Skip to main content
GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ The Games, Movies, TV & Comics You Love
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
  • Games
    • Game Insights
      • Games News
      • Games Features
      • Games Reviews
      • Games Guides
      • The Big Preview
      • On The Radar
      • Future Games Show
    • Genres
      • Action Games
      • RPGs
      • Action RPGs
      • Adventure Games
      • Third Person Shooters
      • FPS Games
    • Platforms
      • PS5
      • Xbox Series X
      • PC
      • Nintendo Switch
      • Nintendo Switch 2
      • Tabletop Gaming
    • Franchises
      • Grand Theft Auto
      • Pokemon
      • Assassin's Creed
      • Monster Hunter
      • Fortnite
      • Cyberpunk
      • Red Dead
      • The Elder Scrolls
      • The Sims
  • Entertainment
    • TV Shows
      • TV News
      • TV Reviews
      • Anime Shows
      • Sci-Fi Shows
      • Superhero Shows
      • Animated Shows
      • Marvel TV Shows
      • Star Wars TV Shows
      • DC TV Shows
    • Movies
      • Movie News
      • Movie Reviews
      • Superhero Movies
      • Action Movies
      • Sci-Fi Movies
      • Anime Movies
      • Horror Movies
      • Marvel Movies
      • DC Movies
    • Streaming
      • Apple TV Plus
      • Disney Plus
      • Netflix
      • HBO
      • Amazon Prime Video
      • Hulu
    • Comics
      • Marvel Comics
      • DC Comics
    • Toys & Collectibles
    • Lego
    • Dungeons and Dragons
    • Merch
  • Hardware
    • Insights
      • Hardware News
      • Hardware Reviews
      • Hardware Features
    • Computing
      • Desktop PCs
      • Laptops
      • Handhelds
    • Peripherals
      • Headsets & Headphones
      • TVs & Monitors
      • Gaming Mice
      • Gaming Keyboards
      • Gaming Chairs
      • Speakers & Audio
    • Accessories & Tech
      • Gaming Controllers
      • Tech
      • SSDs & Hard Drives
      • VR
      • Accessories
      • Retro
  • Deals
    • Game Deals
    • Tech Deals
    • TV Deals
    • Buying Guides
  • Video
    • Newsletters
    • Total Film
    • Retro Gamer
    • Newsarama
Total Film
  • home
  • Games
    • View Games
      • Games News
      • Games Features
      • Games Reviews
      • Games Guides
      • The Big Preview
      • On The Radar
      • Future Games Show
      • Action Games
      • RPGs
      • Action RPGs
      • Adventure Games
      • Third Person Shooters
      • FPS Games
    • Platforms
      • View Platforms
      • PS5
      • Xbox Series X
      • PC
      • Nintendo Switch
      • Nintendo Switch 2
      • Tabletop Gaming
      • Grand Theft Auto
      • Pokemon
      • Assassin's Creed
      • Monster Hunter
      • Fortnite
      • Cyberpunk
      • Red Dead
      • The Elder Scrolls
      • The Sims
  • Entertainment
    • View Entertainment
    • TV Shows
      • View TV Shows
      • TV News
      • TV Reviews
      • Anime Shows
      • Sci-Fi Shows
      • Superhero Shows
      • Animated Shows
      • Marvel TV Shows
      • Star Wars TV Shows
      • DC TV Shows
    • Movies
      • View Movies
      • Movie News
      • Movie Reviews
      • Superhero Movies
      • Action Movies
      • Sci-Fi Movies
      • Anime Movies
      • Horror Movies
      • Marvel Movies
      • DC Movies
    • Streaming
      • View Streaming
      • Apple TV Plus
      • Disney Plus
      • Netflix
      • HBO
      • Amazon Prime Video
      • Hulu
    • Comics
      • View Comics
      • Marvel Comics
      • DC Comics
    • Toys & Collectibles
    • Lego
    • Dungeons and Dragons
    • Merch
  • Hardware
    • View Hardware
      • Hardware News
      • Hardware Reviews
      • Hardware Features
      • Desktop PCs
      • Laptops
      • Handhelds
    • Peripherals
      • View Peripherals
      • Headsets & Headphones
      • TVs & Monitors
      • Gaming Mice
      • Gaming Keyboards
      • Gaming Chairs
      • Speakers & Audio
      • Gaming Controllers
      • Tech
      • SSDs & Hard Drives
      • VR
