You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/luigis-mansion-3.1169/

Since playing it on the GameCube many moons ago, Luigi’s Mansion became my staple for horror. It was never necessarily a scary game, but it was about as far as my tender soul would take me into the genre, and quite honestly I was happy with that. It had the atmosphere, a few chills, a few spooks, but above all was just a brilliantly fun experience. Having not found my feet with the mission-oriented sequel, I was desperate to see a Luigi’s Mansion game truly recapture the spirit of the first title, and in some ways, Luigi does just that.

The game starts out with a lavish cutscene of Luigi and friends as they head towards the aptly named Last Resort, a grand and golden hotel stretching high towards the sky. Everything is shining, everything glistens, it’s the image of luxury itself, but not without an oddity or two. Blissfully ignorant, our favourite friends head to their rooms, where I might add you can pet Luigi’s ghost dog, and get some sleep. In the dead of night, our gallant green wakes, watching on in horror as the golden aesthetic melts away and his nightmare really begins. The hotel, quite unsurprisingly, was a ruse to lure in our heroes and trap them in paintings. The mastermind? King Boo himself, still holding a grudge against Luigi for their previous few run-ins. Naturally, Luigi escapes, dropping down to the basement of the hotel and kicking the game off.

As a setup, I think it was played fantastically. Though the setup doesn’t do much to shock you, it takes great strides to poke fun at itself, and at the cast for falling for such a clear trap. The masks the ghosts wear to conceal their identities were the standout in this for me. You have the tone of the game set incredibly well, putting forwards brilliant physical comedy with the largely-mute ghosts, contrasted by Luigi’s genuine fear in this unfamiliar environment.

When it comes to gameplay, Next Level Games really do take the core controls of the first game to, well, the next level. Luigi has his standard flashlight and vacuum combo, with the general cycle being the same satisfying ‘shine your light on them, and suck them up’. It’s tried, it’s tested, it works. As you continue through the first few areas of the game, you add to your arsenal a little, acquiring the Dark-Light, a launchable projectile plunger, and by far my favourite miscellaneous creation of the Mario franchise, Gooigi. Instead of lumping all of these on you together, the game takes time to introduce each new aspect with small puzzles and time to adjust. Though it might not seem like a lot to remember, the game expects you to have a complete understanding of your options to solve a good number of its puzzles. Forgetting the basics can lead to a great deal of frustration, and in some cases, even death for the lean mean green machine. Quite early on, I forgot one of the new attacks for the vacuum, ending with two bats taking my health down from 99 to zero. Thankfully, the game saves at almost every door transition, but I held an unjust grudge against the game for a good number of hours before realising I had that attack as an option.

Gooigi is the hero we deserve, and thanks to Next Level Games, he’s also the hero we got. Once unlocked, you’re able to summon him at will and switch between him and Luigi as you please. Why would you want to do this? Because of his gooey demeanour, he can quite neatly walk through spikes, cages, even go through some easy to recognise pipes! His health bar is also completely separate to Luigi’s, with no real punishment for it falling to zero outside of having to resummon him. What’s the catch? Water. One touch of the stuff and Gooigi’s down the drain; it’s a clear trade-off, and one you can quickly recognise as a threat or puzzle when presented. Gooigi’s attributes make him a fun character to mess with in single player, a good number of puzzles requiring you bring him out to do his own thing or stand by Luigi when one vacuum just doesn’t offer enough suction. Where I feel he truly shines, however, is in providing a low risk means of enjoying the series for the first time. Thanks to the same system coop available, young children could quite happily play with a parent or family member to be a part of the experience without necessarily hindering the main player. It gives power and satisfaction in a surprisingly balanced way, and I really do hope there are children out there who get to jump in this way.

Though I touched on it earlier, Luigi’s moveset deserves a spotlight (or flashlight as it were) shined on it. Luigi is versatile, Luigi is frantic, Luigi is fun. Starting with the vacuuming basics, you have the slam attack. As you pull the ghost towards you, you fill a small gauge as you drain their health. Once this is full, you can press A to slam the ghost to the ground, dealing a flat 20 damage, with you being able to repeat the attack four times before they break free. It’s satisfying, but that’s not where the beauty of this move lies. Where the fluidity of gameplay and satisfaction truly begin is in how you choose to chain your ghost captures when you’re against more than one spook. In other games, you might hook two together, or just move from one to the next while dodging hazards; Luigi’s Mansion 3 laughs at these simple notions. By slamming one ghost into another, you throw them into a vulnerable state as if they’ve just been hit by your flashlight. This means once you’ve finished with the ghost you’re currently catching, you can move straight onto the next with little downtime, becoming particularly useful as ghosts develop countermeasures in their choice of light-blocking accessories.

