The Haunted Hoard: Luigi’s Mansion 3 (Switch)
The original Luigi’s Mansion thrust Mario’s cowardly younger brother into the spotlight, Luigi working his way through an atmospheric mansion to capture ghosts whose personality and design informed how you fought them. The second game, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, stripped away much of the character and tone of the first game, but an increased focus on more exciting battles and intricate puzzles ensured it was still an exciting ghost hunting adventure across multiple varied mansions. When Luigi’s Mansion 3 was announced, it was unclear whether it would draw more influence from the first or second game, but rather than Next Level Games choosing one style to pursue, they managed to combine the best aspects of both previous games into one of the best ghost hunting games on the market.
Luigi, his much more famous brother Mario, the princess Peach, a few of her servant Toads, and Luigi’s newly acquired ghostly pet Polterpup all begin the game by heading off for some rest and relaxation at an extravagant hotel and resort. Invited by the owner Hellen Gravely, the group quickly learns they have been deceived, Gravely inviting the famous heroes so she can offer them up to Luigi’s long time nemesis King Boo. The royal ghost manages to capture most of the visitors, but Luigi slips away safely, and with the help of Polterpup and his old ally, the kooky mad scientist Professor E. Gadd, the cowardly ghost buster sets off to suck up all the hostile ghosts of the hotel to save his friends and family.
Luigi is just as terrified as ever of the spirits but pushes forward with resolve, even refusing to leave when he seems to have a chance of escaping, but the hotel is filled with plenty of frights that keep Luigi screaming and shivering. There is a marvelous use of lighting and fog to add a sense of unease to new locations, and while Luigi’s Mansion 3 never swings for outright horror, it has a sense of atmosphere to it that makes the lurking spirits seem legitimately dangerous even though many of them are colorful cartoon ghosts. The towering hotel has 17 floors of different sizes, and stepping off the elevator to explore a new one comes not just with a sense that there are unknown dangers ahead, but the resort theming means each floor has an exciting new idea being focused on that the player will be eager to see. Like Luigi, the player plunges forward with trepidation so that they aren’t ambushed by ghosts or swarmed by bats and spiders, but they press on because every time they clear a floor and earn a new button for the elevator, they get to head to a gloriously realized floor theme with a boss ghost waiting to face them at the end.
The many floors of Luigi’s Mansion 3 and their pursuit of drastically different ideas is definitely what makes this the best of the three Luigi’s Mansion games so far. Things begin simply as you head through areas you might expect a hotel to have. The lobby and hotel rooms are a natural fit, and areas like a fitness center and specialty shops can be justified as natural parts of a ritzy resort. Soon though, the game starts to really pursue wilder ideas, and while it’s hard to say why a hotel would have an entire floor with an Egyptian pyramid facsimile, a natural history museum, or a multi-story gardening area, the willingness to break the mold is what gives these areas both the room to explore their ideas and the freedom to really embrace their concepts as far as they wish. They never truly break away from the idea everything is indoors at least, false skies painted on ceilings keeping things grounded and a few areas like the pirate area and the medieval castle clearly meant to be themed restaurants rather than simple reproductions. These floor themes also mix the spooky atmosphere with more explosive and wild moments of pure action and spectacle, but the already silly ghosts feel like they can flit between both tones well without ever pushing so far in one direction that the other can no longer exist side by side with it.
The boss ghosts themselves definitely give the floors a lot of their character. Each floor has a special spirit you’ll need to take down to get the elevator button they are guarding, Gravely’s ghostly minions trying to keep you from reaching her floor at the top of the tower. Some of these ghosts are delightfully goofy like the overweight security guard who bumbles through his task of defending the shops, others like the magician triplets definitely enjoy toying with Luigi by swapping the layout of the floor’s rooms, and then there’s Morty, a ghostly filmmaker who has one of the best floors in the game because it takes place across a variety of different movie sets while the boss ghost has no ill intentions towards you. Morty’s floor may be the most creative, but almost every floor will bring with it puzzles and battles that ask you to solve unique problems or figure out what the boss’s weakness is. The Garden Suites has Luigi climbing to the top of a giant stalk, taking detours through areas he must tear apart with a buzzsaw or use vines and bouncy mushrooms to navigate, the Hotel Shops requires you to find ways into each shop and solve small puzzles to get the keys for the next store, and the castle restaurant requires you to dodge very dangerous versions of medieval props to make your way to a boss ghost whose armor makes him almost invincible to being sucked up. The boss ghosts themselves can posses items like a piano or fossilized skeleton to fight you, use the tools of their trade to attack, or might just have their battles feel more like a minigame where you have to figure out the timing or trick to overcoming their special attacks. Oddly enough the final bosses of the game aren’t as interesting as some of the ones you face off with directly before, but this speaks more for the strength of the boss ghosts near the end of the game than the weakness of the foes you face at the finale.
