General praise for Luigi's Mansion 3 is probably best shared in the OT, but I'd like to discuss what I perceive to be some very refreshing strengths of the game as they pertain to game design at large today. Like many of you, I'm a 30-something working adult with a toddler that takes up a ton of my time outside of work. As I've grown older and accumulated more responsibilities, I've found my interest in sprawling, open-world AAA games to have waned to zero. My gaming time is limited and precious now, so I place a higher value on tightly designed, polished games that offer up gameplay that is engaging and involving from moment-to-moment. Bonus points if the game isn't padded to the point of overstaying its welcome in my busy life.
It's games like Luigi's Mansion 3 that represent something close to my ideal kind of game in 2019. Sure, one could argue that it's a bit simplistic and linear by comparison to far more ambitious projects, but that Next Level Games has achieved here with LM3 is so refreshing IMO.
Here we have a game that is razor-sharp in its focus, polished to a mirror shine, and packed to the gills with charming details that immerse you in its memorable locale and beckons you to try to interact with every inch of the environment at all times. Where most big releases today tend to go for scale, LM3 hones in on a simple set of core mechanics (that are all given you to pretty early on) and expands the ways in which you use them gradually as you progress on your adventure. This is the type of pseudo-linear game design that once defined many of the best games before sandbox and open-world designs began to take over the industry, and you just don't see it executed with this level of warmth, polish, and detail very often. All of this is describing the core story mode, of course, and equal praise can be given to the myriad multiplayer options baked into the experience as well.
I have my criticisms of the game, of course. I wish the shop had more useful items on which you can spend your oodles of coins, and I would've liked for the 100% collection reward to have been more meaningful. But damn. On the whole, this game's design is a breath of fresh air.
Great job to Next Level Games on LM3, and I hope that the game does well enough to have some small impact on how publishers/developers view the viability of games like these.
