistent compared to pressing and holding the 'X' button and I spent way too long falling off balance beams before I realised motion controls were sabotaging me.
Why would you need to hold forward on a joystick and roll the controller left and right? Pick one! Maybe it's my fault for mashing through a tutorial.
Had Luigi's Mansion 2 HD been remade from the ground up, rather than ported from the 3DS with a new lick of paint, I feel a lot of these kinks could have been ironed out and it'd be a better game for it.
Luigi's Mansion 3 is one of my favourite games on the Nintendo Switch.
It is arguably the system's most impressive visual showcase and the love Next Level Games poured into its animation (particularly Luigi's petrified personality) continues to outshine plenty of titles on far more powerful systems.
It is objectively better looking and better to play than Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, which begs the question; who is Luigi's Mansion 2 HD for?
Both it and Luigi's Mansion 2 are being sold for $69 in Australia.
If you haven't played either, pick Luigi's Mansion 3 every day of the week.
But if you're one of the 14-million-plus people who have already bought and played Luigi's Mansion 3, and you're looking for an excuse to dive back into a creepier corner of the Mushroom Kingdom, Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is a great excuse to do just that; just don't expect it to look as good, play as well or be as polished as its sequel was in 2019.
A copy of Luigi's Mansion 2 HD was provided to 9News.com.au by Nintendo for the purpose of this review.