Exploring a new floor and facing off with its main spirit already makes navigating the hotel exhilarating, but every floor is also teeming with plenty to do. Almost every room in the game is well furnished with packed shelves and objects appropriate to the location, and by using your ghost hunting vacuum on the world around you, you can start to uncover hidden gems or just collect tons of money. Tiny puzzles will often lead you to the meatier rewards, but if you walk into a room, you can begin sucking up smaller objects to find plenty of cash that goes towards your score at the end of the game. You can technically buy things with the cash you collect, but besides extra lives that aren’t too necessary and some items that help you track down optional stuff, the cash is mostly quite useless… and yet, it is still incredibly satisfying to collect. Seeing the environment react to your vacuum is oddly thrilling. All kinds of objects will pop into the device with satisfying sound effects and the detail given to the world means there is often so much you can spend your time vacuuming up just for the sake of it. It’s got the same degree of enjoyment that both cleaning a messy space in real life has or making a mess would, the process of sucking shelves clean both disruptive and helpful in clearing away the clutter. Different parts of the environment react to your vacuum in different ways as well, and finding a new floor theme and seeing how its props can be messed with gives you small activities to engage in between entering combat or finding the puzzle that blocks your way forward.
Your vacuum can do a lot more than suck and blow though. It starts off a simple tool, but over the course of the game you’ll gain new attachments that really expand your ability to interact with the hotel and its puzzles. A shockingly ingenious one comes in the form of Gooigi, a green gooey doppelganger you can summon who has his own unique properties and weaknesses. By swapping between the two you can solve more complex puzzles that call on abilities Luigi otherwise lacks. Gooigi can slip through grates and bars, suffers no damage from spikes and arrows, and most importantly lets the player be in two places at once. You can distract a ghost with one character while the other gets an important item or sucks up the unsuspecting spirit and you can do things like manipulate levers and valves to help the other character move forward. Both Luigi and Gooigi will share many upgrades such as the plunger that allows them to latch onto heavier objects and yank them around with the attached rope, the two sometimes having to work together to move the heaviest of heavy objects. A special lightbulb will let you find hidden objects as well, so when you are in a new area, there are plenty of things you can do with your items to try and find the way forward, the puzzle solutions requiring some degree of cleverness with special rewards for people who can figure out the optional diversions.
Combat in Luigi’s Mansion 3 is also surprisingly action-packed. When Luigi has begun sucking up a ghost, he needs to make sure to be fighting their pull like he’s reeling in a fish to properly drain their health. Once they’re out of stamina they’ll be completely sucked up and no longer an issue, but to make fights speedier, Luigi has the ability to slam the ghosts around the room a few times. This slam not only speeds up encounters with the more trivial simple ghosts who fill out the rooms of a floor, but it also gives you a special way to fight off crowds and break objects in the area. A slam can incapacitate and damage another ghost if aimed correctly, and many battles with ghosts that could be overwhelming otherwise are made manageable by this option and more thrilling to take part in since you can so effectively hold them off. Boss ghosts are made much more durable so that the slam doesn’t prevent you from experiencing any extra tricks they have, but the slamming gives the regular battles a quick pace, and some spirits like the burly red ghosts or the sneaky purple ones still have tricks that prevent you from just blindly sucking up and smashing every ghost you see.
Boos actually provide a different type of ghost hunting and combat as well, even though they are entirely optional. The round white spirits will lurk on floors you have visited before, the player needing to focus on the rumble in their controller to find where the Boo is hiding so they can begin the battle. The Boo remains invisible most of the time, the player needing to figure out where it is so they can begin sucking it up, and clues in the movement of the fog or other pieces of the environment help you suck up these simple specters. Some other situations during the story will send you on repeat visits to earlier floors, and while the Boos often have you revisiting old ground with a new goal, some of the tasks that draw you to a familiar floor take you to previously inaccessible spot or frame the old areas as the battleground for a new foe. Luigi’s Mansion 3 doesn’t overdo it when it comes to mandatory repeat visits either, meaning you’ll often get to immediately pursue the exciting prospect of whatever the next new floor has in store.