      • Accessories
      • Retro
  • Deals
    • View Deals
    • Game Deals
    • Tech Deals
    • TV Deals
    • Buying Guides
  • Video
    • Newsletters
    • Total Film
    • Retro Gamer
    • Newsarama
Total Film
Gaming Magazines
Gaming Magazines
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe from just £3
  • Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$12
Subscribe now
Trending
  • Dying Light: The Beast
  • Borderlands 4 review
  • Battlefield 6
  • New Games for 2025
Don't miss these
Key art for Planet of Lana 2 shows Lana and Mui looking out at a landscape.
Puzzle Games I can't get enough of the cute cat-like companion in this puzzle platformer, even if some block pushing is a little business as usual
Cronos tips
Survival Horror Games Bloober Team just teased its unannounced Switch-only horror game for maybe the first time since 2024, and my dream of seeing Nintendo get NSFW has been reignited
The key art for Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly, showing a ghostly girl in front of a shrine, as a thumbnail, with the GamesRadar+ Big Preview Horror Special 2025 badge branding
Retro Fatal Frame's iconic camera exists to force players to "look straight at something scary" says series creator: "We thought it would really bring out the scariness of the ghosts"
Hollow Knight Autumn Preview
Action Games Hollow Knight Silksong hands-on: 2,379 days after its reveal I finally played the elusive Metroidvania, and it is absolutely worth the wait
Donkey Kong Bananza gamesradar+ summer preview 2025 DK and Pauline looking scared
Platforming Games Donkey Kong Bananza is a destructive delight that's basically Super Mario Odyssey+, and I can't believe it wasn't a Switch 2 launch title
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Super Mario Super Mario Bros. Wonder's Switch 2 edition is coming next Spring, alongside a multiplayer expansion with tons of co-op games to play
Mega Victreebel stops two people from escaping in a Pokemon Legends Z-A trailer
Pokemon Great, now I'm desperate for Pokemon to make a Resident Evil-like – and it had better go full Lavender town
Little Nightmares 3 Alone and Low
Horror Games Little Nightmares 3: Everything we know so far about the new horror game from Supermassive
Little Nightmares 3 characters with logo and deluxe edition and future games show logo
Little Nightmares Here's a look at the twisted Carnevale level in Little Nightmares 3 which looks like it might pack peak Little Nightmares creepiness
A screenshot shows Alyssa Ashcroft holding a flashlight in Resident Evil Requiem
Resident Evil Unprecedented Resident Evil Requiem Switch 2 trailer shows spooky mansions and rotten stalkers while Nintendo reveals Gold Edition RE7 and RE8, and I've never been happier to be shocked
Tomodachi Life: living the Dream
Simulation Games After a 12-year wait, Nintendo's weird life sim sequel Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream just got a spring 2026 release window with a new trailer showing off deeper Mii customization and more
Little Nightmares 3 Alone and Low
Co-op Games Little Nightmares 3 release date set for October, it's also coming to Switch 2 alongside an enhanced version of the original, and oh, here's 10 minutes of new gameplay footage
Resident Evil Requiem
Resident Evil Capcom revealed some Resident Evil Requiem gameplay and it's a big day for people who like walking down hallways
A screenshot from Super Mario Odyssey showing Mario throwing Cappy in New Donk City.
Super Mario A 3D Mario game for the Switch 2 could be "many years away" as former Nintendo marketing leads also speculate Donkey Kong Bananza is being made by the Super Mario Odyssey team
Hinako raises a lantern to look at a strange doll within the shrine world in Silent Hill f, from the Tokyo preview, with the GamesRadar+ Big Preview Horror Special 2025 badge branding
Silent Hill 5 hours into Silent Hill f, I've picked out the 10 biggest details you need to know
  1. Games
  2. Adventure
  3. Luigis Mansion: Dark Moon

