Luigi's Mansion 3

In 2000, I remember getting Rogue Squadron II a couple days before the Nintendo Gamecube came out, arriving in the mail a little early. I wouldn't actually go out to the store to pick up my console (that I'd saved several months' worth of allowance to buy) until later. The Gamecube, as it turned out, wound up being an ok but not particularly important Nintendo console. While it gave us Smash Bros. Melee and a few other games that are near and dear to me, it marked a decline that forced Nintendo to go out of its way to be the unconventional video game company after having been the titan of the industry.

Anyway, the point is, there wasn't actually a major Mario launch title for the Gamecube. Mario Sunshine, which was the console's primary 3D platform adventure, came later. Instead, we got this really weird game called Luigi's Mansion, in which you played as Mario's sidekick brother trapped in a mansion filled with ghosts, armed only with a Ghostbusters-inspired flashlight/vacuum cleaner combo.

While the series has, I think, been well-liked, it's odd then that we're now only getting the third game in 19 years. Also, I feel profoundly and tragically old to think that the Gamecube came out almost two decades ago, because I was already a teenager then and now I'm sad.

I also haven't actually played either of the series predecessors - for some reason I never wound up getting the original, and aside from the hybrid home/mobile console that is the Switch, I never got any of Nintendo's portable systems and thus never played the second game in the series.

I'm about an hour and a half into the game. Mario and company are on a vacation and go to stay at a big fancy hotel out in the country. The hotel is a big skyscraper tower, and the huge reception everyone receives and the weird lack of any other guests should probably key you into the notion that this place is actually quite sinister.

Eventually, obviously, it turns out that it's a bunch of ghosts who have lured you there, and everyone but Luigi gets trapped in magic paintings (there's a brief intro chase early on with what I assume to be a nonstandard game over where Luigi gets trapped as well - it's the only time yet I've "died" and it was at the very first moment that was possible. So that's fun.)

The game has you exploring the haunted floors of the hotel, looking for gadgets to help you fight more ghosts and hoovering up the ghosts you encounter. Freeing Professor E. Gadds (introduced in the original game, and also seen in Mario Sunshine) gets the ball rolling, where you establish a safe home base in the parking garage under the building that you can return to for the Professor to send you off on further missions.

The environment is full of details and hidden treasures and secret doors, and it's pretty hilarious how much damage Luigi can do to the rooms with his vacuum pack. It's clearly built on a sort of Metroidvania model where you get new tools that allow access to new areas over time, and if you return to previous areas, you might be able to get treasures that were previously inaccessible.

One of the showcase new features of the game is "Gooigi," which is a sort of gelatinous homunculus you can create and pilot that can, T-1000-style, squeeze through bars and stuff like that.

The game, like a lot of 1st party Nintendo stuff, just drips with charm (and goo) and I'm very excited to see more. So far, difficulty is not super high, but I'm still in the early stages. Also, it's a very kid-friendly game, so I'm not exactly expecting Dark Souls here.