WORK YOUR WAY UP
Mario’s brother Luigi is star of the show in third take of beloved Nintendo series
Luigi’s Mansion 3
Nintendo
Available on: Nintendo Switch
Mario may be the most recognizable mascot in gaming, but I’ve long been partial to his brother Luigi. Whereas Mario is short, round and confident, Luigi is lanky and bumbling — qualities dear to my heart.
Despite this, I haven’t settled my thumbs around a Luigi’s Mansion game until recently. I never had a Gamecube, for which the original was a launch title, nor the leisure to try its sequel, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark
Moon, on the 3DS. Having arrived late to the party, it’s taken me some time to acclimate to the ghostbusting and puzzle solving for which the series is known. Although I still find the controls a tad awkward, Luigi’s Mansion 3 strikes me as a diverting fall treat.
As with many Nintendo games, the opening is a prelude to calamity. On a bus, Luigi, Mario, Princess Peach and the Toads are bound for a hotel whose management has invited them to stay as VIPS. When they arrive at
The Last Resort, they are dazzled by the golden hotel.
But the crew pays scant attention to Hellen Gravely, whose purplish skin recalls the Evil Queen’s attire in Disney’s Snow White. Following her suggestion, the celebrities of the Mushroom Kingdom retire to their individual rooms.
In the middle of the night, Luigi awakens to the scream of Princess Peach. Shivering with fear, he gets out of bed and goes into the hallway where he confronts Gravely, who is delighted to tell him that she, in cahoots with his old nemesis King Boo, has trapped his friends in picture frames. To avoid their fate, Luigi dives into a laundry chute that deposits him in a hamper in the basement. Conveniently, on that same level is a garage where he finds a Poltergust G-OO, the newest model in the line of ghost-vanquishing vacuum cleaners that have been a staple in the series.
Alas, Luigi can’t begin exploring other hotel floors because the buttons for the elevator are missing. Only by systematically recovering them from the various ghosts who have pocketed them will he be able to rescue his friends.
With the help of the Poltergust G-OO, Luigi can stun ghosts with a strobe light and suck them up with a nozzle that also has an air-propellant function. A black light on the device can detect ghosts that are hiding. The Poltergust can also shoot a plunger with a rope attached to its end.
The suction and air-propellent features are mapped to the controller’s triggers while the strobe light, black light and plunger are mapped to the face buttons. Because of such quirks, I sometimes found myself holding the controller a little awkwardly.
Putting aside the rare need for contortions, the puzzles in Luigi’s Mansion 3 are quite good and make ingenious use of Luigi’s abilities. I was frequently stumped, though usually not for long. Inevitably, it was never something obtuse, just very clever.
Luigi’s Mansion’s 3 is my kind of haunted house — a place that’s more funny than scary.