Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

A week or two ago, I finished off Super Mario 3D World and generally enjoyed it as both a platforming game and an improvement to the Super Mario franchise over all the recent New Super Mario Bros. titles. Apparently, my overall approval was not shared by the Back-Blogged community at large, as Trevor had some strong takes about how bland, easy, and boring the game was. There's no accounting for taste, but Trev - if innovation is what you're looking for, then give this one a spin!

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is a full-game extension of the four or five Captain Toad levels in Super Mario 3D World and it's absolutely great. The game is divided into three "episodes," each about twenty levels long; each level includes three gems for Captain Toad to find and a star that represents the end of the level. While you can "beat" any level simply by reaching the star, it's imperative to collect enough gems, too. Every three to five levels, you'll need to have a certain number of gems in order to advance. It's an easy threshold to pass if you've acquired even two out of the three gems in each level, but it still forces you to play the game as more than just a dash from the beginning to the end of each level. (Which you should be, anyway.)

What makes the game work so well are the fully three-dimensional worlds. Levels are traversed by navigating Captain Toad along all three axes of movement - not just your four-directional D-pad trajectories, but upward and downward as well. The rub is that Captain Toad can't jump. He also can't run. He's slower than most of his enemies. All he can do in order to defeat enemies is pull turnips out of the ground from fixed locations and throw them. The whole experience is more of a puzzle game than a true platformer. Time is rarely even an issue; there are no time limits, save for one or two levels where lava slowly rises from below. Playing through Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker has nothing to do with typical platforming skills like perfecting difficult jumps or maneuvering behind or around enemies precisely - it's a game of flipping switches, climbing ladders, and scouring very limited areas for gems. It's always immediately apparent where you need to go - you can often see entire levels at on the screen at once; it's just not always clear how to get there.

I liked Captain Toad not only because it was a different type of Mario game than I'm used to seeing, but moreover because it was just a lot of fun to play. It took me around seven or eight hours to finish - about as long as Super Mario 3D World took - but it was a tighter and more polished experience (and also one that cost about $10 less, if memory serves). Wii U owners with a knack for puzzle games would be wise to strongly consider this one.