Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (Switch, Nintendo)
AS A plumber, Mario’s twin is perhaps more used to ridding pipes of stools than ghouls, but 2001′s GameCube launch title Luigi’s Mansion marked the point when Nintendo’s less famous sibling stepped out of his brother’s sizeable shadow.
An underrated gem, Luigi’s Mansion was unfairly criticised for what it wasn’t (a sequel to Mario 64) rather than what it was - a spirited mix of phantasmagoria and ethnic stereotypes, where gaming’s second most famous tradesman, armed only with his flashlight and vacuum cleaner, purged a haunted house of ghosts, ably guided by the gibberish-spouting Professor E Gadd.
A sequel landed on Nintendo’s 3DS back in 2013, but given the eye-warping handheld is dead and buried, this HD remake lets the Switch mob see what all the fuss was about.
Battling a restless afterlife with his suped-up Henry Hoover, combat takes a backseat to puzzling in a kid-friendly survival horror with plenty of key-hunting, belfry-searching lateral thinking. A spectral spectacle with a cobwebby atmosphere that sends up horror gimmicks and movie references, Luigi must first startle ghosts with his flashlight, leaving them pliant to a hearty sucking with his modified vacuum cleaner.
Nabbing spirits plays out like fishing, where you reel in your cursed catch by yanking in the opposite direction to tire it out. Later ghosts avoid your glare by donning shades or mummy bandages, which must be, er, sucked off before Luigi can stun them, dragging our trembling tradesman around the room until their health reaches zero.
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Rather than a full-throated remake, this is simply a digital do-over for the 3DS game with HD sheen, but given the original pushed the handheld to its limits, it hasn’t aged a day.
Luigi’s scaredy-cat antics are gloriously animated while the game’s rubbery ghouls look like they’ve floated in from Casper (1995′s cinematic heart-warmer about the post-mortem hormones of a dead child) or the plasticine blobs from Willie Rushton-voiced 1980s claymation classic, Trap Door.
Nintendo hasn’t slouched on the soundtrack either, with ditties so catchy Luigi hums along during less frantic moments.
Alas, an episodic mission structure belies its portable roots, with short, focused levels that demand trudging through the same digital real estate over and over again. And, while the HD lick of paint is welcome, Nintendo missed the chance to include some quality of life improvements - aiming the vacuum is still fiddly, while carking it sends you back to the start of a mission.
Worst of all, asking 50 quid for a 10-year-old game without the original’s 3D bells and whistles is the most frightening thing of all.
Still, Luigi’s Mansion is as sweet and spooky as it was in handheld form, peddling a ghostbusting gateway drug for Resident Evil to gamers who were in nappies for its initial release.
