Review #717: Luigi's Mansion 3

 Hotel Luigi!

 Halloween might be over, but Nintendo decided to release Luigi's Mansion 3 on October 31st, guaranteeing that nobody would be playing this game on-season. After what I felt was a lackluster sequel, not that I played the first Luigi's Mansion mind you, LM 3's sets to mix the best parts from the sequel with the best parts of the original game, and it worked. I really worked.

 In Luigi's Mansion you had to rescue Mario, in the sequel you had to rescue Mario and the Toads, but for this third installment the stakes have risen even higher, joining Mario and the Toads is Peach as yet another kidnapee. For you see, Luigi and friend's go invited into a fancy Hotel, which turns out to be haunted by our good ole pal King Boo, who quickly captures Luigi's friends, so now it's up to him to rescue them. The Hotel setting is absolutely brilliant, it's made up of 17 different floors, each one with a different theme. There's a disco floor, an Egyptian tomb floor, a pirate-beach floor(Really!), etc. This keeps things varied and interesting, gaining access to a new floor is always a treat. The annoying breaks between objectives that plagued the second game are gone, while you might need to return to E. Gadd's lab on the basement floor a few times throughout the course of the game, it's never as intrusive or as pace-breaking as it was in the previous game. Heck, E. Gadd's calls can be turned off, most of them anyways, on the options menu.

 Everything you've heard about the game graphics is true, Luigi's Mansion 3 is quite possibly the best looking game on the Switch. Not only are characters incredibly detailed, environments gorgeous and varied, but the amount of detail and stuff you can interact with is quite staggering. Pretty much every thing that isn't a floor, a wall or a ceiling can be interacted with. Maybe it'll just shake a bit if you vacuum it, but more often than not you'll find a ton of stuff you can just break or vacuum, either for fun or for in-game money. It's so much fun looking at rooms before and after you started crashing them, even though money is pretty much useless, collecting money feels great because interacting with stuff and using the Poltegust G-00 on the environment is so much fun. Add to that the fact that the game is chock full of personality, each floor has a boss, and every boss is completely different from the next in looks, personality and how to defeat them.

 Breaking and sucking stuff is fun 'n all, but the game's goal is to hunt ghosts, not money. In order to do this, Luigi comes equipped with all the tools he used to have, namely the Flashlight, which is used to stun enemies in order to suck them in, the Blacklight, a flashlight bulb that can reveal hidden objects and the Poltegust G-00, Luigi's handy vacuum cleaner-turned-ghost-hunting tool that can either vacuum or blow air out. Luckily, Luigi comes armed with new tools and abilities. There's a new mini-jump by pressing L+R(Blow+Vacuum) at the same time, and charging the vacuum gauge, by moving against a ghost while sucking him in, let's you do a powerful slam that'll hurt any other enemy it hits, alongside dealing a hefty amount of damage to your victim. There's a new tool, the plunger, which you can shoot against certain surfaces, so that then you can suck it in order to smash the object it's stuck on. A new improvement to Luigi's movement is that after running for a short while he'll break into a dash.

 There's one final new addition, Gooigie. By tapping R3 you'll let the goo out of the Poltegust, which will then shape itself into the form of Luigi, albeit made out of Goo. Gooigi has the same exact abilities and tools as Luigi, but he can go through metal grating and will instantly melt if it touches water. Gooigie is the game's co-op mode, although the game is built entirely to work in Single player, alternating between Luigi and his gooie companion is as easy as tapping R3, and whichever character you switch out from will continue doing whatever action you were using. This is done so that you can complete a few puzzles and puzzle fights that require cooperation. It sounds like a hassle, but trust me, it's not. At first he controls were a bit awkward, like using the blacklight required holding X while moving the right analog stick until I found out that all tools are mapped to L and R. L is the plunger, R is the flashlight and L+R is the blacklight. Finding that out made controlling Luigi much easier.

 I think the game's biggest failing is the lack of an upgrade system. Wait, hear me out! There's an overabundance of stuff to find. Each floor has six gems for you to find, a secret Boo to hunt as well as an obscene amount of money. Gems are worthless unless you find all of them, and then the only thing you get is a diamond plunger that looks pretty. Boos are useless unless you get all of them, and then the only thing you get is a design for your flashlight's light. Pretty lame, right? And you'll be swimming in money, since there's money hidden EVERYWHERE, but you can only spend them on a dumb hint system or on life ups. Lives are actually useful since some boss battles can be rather hard, and each floor has its very own boss, but the hints are just... hints. Either way, you'll be stuck with a ton of cash worth nothing, which kinda mitigates some of the incentive to explore the game, which is a shame. Mind you, solving puzzles and finding secret stuff is fun since figuring out how to interact with the environment is a treat in and of itself, but how fantastic could it have been to get actual rewards? Purchase upgrades such as more range on your Poltergust, or the ability to deal more damage with it. Heck, one of Mario Odyssey's most endearing features were the costumes, how about the ability to buy skins for Luigi? Just give me something neat for my efforts!

 There are a couple of multiplayer modes, local co-op allowed, ScareScraper, in which you and some buddies go through random floor clearing different objectives, you can find unique ghosts in this mode, and ScreamPark, which is a versus mode. Both modes are nice extras, but not much more, which is fine considering the main game is a meaty 15 hour long campaign. I'd like to mention that the game crashed on me once after defeating the Medieval floor's boss, but that aside, the game ran flawlessly.

 I wasn't expecting to like Luigi's Mansion 3 this much, specially after playing the second game, but they fixed every short coming from said game, changing what didn't work and expanding on what did. Puzzles are fun to solve, stuff is fun to collect and ghosts are fun to battle. While graphics don't make a game fun, the presentation is absolutely gorgeous, from the detailed character models, the charming animation and cutscenes to the huge amount of stuff you can interact with it. Well, now we've got a phenomenal new Mario game, a fantastic new Luigi game, all we need now is a great new Wario Land game. Nintendo, make it happen.
 9.0 out of 10