Beyond this, you have a neat downward thrust that’s particularly handy for blowing away bats that will otherwise chip at your health until you die, and a generic blow function. Both of these are used more for puzzle solving than combat, but the overall variety is something I did come to enjoy, even if it took me a while to remember everything I had. The game relies on you knowing what you’re doing with your controls, especially if you’re seeking out its secrets. Take the time to learn the basics. The plunger is fairly self-explanatory; it’s a projectile. It hits things far away. Thanks to its plungerific design, you’ll find it sticking to surfaces too, allowing you to vacuum it and pull on objects you’d otherwise struggle with. One thing I’m quite grateful for is how it’ll only stick to specific areas in the world. What this means is that you can focus on what exactly it’s stuck to, and debate on whether it’ll lead to a secret, or whether it’s just a chance to cause chaos. If it stuck to every wall, I fear you’d lose a lot of this charm and excitement. It’d be more a case of repetitive frustration as you pull at every wall, knowing it sticks and knowing something might just maybe be there. Finally, the Dark-Light is the item you pull out once you have the solution to the puzzle. Often the final piece, shining it on certain areas can bring to life previously-invisible objects. Be it a chest, a door, a drain or more, you’re rewarded well whenever you need to use it.

Moving from a mansion to a hotel brings with it an interesting assortment of good and bad. As an isolated structure and means of progression, the hotel setting utilises a simple but effective formula. You have a themed floor with a stream of puzzles that ultimately lead you with a trail of breadcrumbs to a boss ghost. You beat the boss, gain access to a new floor, rinse and repeat. Having an entire floor following a cohesive theme provides a fantastic build up, often chasing the boss themselves through it and ending in a more satisfying and meaningful battle. While the game is set in a hotel, the design team clearly took some liberties in their creations, resulting in some incredibly quirky and ‘unhotel-like’ floors you constantly find yourself in awe at. This is especially hammered home as you return to the elevator upon completing it and find yourself pulled back to the frankly odd truth that the knight’s castle you just ventured through was in fact a part of the hotel. It is, of course, not without its floors.

Compared to the mansion of the first game, you notice an oddly distinct lack of life—something amusing to point out in a game so focused on catching the dead. Though the game features roughly the same number of unique boss ghosts, this build up and time to develop and embrace a theme can at times backfire, going out of its way to say ‘you are alone’. On paper, this sounds like a good thing, pushing the spooky ambience and isolation of our protagonist, but it never really feels that way. You lose the constant drabs of dialogue, the tiny injections of personality and charm. The first game thrived in its limitations, in the cramped and almost claustrophobic environment. Opening this up gives you more content, but I feel something was lost along the way.

It’s not to say the puzzles occupying the hallowed halls are particularly lacklustre either; I do in fact hold them in high regard. They kept me engaged, trying and testing me at every opportunity as I methodically tore each room apart. The game is full of puzzles with a great variety of complexity and obscurity, all but guaranteeing you’ll miss one or two as you play. With five optional gems to find on each floor, each hidden behind a puzzle or small challenge, you’re always looking for what’s coming next. In my playthrough, I found myself averaging between three and four gems, and I was compelled to seek out more. There is of course a point where this search boils over to frustration, but the game never lets you reach that point, with hints available to purchase. What makes these hints appealing to me is that the game only reveals the room the gems are in, leaving the satisfaction of finding and completing the puzzle completely to you. It keeps the challenge and overall sense of reward, while removing the frustration of moving from room to room after the fact, creating a fantastic sense of balance that had me unashamed in asking for help.

