Honestly speaking, I’m not quite sure I’ve had this much fun with a puzzle-based game ever in my reviewing career. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker was born from the likes of Super Mario Galaxy, as perspective is key to success in this adventure through creative, colorful and sometimes dangerous/difficult levels.
Let’s get this going by discussing the gameplay of Captain Toad.
When I say this is similar to Super Mario Galaxy, I mean it. The gameplay in CT forces you to stop and think during the game and investigate every inch of the screen to get the most out of each level. Your job is to collect gems strategically placed on each map, as well as accomplish specific goals that are unique from level to level. The gem portion of the game is your main focus, as each map provides a nice hiding place for the gems.
The gems can sometimes be underneath plants, locked away behind doors and/or hidden in specific underground (sometimes above) areas. They are the main focus here and you shouldn’t ignore them. Without the gems, you cannot open up new worlds, and you cannot open up bonus levels after the game is completed. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Wow, this sounds tedious’, and that was my initial thought about the game, but it’s far from it. The thing that keeps searching for these objects interesting is the controls of the game.
The controls are broken into two ways to move. First, the left thumbstick actually moves Toad through the very condensed levels. It will be your main movement controls for our Toadstool and the thing that gets Toad from point A to point B. Easy, straightforward and no hassle. The movement of the camera is controlled by the right thumbstick, which allows you to scope the land freely. It’s a natural control for the camera and something that gamers should be used to by now. The importance of the right thumbstick camera control can’t be understated. It allows you to move around the map, check out where there might be potential gems and helps to find the appropriate path to get there. For something so simple on paper, the camera control keeps the game interesting and in check. I understand that this sounds like a ridiculous statement, but check out the video below for details.
(SPOILER ALERT — If you don’t want to know where gems are on this early level, don’t watch this video)
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If you want to be a brave lad/lass, then you can depend on the actual movement of the Wii U gamepad to move the camera around. Personally, I tried using the gamepad for about 10-15 minutes and just didn’t like the movement of it. For the majority of my time with Captain Toad, I used the right thumbstick to control my camera movement, as it made more sense and felt better.
Now, controls are one thing, but to get them to work properly and be entertaining you have to have some great level design.
The levels you play are not just simple repeats and remixes of one another. The design in CT is phenomenal. You get a bevy of different ways to complete levels. Some levels you just simply search, seek and conquer. Other levels have you moving pieces by touching them onscreen and shifting them constantly until you can find your gems and get through to the star at the end. The levels in general are multi-tiered, with some bigger than others (as you can see in some of these pictures attached). There are some levels that allow you to flip upside down for your treasuring hunting moments. One of the cooler levels in the game, and one that I enjoyed replaying and finishing completely, consisted of clear pipes where you had to navigate Toad through, while avoiding enemies along the way. Having to look ahead to your moves through the pipes and adjust your timing on the fly was nothing short of intellectually stimulating — and that’s really how the game in general felt from level to level. The design of the levels felt unique from level to level. Each one contains its own personality and its own style that nothing feels repeated. I’m highly impressed with the variety of places you get to explore and how each is constructed.
So, with level design, expect a large abundance of variety.
Having said that, If I had one item to gripe about in Captain Toad, it would be the uninspired bosses. Having played through every level in the game, sans some bonus levels that I’m still gaining access to, the most patterned and easiest levels were the boss levels. The bosses are divided into a lava-residing dragon and a giant blackbird that steals Toad/Toadette through the adventures. While the levels they reside on are unique and challenging at times, the actual boss fights are pretty anti-climactic and contain easy pattern recognition. In other words, there’s not much of a struggle when you fight them. The dragon just requires you to climb to the top of his level and knock over a cliff onto his head — each time you face him. The blackbird just requires you to knock him/her on the head three times with a veggie pulled from the ground. The majority of the game is clever level design, but these bosses are a major step down in the gameplay department. Of course, I’m not expecting anything grand here because it’s made for kids, but I would like a little variety to change things up. This is my only real gripe about the overall gameplay, which isn’t minor when compared to the other 90% of the game, which consists of beautiful level design.
Overall, I love the gameplay and style to Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. It never once felt like a boring game that was purely strategy and puzzle solving. It felt like a true adventure that belongs up there with the likes of Super Mario Galaxy, though not quite to that echelon — as Steve Schardein tells me all the time, “SMG is the best thing ever made”…(paraphrasing).
Gameplay aside, what about the presentation? You get a gorgeous and colorful game that runs at a smooth 60fps. The textures are stunning, especially in the lava boss stage. The lighting, shading and shadows are something to behold — wait until you get inside Boo’s mansion and are only armed with a headlamp. This game has a very next/current generation feeling to it. Having said that, the game only takes up a small amount of real estate on the screen, so the system probably didn’t have to work that hard to get to that level of visual achievement. But! Credit Nintendo’s developers who kept focused on what type of game they wanted to visually put together. The entire game embodies the world that Toad lives and resides in. Also, you will find a lot of Super Mario Galaxy-esque style inside of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.
Visuals and gameplay aside, what about the overall fun factor? If you haven’t translated my feelings about this game through my text yet, the fun factor is high. I completed the game yesterday and I have since gone back prior to this review and found remaining gems and accomplished specific goals provided to me on each level. The entire time I have been doing this I haven’t once felt like this was some collecting ‘chore’ process that I was going through. This felt fun the second and third time around in the game. It didn’t feel like work. Even though the puzzles weren’t incredibly challenging, the fact I had to go searching for gems left behind was fun. The goals in each level were also fun, though I have to admit there were some that seemed darn near impossible to get through. For example, there was a level that I had Toad armed with only a headlamp and the goal given to me for that level was to make it through it without alarming the Shy Guys that were guarding it. I still haven’t successfully completed that level yet.
Nintendo makes the game replayable with these little add-ons to the levels. While I’m still going through it and trying to complete all the levels perfectly, I’m almost certain there is something unlockable waiting for me if I complete the goals and obtain every gem. I’m far more excited about the possibility of going back to accomplish these things, rather than dreading them. So, in short, there is enough here to not only make the game fun, but also establish a high amount of replay value to the title.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is worth your time and money, Wii U folks. You get a kid friendly game that has a ton of different levels (and there are a lot of levels — far more than you start out with, but I won’t ruin it for you), manageable challenges and goals and a bonus book of levels to boot. I know you Nintendo fans out there have Smash Bros. Wii U on your list, but you need to look nice and hard at Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, as it’s a title worthy of a spot on your Wii U game shelf.
