By Cole Rose

Spooky Scary! With Halloween over with, I thought I would return to a childhood classic that has haunted me to this day: Luigi’s Mansion. With the year of the Luigi ending, we got a ton of new Luigi content: New Luigi Bros. U, secret Luigi sprites, and the game that made me scream like a little girl at a One Direction concert: Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. When I sat down to play it; however, I was greatly disappointed by this sequel of a classic game. It is time to look at the facts of why Luigi’s Mansion is scarier than Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon.

The first important point of what makes a game scary is the plot. In the first game, you play as (guess who) Luigi who won a mansion in a contest he never entered. The questions begin to build up in the player’s mind as he opens the door to the mansion, which looked nicer on the paper. Soon you meet Professor E. Gadd, who states that he has lived in a small house nearby all his life and said that the mansion did not arrive until a few days ago. He also mentions a man who looks like you, only red, walked into the mansion, and hasn’t come out! OH NO! Your brother is in this haunted house, and it’s up to you to save him!

In the sequel; however, the game becomes a treasure hunt. With all the ghosts becoming “nice” King Boo breaks the dark moon into fragments all over the different mansions (that is right, MANSIONS) and it’s up to Luigi  to try and find the missing pieces. You also already know what is going to happen and who you are going to fight in each area, making the game even more like a cheap haunted house, off the side of a road.

Another important factor in horror games is atmosphere. In Luigi’s Mansion, everything is dark and scary. We have seen haunted houses in Mario games, yet this house is much darker and scarier, and only when the player clears out all the ghosts in a room do the lights turn back on. That is when the player feels relief knowing that that room is cleared of ghosts. They know they have to keep moving, however to keep the game moving, thus making them leave the comfort of the room and heading into the dark hallway filled with ghost mice, bats, and the occasional scare that you do not see coming until it happens. Even if you know it is going to happen, it still pops out and scare you.

In the sequel, the first area has a bunch of soldier statues that try to attack you when you walk down the hallway. The player sees it coming, and it just becomes a bore to go down the hall over and over when you know that you just need to run through. On top of that, the mansions are lit up at random spots so the player is not scared. With that being said, you will walk through the hall just to find spooky dust covering the hallways that you need to vacuum up.

I could go on and on and on about all the points, but I truly think you can understand what I am trying to explain. So with all these points in mind, it is decided that Luigi’s Mansion is scarier than Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon.