Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is the latest in a long line of remasters that Nintendo has been pushing out simply because they can, rather than because anyone is clamoring for them. The 2013 3DS original (called Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon in the US) was a solid action-adventure, but hardly a classic by Nintendo standards. And more than a decade later, it feels rather ordinary and a little out of place on the Switch.

While this is certainly a polished, high-quality remaster that vastly improves on the look and feel of the original, it fails to shed the weight of being designed for much inferior hardware. Furthermore, some of the original’s most obvious and easily fixable flaws inexplicably remain.

For the uninitiated, the Luigi's Mansion games are a cartoonish take on the survival horror genre: they're essentially survival horror without much survival or horror. The silliness of this premise is both Luigi's Mansion 2 HD's greatest strength and greatest weakness. As a parody of tacky horror, it works beautifully. But it comes at the cost of any truly compelling gameplay hooks.

Perhaps the best example of this clash between taste and gameplay is the Poltergust 5000, Luigi’s all-in-one ghost-hunting tool. It’s as if Luigi ordered a Ghostbusters proton pack from a discount e-commerce platform, and what actually arrived was a vacuum cleaner with shoulder straps. And that’s the joke. And it’s a funny joke. But while the Poltergust 5000 is a great concept aesthetically, it’s a cumbersome and ultimately rather limited gameplay device.