Beyond the previously-mentioned same system coop in Gooigi, Luigi’s Mansion 3 features an online multiplayer mode in the form of ScareScraper, making its return from the second game. The concept is simple: move from room to room in a series of randomly generated floors to clear them of their ghostly inhabitants. Being on a timer, the focus shifts to your skill in quickly dispatching these ghouls, the challenge lessening with the number of players joining you. There’s fun to be had both alone and with friends, and this mode being playable both locally and online really does wonders for it. I already have plans to be playing this with friends once the game launches! 

The game also features a number of multiplayer-exclusive minigames, allowing between two and eight people to partake on the same system. Sadly, with my right Joy Con’s SL and SR buttons out of order, I wasn’t able to connect two separate controllers to try these for myself, but you can check out their descriptions below. While I doubt they’re anything particularly extraordinary, they seem fun distractions from the main game if nothing else, and ones to be enjoyed with friends. As miscellaneous extras, you can’t really ask for more than that.

All in all, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a game I urge anybody reading to play, and I really do mean anybody. Whether a series veteran or completely new to gaming, this game covers every base. Featuring a myriad of fun optional challenges, puzzles, and achievements, there’s a fantastic amount to do and experience. I can think of no better way to spend Halloween. 

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/sublevel-zero-redux.1158/

When it comes to roguelikes, I think of The Binding of Issac. I think of simple to grasp gameplay with fun random elements to keep the experience fresh, and I think of something I can keep coming back to in an addicting way. Sublevel Zero Redux is a roguelike similar to no other I’ve played before, carrying the lifeblood of the genre in a bizarrely gripping manner I’m yet to master but can appreciate all the same.

Starting the game for the first time, you’re shown the ropes with some in-game tutorials. Instead of having walls of text to read, you’re given a small area to travel through, requiring you follow small directions to gradually build up your catalogue of movement and combat options. As soon as you start moving around, you know this game is different. Gone are the tight and responsive controls of Isaac and co, in its place the floaty cockpit of a ship in a full 360 degree experience. If nothing else, you feel an instant focus on just how fun it is to be moving through tight corridors leading to rooms both open and complex, some hiding enemies, others hiding rewards, traps, or just more places to explore. The acceleration can be a little hard to control at first, but ultimately does well in assuring you never feel too cornered in a tight situation.

Investigating an abandoned facility rumoured to be at the root of the universe’s demise, you find yourself stranded, with the only means of getting home lying in the hopes you can scavenge the technology lurking within. Of course, this isn’t without its risks, the automated defences kicking in and giving you a fight whenever you come into its sights. These defences take many forms as you progress through the facility. Starting with slow drones firing slow shots at you, they advance to launching missiles, faster shots, having periodic shielding, and a whole range of different challenges. These defences encourage slow and methodical observation to analyse each threat and proceed accordingly, but the beauty of this kind of game is that such a strategy is entirely at the player’s discretion. If you want to speed past enemies in search of a chest, you’re free to. The game rewards knowledge however. If you can recognise an enemy, you can work around its limitations. If you know the components for a strong weapon, you can optimally seek out and manage inventory space to create it. Perhaps more interesting is a player’s lack of knowledge however, creating a sense of immersion and empathy with the pilot as they explore this bountiful unknown.

Item collecting and crafting took some time to get used to. You can collect items by defeating enemies, opening chests, and just by finding them lying around. You pick them up, managing a limited inventory space, equipping weapons you want to fight with, and storing others you may want to use for crafting later. It’s here in particular I found my lack of game knowledge daunting; everything seems useful in some way. Picking and choosing what I should keep became a stressful ordeal to the point of me downright rejecting anything once my inventory became full. As somebody used to a simpler ‘pick this up and gain its attribute’ kind of system, I feel no shame in saying this left me out of my depths to a certain degree. These kinds of games are a learning experience in and of themselves as you come to terms with optimal combinations and strategies, but with Sublevel Zero, I struggled to get a defined feeling of what was strong. With so much happening on-screen at once, I saw enemies fall, but rarely found the time to take notes or keep track of how quickly they did with one weapon against another. You’re given some stats to work with in the inventory screen, things like rate, damage, and accuracy, but the whole thing never quite clicked with me. It wasn’t helped by the fact there is far too little visual feedback in the menus. Take the image below as an example—would you know the cursor is currently on the crafting tab if I didn’t tell you?