Luigis Mansion: Dark Moon preview Scared of the spotlight

Features
By Henry Gilbert published 18 December 2012

We’ve spent more than an hour in Luigi’s haunted house and lived to tell the tale

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Page 1 of 5
Page 1 of 5

Page 2 of 5
Page 2 of 5

Page 3 of 5
Page 3 of 5

Page 4 of 5
Page 4 of 5

Page 5 of 5
Page 5 of 5
CATEGORIES
Nintendo Platforms
Henry Gilbert
Henry Gilbert
Social Links Navigation

Henry Gilbert is a former GamesRadar+ Editor, having spent seven years at the site helping to navigate our readers through the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation. Henry is now following another passion of his besides video games, working as the producer and podcast cohost of the popular Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon podcasts. 

If we had to bet on what game would never, ever get a sequel, Luigi’s Mansion would be near the top of that list. The GameCube launch title might not have been a blockbuster, but now the green one is getting another shot at a starring role in the 3DS sequel titled Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. Out early next year, we recently played over an hour of Dark Moon, and it’s clear the near-final game improves on the original in substantial ways.

The story seems to follow the original’s, namely that oddball Professor E. Gadd needs help rounding up the dozens of formerly friendly ghosts that have gone AWOL in several different mansions. Despite his cowardly nature, Luigi is tasked with catching the specters using a modified vacuum cleaner, though his larger goal is to collect pieces of the shattered Dark Moon, the artifact that must be reformed to get the ghosts to behave once again.

The game is divided into multiple chapters spread over several different haunts, and our demo started in one of the first sections. Luigi had just been given the Poltergust 5000 (aka, the vacuum) and a flashlight--the combo needed to start busting ghosts. Unlike in the first game, simply shining a light on the apparitions doesn’t freeze them. Instead, you have to time flashing them with a strobe effect from your flashlight, an approach that adds a little more skill to ghost hunting.

You may like
  • Key art for Planet of Lana 2 shows Lana and Mui looking out at a landscape. I can't get enough of the cute cat-like companion in this puzzle platformer, even if some block pushing is a little business as usual
  • Cronos tips Bloober Team just teased its unannounced Switch-only horror game for maybe the first time since 2024, and my dream of seeing Nintendo get NSFW has been reignited
  • The key art for Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly, showing a ghostly girl in front of a shrine, as a thumbnail, with the GamesRadar+ Big Preview Horror Special 2025 badge branding Fatal Frame's iconic camera exists to force players to "look straight at something scary" says series creator: "We thought it would really bring out the scariness of the ghosts"

Aside from the strobe effect, the ghost-catching seems fairly unchanged from the original. After stunning a ghost with your flashlight, you switch on the Poltergust and suck up the ghosts in a whirlwind of excitement. The ornery ghosts will pull Luigi around the room, so the player has to pull in the opposite direction to get the ghost in. And if you can stun more than one ghost in a single strobe flash, you can inhale multiple ones for a bonus, though it’s much tougher for Luigi to pull in two opposing directions.

In exploring the mansion, we searched multiple rooms for ghosts and can say that developer Next Level has certainly captured the feel of the original, at least in the first stages. Each room Luigi enters has new puzzles to interact with and secrets to find, demanding we use every tool at our disposal. And the rooms look great with the added depth of 3D.

Later on, Luigi received a tool that makes its premiere in Dark Moon, the Darklight Device. Once Luigi attaches it to his flashlight, he can shine this specific light spectrum to find items that pesky ghosts have turned invisible. This potentially deepens the game considerably. Before we were checking every item in the room we could see; now, we need to check all the ones we can’t see. This technique came into play in the second stage we explored, a sand-covered clock tower in need of some serious renovation.

Dark Moon looks like it’s going to be a pretty long game once it finally comes to stores early next year. Each chapter has a mission that can take up to 20 minutes, depending on how quickly you can solve the many environmental puzzles. And each stage is meant to be played multiple times so you can seek out all the hidden gems, golden bones, and other collectibles the ghosts have sneakily hidden all over the mansions. We won’t know for sure till we play the final game, but this looks like it could be one of the deepest adventures the 3DS has seen yet.

See more Nintendo Features
Read more
Key art for Planet of Lana 2 shows Lana and Mui looking out at a landscape.
I can't get enough of the cute cat-like companion in this puzzle platformer, even if some block pushing is a little business as usual
 
 
Cronos tips
Bloober Team just teased its unannounced Switch-only horror game for maybe the first time since 2024, and my dream of seeing Nintendo get NSFW has been reignited
 
 
The key art for Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly, showing a ghostly girl in front of a shrine, as a thumbnail, with the GamesRadar+ Big Preview Horror Special 2025 badge branding
Fatal Frame's iconic camera exists to force players to "look straight at something scary" says series creator: "We thought it would really bring out the scariness of the ghosts"
 
 
Hollow Knight Autumn Preview
Hollow Knight Silksong hands-on: 2,379 days after its reveal I finally played the elusive Metroidvania, and it is absolutely worth the wait
 
 
Donkey Kong Bananza gamesradar+ summer preview 2025 DK and Pauline looking scared
Donkey Kong Bananza is a destructive delight that's basically Super Mario Odyssey+, and I can't believe it wasn't a Switch 2 launch title
 
