Next Level Games has been working on various Nintendo IPs for years. Their first Nintendo game was 2005’s Mario Strikers Charged for GameCube. Since then, they’ve worked on the Punch-Out! and Metroid series’ as well, but their most successful, and arguably best, Nintendo game might be Luigi’s Mansion 3. It’s a vast improvement from Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon on 3DS (or Luigi’s Mansion 2 as it’s called on Switch) and is definitively the best game in the series.
Even though it’s called Luigi’s Mansion, Luigi isn’t investigating a spooky mansion this time. He’s got a massive luxury multistory hotel he has to deal with full of all kinds of troublemaking specters. Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and the Toads receive a mysterious invitation to a luxury hotel. However, when they get there, all is not as it seems and Luigi finds himself alone battling ghosts once again thanks to a familiar nemesis. There’s more to the story than that, but we’ll keep it light on spoilers.
If you’ve never played a Luigi’s Mansion game before, it’s basically Resident Evil for kids. Or Ghostbusters wrapped in a Nintendo skin. Luigi uses his Poltergust device to suck up not just ghosts, but just about anything else not nailed to the floor, ceiling, or walls. Walking into a room and completely ransacking it using Luigi’s Poltergust is strangely addicting and never gets old. This being a luxury hotel, there is money and gold strewn about everywhere which Luigi can suck up and use to buy extra lives, gem locations, and Boo Ghost locations.
Each floor of the mansion has six gems to collect. They’re usually hidden in a clever location and require some thinking to get them all, and you can even use Luigi’s money he’s collected during his adventure to buy clues to which specific room each gem is in. There’s 90 of them in the game total, but unfortunately, if you get them all, you’re not rewarded with much. You get an in-game achievement and a cosmetic unlock for Luigi’s Poltergust, but that’s it. It would’ve been nice to see a much bigger acknowledgment from the game for a player who goes through the trouble of attaining all the gems, especially since they just act as trophies and you can’t do anything else with them.
The different floors of the hotel have different themes, which I won’t spoil, but are all very creative and fun and help keep the gameplay fresh. The individual floors are similar to Zelda dungeons. Some of them are small and simple, and some of them are bigger with more than one level, but the design principles are the same as what you see in Zelda games. You’re exploring, sucking up ghosts, solving puzzles, and finding secrets.
Speaking of solving puzzles, Professor E. Gadd makes his return in Luigi’s Mansion 3. Thankfully, he doesn’t interrupt Luigi nearly as much as he did in Dark Moon, but I found myself not liking him very much at times, as he seems to be just using Luigi for his own ends. He sits in his lab giving orders while Luigi does all the work! Maybe I’m being too hard on the professor, as some of his input and hints were genuinely helpful this time around in some tough spots. Not to mention, there’s an option in the settings to turn his hints off if you don’t want his help at all, which is a welcome improvement from Dark Moon, in which the Professor was constantly interrupting the gameplay and pretty much single-handedly ruined the pacing of the game.
What is absolutely new in Luigi’s Mansion 3 is the inclusion of Gooigi. He’s a green doppleganger of Luigi, made all of goo, and can do things and get into areas that Luigi can’t. Luigi and Gooigi have to work together constantly to solve the game’s many puzzles, not to mention some of the ghost-catching as well. It’s not a stretch to say that the co-operative gameplay between Luigi and Gooigi is the beating heart of Luigi’s Mansion 3. It’s the constant theme behind almost everything you do, and Luigi doesn’t go very far before needing Gooigi’s help in some way, shape, or form. Their teamwork is used in some really clever ways and makes sure the gameplay never gets dull or repetitive, and is a lot of fun.
Battling ghosts is similar to how it was in previous games in the series and requires some tact and strategy. Luigi must use his trusty flashlight to stun the ghosts before using his Poltergust on them. Once he has them, they’ll fight and try to drag him around. You have to pull back with the analog stick in the opposite direction until the ghost meter is full, then hit the A-button to make Luigi slam the ghost to the ground repeatedly, showering money and gold everywhere. Once the ghost’s life meter is down to zero, they get sucked up for good. Fight over. Luigi wins. That’s the basics of it, but different ghosts have different attacks that Luigi must deal with, but pummeling the ghosts into submission is very satisfying, especially the annoying ones that chuck projectiles and run away.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is not just the best-looking game in the series, it’s one of the best-looking games on the Switch, period. The jaggy character ghost models and underwhelming visuals in Dark Moon on 3DS are gone. Granted, the Switch is a much more powerful system, but the ghost models in Luigi’s Mansion 3 are bright and luminescent, plus the art looks so much better. The game runs at 30 FPS with the occasional stutter and/or hitch, but between the art, animations, use of lighting, and performance, it’s just a pretty game to look at and much more consistent with the style of the original GameCube Luigi’s Mansion, which Nintendo basically used as a glorified tech demo to show off what the GameCube was capable of visually when it launched in 2001. This is how Luigi’s Mansion is supposed to look, and hopefully, will be how it looks in future installments.
There are multiplayer modes as well. The whole main campaign can be played co-op locally with another person with one person playing as Luigi and the other Gooigi. The Skyscraper Mode has Luigi operating on a time limit as he races around different rooms trying to suck up as many ghosts as he can while attaining power-ups. It’s meant to be played co-op with other players, but you can play it by yourself, although it’s more challenging that way. Plus there are a few Mario Party-style minigames to check out that can be played locally or online.
VERDICT
Luigi’s Mansion 3 expands on the exploration and ghost-catching formula of the first two games while eliminating all of the pacing and graphical issues Dark Moon had on 3DS. If you can play only one Luigi’s Mansion game, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is not only the best game in the series, but one of Switch’s best games. It’s fun, funny, clever, spooky (but not too spooky), and looks great doing it. It’s Luigi, Mario, and the gang mixed with a little Resident Evil and Ghostbusters with lots of ghost-catching and puzzles, plus Googi is a great addition that adds new gameplay mechanics and a co-op element not seen in the series before. It’s the best-looking game in the series and looks and runs great on the Switch in both handheld and docked modes. Recommended.
The Gamer's Standard 