Ever since our first glimpse at Luigi's Mansion 3 - the medieval castle level revealed at E3 - it's been clear this was going to push the series further from its traditional mansion format than ever before. I remember thinking, well, okay - we've had two quite traditional haunted house games already. It felt like the right time for Nintendo and developer Next Level Games to try something a little different - even if its themed hotel take on a medieval castle felt less like a themed hotel version and more like the real thing.
Just as Luigi's mansions are strange halfway houses for its ghostly residents, this third installment feels a mix of the series' more traditional formula mixed with an injection of the new. And while the game can ape the GameCube original well for a couple of floors - your trusty Poltergust vacuum slurping ghosts and money from every crevice - it's not until you start exploring some of its themed areas that the whole thing comes into its own.
The Ancient Egypt moment is followed by several others in a similar vein - and each time the elevator pings and its doors open onto a new floor you're left guessing as to what comes next. A Hollywood film studio with a ghost director ready to cast you in his new kaiju movie? Sure. A sewer level where Luigi has to do actual plumbing while operating a boat? Why not. These settings are when the game really shines - but also when it sort of gives up its hotel premise in the process.
The overall conceit still makes sense - what better way to link such thematically separate areas than as floors on a hotel elevator, used to quickly zip between them all? And yet it doesn't really play out as I'd expected. Luigi's Mansion 3 is a surprisingly linear game, and in the 15 hours it took for me to clear its story I was forced to backtrack only three times - for prescribed, and sometimes quite laboured, story reasons. I'd expected more of a Metroidvania-y experience, with rooms locked behind doors I'd have to return to later. But there are no new power ups, no new mechanics to learn after the early introduction of Gooigi. Each floor is served up as its own discrete course, then it's on to something different.
Gooigi, though - what a star he is. A blank-faced avatar for your co-op partner, or just a gelatinous double for when you need a second pair of hands. He's quietly terrifying - a living Haribo man, barely sentient, unable to move unless being controlled by someone else - and yet he is frequently part of the game's most testing puzzles. Yes, there are only a few new mechanics to learn past those available from the get go - but the game squeezes a lot out of those. Whether that's ghosts requiring a particular sequence of actions to render them vulnerable, or a puzzle which requires both the strength of Luigi and Gooigi combined to unlock, there are moments I sat marvelling (a little frustrated) at why everything I had tried had not yet worked.
On a brighter note, Luigi's Mansion 3 has some brilliant bosses - a collection of real characters frequently introduced and teased throughout the floor they inhabit before your inevitable showdown with them several rooms later. You'll do battle on a pirate ship, amongst dabbing ghosts on a disco floor, against a dinosaur - and all this again makes the most out of the limited arsenal Luigi has on offer. He can vacuum, he can stun with his torch, investigate with a dark light, pull off a sucker shot, or do a ground pound. Just as in Luigi's Mansion 2, there are no elemental upgrades. One brilliant sequence where Luigi briefly buddies up with another character aside, Luigi must make do with what he has, and the set of duplicate abilities on offer from Gooigi.
When all's said and done you'll likely to still have lots to do. I finished having barely found any of the game's hidden Boo enemies - it's there that backtracking will come into play, although from the ones I have located, it's simply a matter of retracing your steps until your controller vibrates (you can pay to see their locations, but this then deducts currency from your final score). Likewise, the game's collectable gems, of which there are half a dozen on each level. I only netted around three-quarters during my playtime, having been as thorough as possible.
Part of me still yearns for those dusty carpets of the first Luigi's Mansion - the near pitch black corridors, the fumbling around in the dark. This third entry, by contrast, feels more like Luigi has left the haunted house and gained free reign around the neighbouring theme park. But what a theme park. It's left me excited to see where the series goes next.
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