 
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Super Mario Bros. Wonder's Switch 2 edition is coming next Spring, alongside a multiplayer expansion with tons of co-op games to play
 
 
Latest in Adventure
Pokemon Pokopia screenshot showing Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle all gathered around a Ditto in human form between two green trees
Pokemon Pokopia: everything we know about the Pokemon game that looks a lot like Animal Crossing
 
 
Mega Raichu X
Nintendo announces Pokemon Legends Z-A DLC before the game's even out: Mega Dimension expansion adds "spatial distortions" and makes Raichu the third Pokemon to ever get two Mega Evolutions
 
 
a ditto human sitting on some logs with pikachu and pichu
Nintendo finally wises up to Palworld, announces Pokemon crafting and building game Pokopia – starring a Ditto that thinks it's a real human
 
 
Protagonist Jordan in a screenshot from the reveal trailer for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Neil Druckmann says Naughty Dog is "firing on all cylinders" with new project Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and the reveal trailer "doesn't even scratch the surface of what this game actually is"
 
 
James, Jessie, and Wobbuffet from Team Rocket crying
Even Pokemon's former chief legal officer thinks Nintendo's controversial new patent is unenforceable: "I wish Nintendo and Pokemon good luck"
 
 
Screenshot of Mega Malamar from Pokemon Legends Z-A, showing a glowy octopus monster looking dumbstruck at the camera.
New Pokemon Legends Z-A Mega Evolution Malamar will call you dumb and hypnotize you "if it disagrees with an order," as if having the weirdest evolution method wasn't enough
 
 
Latest in Features
Man of Tomorrow concept art showing Superman and Lex Luthor teaming up superimposed over a group of heroes from the cover of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?
Almost 90 years after Superman was first called the Man of Tomorrow, James Gunn is reviving the name for his big sequel
 
 
A taurus-shaped robotic figure with flaming innards, against a dark background with rocks visible
Helsmiths of Hashut review: Fear this new Warhammer Age of Sigmar army, because it's gonna kick ass
 
 
A screenshot of the upcoming Switch 2 game, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave with a character using a purple energy blast
Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave – Everything we know about the strategy game's Switch 2 debut
 
 
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
Downton Abbey helped me through the toughest times, but The Grand Finale feels like the perfect time to wrap things up
 
 
Upcoming video game movies: Mario, Princess Peach and Toad in The Super Mario Bros Movie.
Super Mario Galaxy Movie release date, cast, plot, and everything else you need to know about The Super Mario Bros. sequel
 
 
Mario
How well do you know the Super Mario series?
 
 
  1. Gwent: The Legendary Card Game box on a wooden surface, with cards visible in the background
    1
    There's now a real version of the Witcher Gwent card game, and it's just as engrossing as the original
  2. 2
    Borderlands 4 review: "Undeniably an excellent looter shooter, but one that requires a bit of tunnel vision to fully enjoy"
  3. 3
    This enormous exploration board game won't be for everyone, but it's a masterclass in narrative and sandbox gameplay
  4. 4
    Hollow Knight Silksong review: "Worth the wait and then some, this isn't just more Hollow Knight but an evolved, spindly beast all its own – even if it's fiddly at times"
  5. 5
    Cronos: The New Dawn review: "An unabashed mash-up of survival horror greatest hits, from Dead Space to Silent Hill, with plenty of its own gory ideas"
  1. Vera Farmiga as 'Lorraine' in The Conjuring: Last Rites
    1
    The Conjuring: Last Rites review: "Not bold or memorable enough for the Warrens' final chapter"
  2. 2
    Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle review: "Roars past Mugen Train as Demon Slayer's best adventure yet"
  3. 3
    The Long Walk review: "One of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made"
  4. 4
    Frankenstein review: "A classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation"
  5. 5
    Weapons review: "A twisted fairytale that bests Barbarian"
  1. Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams, Luis Guzman as Gomez Addams, and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley Addams in Wednesday season 2 part 2
    1
    Wednesday season 2 part 2 review: "Ortega shines, but it's a zombie who steals the entire show"
  2. 2
    Peacemaker season 2 review: "Darker and sadder than the first year, but there's still a lot of fun to be had with the 11th Street Kids."
  3. 3
    Wednesday season 2 part 1 review: "Complex and exciting but weighed down by too many subplots"
  4. 4
    Alien: Earth review: "Arguably the franchise's strongest outing since James Cameron's Aliens"
  5. 5
    King of the Hill season 14 review: "Hank Hill himself has evolved into a much more open and accepting person"

GamesRadar+ is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Review guidelines
  • Write for us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...