Is the year of the Luigi on the Chinese zodiac?

Mario and Luigi: Dream Team is the fourth game in the Mario and Luigi saga and the second one I’ve actually played. Yeah, gonna be bringing you some extensive knowledge on the series. Yeah. Knowledge.

How it goes is… Princess Peach is invited to (and I quote) “Pi’illo Island” to enjoy some serious relaxation (please make that an Olympic event Mr. Olympic) Having won the title of “miss popular, 1978” Peach decides to bring all her friends, including Toadsworth, like a gajillion toads, Luigi and that other guy… What’s his name? Frank? Yeah, I think it’s Frank. Surprisingly, nothing bad happens to Peach until like maybe an hour into the game. But once something does, then Luigi and his useless brother, Frank have to go all over the Pi’illo island, fighting monsters and jumping around and solving crimes and… sleeping?

Oh, the title “Dream Team” doesn’t refer to them being a really good team that people dream about? It literally refers to dreaming… as a team? Yeah, okay.

So, Luigi suffers from narcolepsy and must fall asleep every thirty minutes or so, lest. He. Die!

Or maybe it’s to solve the world’s problems.

Luigi’s narcolepsy is the newest and biggest feature in Dream Team. It literally lends itself to half of the title. And Frank goes in those dreams and teams up with Dreamy Luigi, bringing the second half of the title to fruition.

Basically, Pi’illo Island (I feel like an idiot every time I have to say that.) was previously inhabited by adorable little sprites called (ugh) “Pi’illo” But sadly, the Pi’illos have all decided to go and get themselves petrified into stone pillows. Now Luigi has to go around the place and rest his weary head on every stone pillow he sees. When he falls asleep in exactly 0.12 seconds, a big wibbly wobbly portal opens up above his head that Frank can jump into. Inside Luigi’s inner mechanisms, the game takes on a sidescrolling gameplay style, which is completely pointless because combat is still turn-based (but completely different, I’ll get to that.) Inside the dreams, your main goal is to smack a bunch of dream spheres with Frank’s big, fat head then the spheres turn into Pi’illos and they help you or something. While exploring the dream world, you can make Dreamy Luigi turn into “Luiginary Works” that can be operated with by twiddling Luigi’s thumbs in the real world. That’s the central gameplay idea. There’s also another gameplay element that I only encountered seven hours in and it seemed really cool. But I won’t tell you as my way of getting you interested.

How’s the combat? Oh it’s fine. I think it’s pretty good.

In da real world, you control both brothers simultaneously (eh, eh? Look at me using big words.) Frank is controlled with the “A” button and, the far more attractive and cool brother, Luigi is controlled by the “B” button, you must control the brothers in tandem to survive. It’s a little tricky to get used to, but it’s actually super fun and engaging once you get the hang of it. In the dream world you only control Frank directly. Luigi is still present to help out but in a completely different way.  Dreamy Luigi (as he’s called in his subconscious state) basically gets absorbed into Frank, then Franks attacks have the added benefit of large areas, thanks to Luiginoids. AND NOW I SHALL EXPLAIN LUIGINOIDS.

Luigi turns himself into a bunch of smaller Luigi’s that Frank can exploit (I use the word “exploit” because that’s the kind of guy Frank is.)

That’s the end of my explanation.

You know, the game is actually really fun. It’s held my interest a lot more than it should. But alas, there is a griping flaw that I really hate and it’s only a little thing but it gets really annoying after a while. When you’re exploring the real world, A and B make both the brothers jump, but you also need to use the hammer to solve certain puzzles. Yeah okay, the 3DS has Y and X buttons, surely I could use those. Ummm nope. They make the brothers jump, too. You have to switch to your hammers with the R button and then use the hammers with the A and B or X and Y. It doesn’t sound like much but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally swung my hammer when I meant to jump across a gap over a very long fall to my demise. I honestly think Nintendo had a collective retardation spasm when they were designing the hammer control allocations. What’s with Nintendo and making control decisions that make me want to snap my 3DS in half and throw it at a Nintendo employee and demand they make better control schemes?

Aside from that complete crap burger. The game is good.

On a scale from a dreamy hunk to a teaming skunk. Frank and Luigi: Dream Team gets a completely asinine hammer-jump-switch-method.

Wait. His name’s Mario? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? No, I’m not going to redact the review, I already sent out three hundred copies. Just leave it.