Outside of the menus, you’ll find the game’s stylistic choices as a whole at times muddying your vision. You often have corridors and rooms illuminated by vivid lighting. It looks fantastic and drives home a brilliantly futuristic and curious setting, but with the side effect of it making enemies less clearly visible in front of you. With them being distinguishable by their coloured lighting and shape, I found myself too often only noticing their presence as I took damage from their equally-luminescent lasers and missiles. The good thing about these as issues is the fact they’ll gradually fade away as you adjust to the game and its stylistic choices, but the initial adjustment period can be a challenging one, especially on the smaller handheld screen.

Despite the lack of clarity in places, one element I can’t help but commend is the map. In a game so rooted in the idea of manoeuvring in every which direction of 3D space, it’s easy to get lost in your turns and rotations; the map remedies any potential to this flawlessly. Showing where you are, the rooms you’ve come through, as well as colour-coded doors to represent those you’re currently able to open amongst other things, you can always find your way. It’s a small detail, but it’s one that goes a long way in making the experience as seamless as it attempts to be.

With this game available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, you may be left wondering exactly what the Switch version brings to the table in terms of exclusive offerings. The major pull, as with most Switch games, is going to be the portability and overall versatility of the system, but more interesting to the gameplay is this version’s motion controls. Though they’re quite difficult to implement in a way as to please everybody, this optional feature is something that stuck with me. Instead of attempting to create a system to move the camera in its entirety along all three axis, it’s easier to think of your motions steering the guns, adjusting the view a little to show you where they’re facing. The majority of the control still lies in the right analogue stick where it rightly belongs, but these fine adjustments make it easier to get in quick and precise shots as you’re charging towards or fleeing from enemies. It’s a nice and well-implemented addition that genuinely brings something to the overall experience, and one I recommend at least trying for people intent on picking the game up. 

All in all, Sublevel Zero Redux is a fine roguelike. Preserving the core ideals of the genre, along with some unique ideas and a divine control scheme I wish were in some kind of free flight game, you have something that can keep you hooked from start to end. The beauty of these games of course, is that the end never truly has to come.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/roccat-vulcan-120-aimo-keyboard.1134/

Out of the box, the first thing that hits you is the anodized aluminium plate sitting beneath the keys. Similar to the BlackWidow Elite, keys sit atop this plate, allowing for easy cleaning and degunking, but a pleasant difference is the lip bordering the keyboard. Though this less streamlined design obviously takes up more space, it allows you to better appreciate the build quality and overall design. It isn’t bulky to the point of it being in the way or irritating, it’s just right in showing off what it needs to.

Looking at the keys themselves, you have a largely standard assortment. The key font is bold and somewhat wide for the RGB lighting to pleasantly shine through, looking great plugged in. I always appreciate a gaming keyboard without any kind of obnoxious ‘gaming fonts’, and Roccat’s design here really sits well with me. Another favourable choice comes in the decision to include a remappable volume dial in the upper right corner. What I really like here is that by default, it has two uses: changing the RGB brightness, and altering your system’s volume. Switching between these options can be done by hitting the respective tactile button. It’s a bit of a shame these buttons don’t have a more general icon with them being customisable in use, but when you’re more than likely to keep them at their default setting it’s far less of an issue. 

The switches on offer are, for better or worse, Roccat’s proprietary brand going by the name of Titan. Boasting a ‘tactile and silent 1.8mm actuation point with a 3.6mm travel distance’, I’ll leave judging the technical ramifications to those better understanding of them. Comparing this to my experience with Razer’s Greens and Yellows (Blues and Reds by non-proprietary standards) however, the typing experience falls somewhere in between. I’m not finding keys hit at a feather drop as I did with the BlackWidow Elite, instead having a tactile bump to them. It’s satisfying in a way both familiar and really quite different; I like it, but it’s hard to get a real feel as to what makes it so nice to be typing on. 

Without a doubt, my favourite thing about this keyboard is its lighting. RGB lights are a staple of any flashy gaming keyboard, but it’s in this keyboard’s unusual keycap design it really stands out. Because the slim caps only cover the tops of the keys, you find the colours blending magnificently in a way I simply haven’t seen in other keyboards. Despite each key only having a single light behind it displaying one solid colour at a time, you have a sense of gradience as the keys flicker and dance. Of course, to make the most of this stunning lighting, you’ll be relying on Roccat’s special ‘Swarm’ software, an app I have mixed opinions of.