The main adventure of Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a long, varied ghost hunt that switches between exciting and moody quite deftly, but there is more waiting for a player if they want to pursue the multiplayer component. Besides playing through the plot with a second player as a more permanent Gooigi ally, there is also the ScreamPark and ScareScraper modes. ScreamPark is a set of minigames that use some of your ghost-hunting tools in new ways such as propelling yourself around a pool with the vacuum’s suction or loading a cannon by grabbing cannonballs with the vacuum. There is one that is just a speedier ghost hunt still, but these minigames are mostly quick but forgettable fun, especially when compared to the more substantial ScareScraper mode. ScareScrapers has you and up to three other players tackle a set of randomized floors capturing ghosts and fulfilling objectives. The randomization doesn’t apply to floor themes as most layouts rely more on the basic hotel look than any of the main game’s more wild ideas, but the different goals and timed action keep things moving and varied enough. Catching all the ghosts, collecting a certain amount of cash, and finding hidden toads will both necessitate splitting up or working together as traps can trip up solo players and certain situations or items require more than just one Luigi to overcome, but that timer means you have a lot of ground to cover if you want to succeed. This mode mostly relies on the simple colored ghosts and reimaginings of them with different powers or stats, so while it may not be as interesting as the single player, it is a decent additional mode attached to an already stellar game, and so long as you don’t do one of the longer modes like a 20 floor ScareScraper, you can come to the multiplayer for some quick fun with the same ghost busting action that makes the main game’s combat so thrilling.
THE VERDICT: Marvelous character animation, use of detail, and atmospheric lighting all come together in Luigi’s Mansion 3 for an experience that can balance moments of family-friendly frights with lovable ridiculousness. The creativity on show for each floor of the hotel and the boss ghost heading them makes for a constantly exciting push into new and varied territory, each floor teeming with clever puzzles, thrilling combat, and stuff that is just plain fun to suck up with your vacuum. It may not be very hard on the whole, but the imaginative twists and turns this ghost hunting adventure takes make up for that with personality and diversity. Luigi’s Mansion 3 not only brings back the best parts of its two predecessors, but it brings its own new ideas into the mix for a spectacular realization of the ghost hunting concept.
And so, I give Luigi’s Mansion 3 for Switch…
A FANTASTIC rating. There are so many memorable and enjoyable moments to point at over the course of Luigi’s Mansion 3, but I think the game once again shows off its potential best at Morty’s movie studio. Passing through various movie sets with their own unique intermingling puzzles, combat with simple ghosts that is exciting because you are both powerful enough to handle it and the game can toss in more abundant tougher foes without worrying about your ability to overcome them, and a boss ghost who has a unique way of being dealt with all make this one of the most interesting parts of the game, and many of the parts that make it great can be said about other floors in the hotel. Luigi’s Mansion 3 makes sure every part of the normal play is satisfying or engaging in some way even if the rewards aren’t always the best, but the fact that tearing apart a room with just your vacuum is so viscerally enjoyable shows off that devotion to detail that gives much of the game its appeal. Every boss ghost is a character even though not all of them can speak, every floor is a unique location that asks for something new from how you use your versatile tools like Gooigi and the plunger, and it does all of this while expertly straddling a line where a game can be somewhat spooky without straying away from the cartoon horror style the game is going for. There’s room for improvement in regards to things like the multiplayer or having more use for your cash, but this still is certainly the best Luigi’s Mansion game to date.
It’s clear Next Level Games not only considered how best to meld together the best parts of the first two titles but also were full of imaginative new ideas on where the Luigi’s Mansion series could go. Luigi’s Mansion 3 makes sure your trip through the hotel is consistently fun and it won’t restrict itself on delivering what it believes could be a great new floor idea. Why not head to a floor with an Egyptian pyramid theme to it if that’s going to bring you fun puzzles, interesting battles, and new distinct ways to use your vacuum and fight enemy spirits? This is essentially family horror at its finest: silly and spooky but immensely fun. With extra touches like the creativity found in boss and puzzle design on top of that, Luigi’s Mansion 3 really does come out feeling like the most enjoyable way to catch ghosts in a video game.