Among Halloween games, Luigi's Mansion—known simply as Luigi Mansion in Japan (because who needs apostrophes?)—is the least scary of them all. I'd say it's fairly child-safe. Light and lighthearted, it's a great team game for two. Of course you could play it alone, but I think it's easier with two.
One player controls Luigi, while the other controls his gelatinous shadow Gooigi. While Luigi and Gooigi can wander off and do their own thing (without straying too far), some puzzles require coordinated teamwork. It's a nice balance between playing together independently and occasionally joining forces.
Gooigi can do what Luigi does, and more: Being the texture of jelly, he can slip through pipes and bars to access otherwise unreachable areas. But one downside: Gooigi is destroyed whenever he touches water, and it'll take a few seconds for him to respawn. Dying happened pretty often to me and the hubby during boss fights. Resurrection comes cheap though, if you have a good stock of Gold Bones.
The action-adventure takes Luigi through 16 floors of a haunted hotel, in pursuit of Mario and kidnapped friends. Each floor features a different theme—Egyptian, pirate, music, and so on.
It's pretty fun to discover what each floor has in store, though we felt 16 floors made the game much longer than necessary when mechanics began to feel too familiar. And when an annoying ghost-cat made us backtrack to previous floors. So about 10 hours into the game, a little weariness began to set in. So best not to rush; I recommend savoring the game slowly over its roughly 15 hours.
Still, the game is overall pretty easy and relaxing, apart from the boss fights at the end of each floor. It took us more than awhile to figure out how to beat some of these bosses. Obscure solutions aren't the real problem, though—poor controls are. Even pretty far into the game, I was struggling to aim Luigi's vacuum precisely. This became a real pain in the neck when accurate shots were needed to take down certain bosses. And don't remind me of the time we had to fight in an inflatable rubber ducky in a tiny pool littered with spiked balls and bombs.
Despite major gripes, I did enjoy my time adventuring as a pair of plumbers with the hubby. We constantly admired how good the game looks, chuckled at ghostly humor, aww-ed at our cute canine Polterpup. Giving enemy ghosts a good smack-down was always satisfying--and funny in the way they try to run away as you pull them by the tail.
Besides the main Story mode, Luigi's Mansion 3 also features two multiplayer modes, for up to 8 players. We took multiplayer for a short spin.
ScreamPark, the competitive mode, felt lackluster for only 2 players. And we discovered it was unbalanced—in fact, totally unfair—for 3 players (or any odd number of players) because the team with fewer players receives no handicaps.
ScareScraper looked more promising, and we tested this cooperative mode in a public game online. The goal is to vacuum up enough ghosts within a time limit. This takes place over a designated number of floors (5 floors for a "short" game). After multiple attempts in a co-op game of 6 players, we gave up and declared it impossible. The time limit is too short, and we couldn't even clear one floor most of the time. It's fun but one doesn't feel like returning to a game that one is unlikely to win, for eternity.
So, I'd recommend the Story mode wholeheartedly but not the multiplayer modes.
Regardless of the game's merits, the $60 tag is steep and it's not a game I would have bought on my own. And yet, regardless of the game's faults, it was time very well spent with my plumbing partner.