Having only used Razer’s offerings in the past, I’ve become accustom to clean and easy to use software. With Razer, everything makes sense out of the box in an incredibly intuitive way; Swarm is a bit of a mixed bag in this sense. Opening the software for the first time, I’m hit with the fact Swarm doesn’t take note of Windows scaling options. With my laptop screen being 3200×1800, I have scaling set to 200%, and every app I can think of takes note of this. It’s minor and something incredibly unlikely to affect most people, but it set a president with the software as a whole. Comparing it to Razer’s Synapse, there’s a lot to take in. You have profiles, key assignment, a macro creator, the lighting settings, and a few miscellaneous options to play with. It’s a lot. Spending some time with the software, things start to become clearer, if not still a little cluttered.

When it comes to functionality, Swarm falls back on two pillars: Game Mode, and Easy-Shift. Game Mode is something you’ve likely seen before in similar gaming keyboards, disabling the windows key to avoid your current game getting minimised at a crucial time, a generally-accepted good ideas all in all. What Roccat have done to try to add to this is allowing you to rebind keys when this is active, as well as the fancily-branded Easy-Shift. Key binding is exactly what you’d expect. You can swap keys, or have any number of keys being mapped to the same character. If you were in a game where you need to mash a single key, it could be handy to set every one available to that. In a far more normal use case of wanting to make use of the function keys that line the top of the board, you could remap them to things like Insert or Home to maximise available keys on the left side of the keyboard. It’s generally not something I used, but with no clear way of remapping keys normally, I could perhaps see use in this for people wanting to switch their key caps for the DVORAK layout or something similar.

At its core, Easy-Shift gives each key additional functionality while a designated Easy-Shift key is held while in Game Mode. By default, this key is caps lock, sitting just above your normal left shift. Holding this down, your keyboard is swept in a white light, and hit keys will perform their Easy-Shift function, this able to be pre-made macros, opening applications, multimedia controls, and your other general utility functionality. As an idea, it’s difficult to fault, but the implementation is needlessly limiting. The fact these macros and extras are locked behind having Game Mode currently enabled adds a layer of tedium when it comes to general use. Compare this to Razer’s BlackWidow Elite being able to add this kind of functionality via the function key at all times, and I’m just left wondering why Roccat can’t match this.

Of the features on offer, the standout hit for me is the AIMO Intelligent Lighting System. Where I’d take the time to get a visually appealing set of static lights (a little boring, sure) on my previous keyboards, this captivated me in a way where I really didn’t want anything else. At first glance, the lights seem to shift and sway as if at random, transitioning fluidly from one colour to the next across the keyboard. As you hit a key, it reactively changes colour. If you hold a key or hit keys close to each other, the surrounding area also lights up. It’s difficult to put across in words what makes this so enticing but it’s my far the nicest setting I’ve seen on this kind of keyboard. Naturally, all of this isn’t without fault.

The caveat in this case comes from the fact Swarm likes to crash. Without cause, reason, or rhyme, it closes. It does so silently in the background, making no fuss, and leaving the keyboard confused as to what it should be doing with its lights, often simply freezing with its current setup. On top of this, it doesn’t seem to launch at startup despite being set to, and clearly being in my startup options. The software freezing doesn’t impede the core functionality of the keyboard by any means; you can still type, you can still adjust your volume, all that good stuff, but you lose a lot of what really makes the Vulcan 120 AIMO stand out. As an odd aside, one thing that does remain with the software crashed or closed is your game mode setup, so if you want to swap your WASD with your arrow keys for that older generation of Command and Conquer that doesn’t let you remap keys, you can do so safe with the knowledge you won’t be interrupted mid-game.

All things considered, whether this keyboard is for you isn’t such a simple thing to ascertain. From what I know, Roccat are a fairly good brand and I do have some hope the software will improve in time, but with anything of this nature there simply is no guarantee. There’s also a chance these issues are exclusive to my PC, as slim as that may be. If you’re after a well-built keyboard with a clean and aesthetically pleasing design, the Vulcan 120 AIMO ticks every box. For everything beyond that, it’s a case of hoping for a fix, and at £149.99, that just might not be good enough for most.