It turns out plumbers not only save princesses: They’re also ghostbusters.

“Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon” for the Nintendo 3DS is a sequel to the original “Luigi’s Mansion.” The game starts off with brilliant–perhaps crazy–Professor E. Gadd studying paranormal activity in Evershade Valley. He studies with a group of friendly ghost until they start to go hostile. The ghosts’ sudden change is caused by the breaking of the Dark Moon that hangs over the valley.

Professor E. Gadd once again gets the help of Luigi and his flashlight and ghost-sucking vacuum. The duo must discover the mystery of Evershade Valley and return the Dark Moon to its normal state.

This action/adventure game has a simple setup. The player controls Luigi as he travels through five haunted mansions, defeating ghosts and solving puzzles to progress further. In order to capture the hostile ghosts, Luigi has to stun them with his flashlight and then use the vacuum to suck them up. Players have to move in the opposite direction of the evil spirits, who are trying to bring down their health. Every single type of ghost is different. This leads the player to have to use all kinds of different strategies to fight them: Some ghosts will show up with sunglasses, which means it is impossible to stun them. The only way Luigi can defeat them is by sucking the sunglasses off with his vacuum-like weapon.

Progression in the game is different from the formula of the original game. Each mansion is divided into a series of smaller missions. Each objective provides a different goal, and every quest slowly opens more parts of a mansion. This tends to break up gameplay, and the game automatically saves only once upon completing a mission. This is very different compared to the original “Luigi’s Mansion,” where the player wandered around a very large mansion. The player could go back forth to each room because Toads were scattered throughout the mansion, making it easy to find a save point. The player can collect cash just like in the original, but in “Dark Moon” the player receives upgrades when receiving a certain amount of money.

An interesting addition to the new game is a multiplayer mode called ScareScraper. Players have the ability to play with other 3DS owners, either within a nearby area or online with people from all around the world. In the multiplayer mode players can join up to three other people and progress through levels together. The game offers a variety of modes and difficulty levels; ScareScraper is something that can be played over and over again without being boring.

There are only a few problems that I noticed with the game: The controls can be a little confusing at first, but you get used to them fast. The one control that has a major problem is the vacuum weapon. The player will begin to start sucking up a ghost, but can’t rotate Luigi once that’s started. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it can get annoying at times.

“Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon” will offer quite a few hours of gameplay, puzzle solving, creative boss battles and some silly hijinks as the player goes through all the mansions. It’s a hauntingly good time for anyone.