Luigi’s Mansion 3 | Nov 20, 2019 | 18:30hrs | rating: 3.5/5
Once again you explore dark rooms and suck up everything that looks suckable.
GAMEPLAY: The gameplay loop is slow and methodical as you aim your vacuum at everything in order to unlock the next room, and occasionally suck up ghosts. I have no problem with the controls, but it does get repetitive, and you rarely feel rewarded for your exploration; it’s just money, money and more money, which all feels useless.
AUDIOVISUALLY: Visually it’s definitely among the best on Switch, and the animations are amazing. The audio is the most pleasant during the rare peaceful moments when you let go of the vacuum button. I think this is a negative, that the game is mostly just noise.
STORY/PRESENTATION: Great short cut-scenes that set the mood, and there’s a lot of variation visually. It has maybe the best presentation of any Nintendo game, and would really work as a cartoon series.
MULTIPLAYER: Once you’ve unlocked Gooigi, you can play through the whole adventure in co-op, which is absolutely great, and makes the game so much more fun. The additional multiplayer games are forgettable when you’re two people, but might be fun when you’re a whopping 8 players.
The big problem is the lack of rewards and upgrades. The gameplay never changes up, and in an exploration heavy game like this, you need more than 6 special trinkets per “level” to make exploring feel worthwhile. There’s so much ambition and love poured into the game, so it’s unfortunate that the gameplay loop always gets tiresome within an hour of playing.