My favourite thing about the Luigi’s Mansion games is the detail. The way Mario’s cowardly brother nervously hums along to the music as he bumbles through spooky stately homes. The slapstick animations when he falls through a fireplace or gets catapulted into a secret room by a fold-down bed. The cackles and goofy expressions of the ghosts as they get up to their hijinks. As you use Luigi’s trusty ghost-capturing vacuum cleaner to pull back rugs and expose secret trapdoors (or secret spiders), and suck up the banknotes and golden coins that are hidden everywhere, you can’t help but notice how each little sound, scene and secret has been carefully arranged to give you a small dose of delight.
This ghost-busting puzzle game was such a delightful surprise sequel in 2013, when it was released for the Nintendo 3DS. Its diorama-like mini-mansions and peepholes gave Nintendo’s artists ample opportunity to show off that console’s stereoscopic 3D effects, activated with a little slider at the side of the screen. But now it’s out on the Switch, 11 years later, and two things have changed. Firstly, the 3D effect that it was designed around is no longer a thing. And secondly, Luigi’s Mansion 3 now exists, and it’s significantly better.
