Luigi's Mansion 2 is being developed by Next Level Games and with their track record (Super Mario Strikers, Mario Strikers Charged, and Punch-Out! (Wii)), it's easy to see why Nintendo would trust such a sequel to them.
For starters, the game looks great. It may be a little less graphically amazing than it's Gamecube counterpart, but looks nearly on par with it. Everything from Luigi, to the ghosts, to the mansion itself is richly detailed in that traditional Nintendo look.
The demo starts you off with Professor E. Gadd sending Luigi off to a new mansion to suck up ghosts with his newly improved Poltergust 5000, a step up from the last game's 3000. After being turned into 3D pixels and teleported, Luigi sets foot in the courtyard of the mansion. Through this walk you learn the basic controls of the game. The R shoulder button is used to suck with the vacuum. While sucking (or not), you can tilt the 3Ds in any direction to make Luigi look up, down, etc. in order to get coins and other items. X is used to open doors and chests. B is used for running. Obviously, the slide pad is for moving.
After collecting some coins and opening up a chest to reveal a key, you head to the mansion door and unlock it. From here, you learn you can't go upstairs as a ghost flattens out the staircase on you, causing you to slide down, and that the door to the north is unlocked. You eventually head into the west room, where you notice a chest with a blanket on it. By sucking the blanket, you're prompted to press the A button to jolt suck it into the vacuum. Once the chest is opened and a key is collected, your first battle starts!
Unlike just shining the flashlight on the ghost from the first game, it is now done by holding the A button to charge and stun flash ghosts. A flashbang of sorts. Once a ghost is exposed, you start sucking away at them, and like the original, you must do so until their HP goes to zero. Since there is no second analog controller, you must push the slide pad in the opposite direction the ghost is trying to get away in and are sometimes given the option to press A again to do another jolt suck that takes away a few points of HP at once.
The rest of the demo had more ghost hunting and treasure collecting, as well as dodging knight statues that try to chop you with their sword! You can also fight and suck up 3 ghosts at once. And after a grueling boss fight in the library of the mansion, it ended. Only leaving me with wanting more. A lot more.
There haven't been any announcements on the official story behind Luigi's Mansion 2 other than Prof E. Gadd wanting some ghosts for his (I guess) collection and study, but I assume Mario has gone missing again as well. Throughout the demo, Luigi would call out his name and do his traditional humming and whistling to himself.
While there is also no set release date, you can expect the game to be coming sometime early in 2012. And for fans of the original, you won't be disappointed. The game plays and stays true to the style of the first. This sequel seems to have found a good home on 3Ds.
