I have been playing Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for the last several weeks, and have been enjoying it immensely; until last night. In general, the missions are fun and challenging, and the game play itself is really kind of silly which adds to the fun factor. But there is one boss level which nearly sucked all the enjoyment out of playing the game for me.

You see, most of the game mechanics revolve around using a backpack-mounted vacuum cleaner – the Poltergust 5000 – used to suck up ghosts, and manipulating objects and puzzles using the vacuum or its attachments. But then in the middle of this game the developers stuck this first-person-rail-shooter style level, and they equipped Luigi with a nearly impossible to control weapon.

The biggest problem is that the level makes no sense. Here’s how it works. First, take everything you have learned in the game and throw it away. Now you are chasing your enemy down an ice chute on a sled that has a bomb throwing gun strapped to it. Your enemy has frozen ice plates that you must blast with the bomb gun and then you must fire one more bomb into his mouth. As if that wasn’t hard enough, you he is spins at different rates while is getting farther and farther away, so you have to time your shots perfectly so that your bomb will hit the just the right spot. Your gun doesn’t really shoot bombs as much as it dribbles them down the chute at the enemy. But the single-most stupidest aspect to the level is you have to do this 3 times before your sled OVERHEATS… while it travels down an ICE chute… chasing a FROZEN enemy… right… If you’re lucky you might get 2 attack runs before it does overheat.

This level just seems out of place on the game to me. In the rest of the game all the mechanics build on one another and the tricks learned solving one puzzle can be used in other areas. But having to beat a skill-shot level in the middle of the game, I began to worry that I would never be able to see how the game ends. I would have been better prepared for this boss if there was an earlier boss that used a similar mechanic, but this came out of nowhere, and I was extremely frustrated, let down, almost defeated. In the end, perseverance won out and I was able to beat this level.

If you are playing this game here’s how to prepare for this battle. The main thing is just try not to panic about the sled overheating, just make sure that every shot is deliberate. Try to hit the center ice plates first because they will be harder to hit as the enemy get farther away. After you break all the plates, wait for the enemy to get as close as possible before you fire the last bomb in his mouth.

I highly recommend pushing through despite this level almost ruining the game, the game does redeem itself in the end with a huge payoff.