Luigi's Mansion 2

Luigi's Mansion 2 is an extremely pretty game - probably the best-looking 3DS game at the show, and indeed to date. The lighting effects are exceptional; lightning flashes which cut the power create a dramatic effect, while the lens flare and flickering shadows when you turn Luigi and his torch toward the screen are fantastically effective. Everything is so solid and colourful you feel you could pluck it out of the screen with your fingertips.

The gameplay involves familiar cautious exploration as you search for keys to open out the mansion, battling with ghosts who trap you in strongly individualised rooms along the way. There's garage with an old jalopy, a lab full of beeps and bubbles and a dining room haunted by a ghost with a saucepan on its head.

To defeat ghosts you need to stun them during their brief appearances. This is done by using the strobe near them, then trapping them in the vacuum's twisting cone of suction. Numbers above their heads show how long they can resist being inhaled while the A-button prompts allow you to suck them up prematurely or take a chunk out of their stamina.

Once trapped ghosts drag Luigi around and try to bump him into the furniture, breaking the suction. The skill comes in adjusting Luigi's movement to keep him out of trouble while pulling away from the ghost as strongly as possible, thereby provoking those buttons prompts.

It's simple stuff but if the demo is anything to go by, it's spiced up by room design and mixing up ghost types. You need to keep Luigi from being startled by other ghosts while he's on the pull, so to speak, and some of them have special attacks, like the big, thuggish red ghosts' thunderous claps which can knock Luigi across the room.

After a few rooms - how many depends on where you choose to spend your keys to unlock new doors - Luigi ascends a treacherous staircase to the library, piled high with books and soundtracked by the spooky tinkling of an unmanned piano.

Here a ghost with an outsized brain pulsing visibly in his mushroom head hurls books invisibly at Luigi. You'll need to dodge those while watching for subtle tells to startle him and hunt him down.

Luigi's Mansion 2, as the title suggests, is the straightest of sequels. It transposes a minor Nintendo classic to a new home which suits it perfectly, adds nothing unnecessary, and does it all with innocent charm, impeccable attention to detail and an immediate, physical sense of fun.

It's another astonishingly convincing understudy performance by Next Level Games, which recently made Pilotwings Resort for 3DS and Punch Out!! for Wii before that. [Correction: Next Level totally didn't make Pilotwings. Whoops. It was a long day. -Ed.] So many studios fail to replicate Nintendo's knack for strong control feedback and a sort of sturdy playfulness, but this Vancouver outfit has it down.

If Luigi's Mansion 2 doesn't immediately promise to take this once-neglected, now-loved idea in a new direction, that's OK. Poor old Luigi is owed this one.