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Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker |OT| rrrrready for adventure!

M

maxcriden

Member
Played a bit more. It's a very charming game but in a way it's kind of a disappointment if I'm honest with myself, mostly because I feel like even besides my own limitations it's not optimized for enjoyment, given the tweak-ready factors I mentioned above. I feel like the most crucial of those is the mid-zoom option. When the game is zoomed in you just do not have a sufficient field of information to properly play a level. For me at least, when it's zoomed out I feel like I'm straining to see all of the aspects of the level on the screen. I think this is an inherent limitation in the game's philosophy of almost every level being an individual diorama, but since some levels do not hew as closely to this template, I see no good reason why there can't be a mid-zoom option. I dunno. I don't mean to proselytize for this. It just feels like a significant oversight and for me a hindrance in enjoying the game. (FWIW, I did find covering the screen with a blanket has helped a bit in the dizziness/headache department.)

With that said, I am enjoying the game. I'm 25 or so levels in now and it's very clever and sweet. The graphics are charming as all get out. The music is very, very similar to 3DW which is not a bad thing per se since this is a spin-off, but it does give the game a bit less of its own identity in a way. (Ah, here I go again, criticizing the game even though I really like a lot of it.) It does feel like some of the levels are over in a bit too much of a blink of an eye if you're only going for the goal.

All in all, I'm not sure what I wanted to expected from the game differently than I got. I feel like a bit of a curmudgeon critiquing the game like this, but these factors really do affect my experience with the game. The game is just so full of greatness that in some aspects of it I feel like I can't help but see some of what feel to me like missing features, at least from a technical aspect. With all of that said, as great as the great aspects of the game are, even in and of itself putting aside any flaws I perceive, I don't think this is GOTY material for me like I hoped it'd be. In a year with Shovel Knight, Pushmo World, Tropical Freeze and Kirby: Triple Deluxe, to name a few or so, I don't feel like this feels fully fledged and satisfying in the same way.

(I hope y'all know I love Toad and feel a bit guilty for critiquing his game like this. ;__;)
 
Q

QuixoticNeutral

Member
I am not quite finished with Captain Toad—challenge times and
Mummy-Me Maze Forever (on which I have made only one attempt to the tune of five levels and 1125 coins)
remain—but for those interested in playtime numbers, I completed everything else (all stages, treasures, and bonus objectives) in 14 hours. It took me probably half an hour to locate the first hidden Gold Mushroom, especially as I played with the rumble off, but after collecting the first one it was fairly straightforward to intuitively spot where one was likely to appear in all the stages that followed.

For those who have completed all the challenge times: do they unlock any playable content? I will likely get to them eventually, but my completionist streak usually stops just short of time trials and if there is no urgency to them, I may put them off for a rainy day.

I have to say that I think I'm getting fair value out of the game for the equivalent price of a 3DS retail title; the scale feels comparable to 3D Land and the endgame unlockable plays like a game of its own, from what I've seen. (The "final exams" of The Perfect Run, 8-Crown, and Champion's Road are by far my favourite thing about the recent trajectory of 3D Mario, and I was looking forward to bashing my head against whatever this game had in store—Champion's Toad, if you will.) It is definitely on the easy side, and that makes the game feel a lot shorter than it otherwise would, but in this respect it runs into the same problem of difficulty scaling as even the best puzzle games, like Pushmo/Crashmo or the Portal duo: it doesn't take long for you to learn the entire range of your character's possible interactions with the game world, as all the tools are there for you from the start. So while the stages get more interesting in terms of the flavour and variety of their mechanics, in terms of solving puzzles there is a low ceiling for what your character can actually do, and past a certain point the stages no longer push the player towards any genuinely new ways of thinking about a problem that he or she hasn't stumbled across already.

In the case of Captain Toad this means there is no real appreciable increase of difficulty when it comes to spatial reasoning, and the burden of keeping the player challenged rests entirely on execution—so it presents what are ultimately exactly the same challenges as a 3D platformer, except now you can't jump, as if you had invisible spikes over your head at all times. The problem here is even more pronounced than in Pushmo or Crashmo (both of which I found elegant but far too gentle) for the simple reason that there is no way to botch the solutions such that you have to rethink them from the start, so the puzzles, like mazes, ultimately solve themselves as you exhaust the available pathways. Games like Zelda get away with this (indeed, it's a bit inelegant in Zelda when you fail to the point of having to exit the room and magically reset the blocks in it) because they progressively expand your arsenal of actions along with the demands of the puzzle environment; there the dungeons are spaced apart and conceptually self-contained enough that one doesn't much mind when the puzzles in one are no harder than the puzzles in the one before it, as is typically true. In Captain Toad, however, the flatness of the puzzle progression is quite conspicuous, and as the difficulty lies instead in execution—running, climbing, dodging, throwing, with an extra helping of camera management—there are many ways to fail and none of them involve being stumped.

Well, if that's the game they chose to make, it's exceptional and adorable in its own right, and fills an absence I didn't know was there in being the 3D Mario lineage's closest relative to SMB2—and here I don't simply mean the obvious likenesses, from plucking and chucking to Wingo standing in for Birdo, but the whole style of play that follows logically from not being able to crush your enemies from above at will. Captain Toad is a superb action platformer in its own right, if one where playing the camera is more than ever a part of playing the game, and I enjoyed every minute of it. But this is certainly a different creative direction than the one that I thought was suggested by the handful of prototype puzzles in 3D World, particularly the one late in the game that depends on the Galaxy-style manipulation of gravity—a stage that only has a single analogue in all of Treasure Tracker, and a less challenging one at that. A part of me wishes we had seen more of that other possible direction for Captain Toad, a game that was out to get you stuck just as desperately as it was out to kill you.

As someone who primarily plays off-TV, I encountered one serious failing in the UI: the spinning wheel's obstruction of the action on the GamePad screen. More than once, I merely walked across a wheel—which momentarily interrupts your walking pace until you push on—only for an Bullet Bill to slam into me unseen. By its nature it was also a less responsive use of the GamePad than tapping blocks, so I always had to pull out the stylus for it, and I found myself wishing for the valve-turning controls of The Wonderful 101 or at least some alternative to turn the valve by rotating one of the analogue sticks. I didn't mind any of the other touch-screen elements but this one stuck out as poorly conceived.

Word of advice, as already mentioned in this thread: use ZR as the action button. In the later stages this allows you to dash and pluck while gently tapping the right stick to keep the camera under control.

At any rate: brilliant game, lots of fun, with a satisfying if not bedazzling amount of content, but not the cerebral experience I thought it would be. I am, however, understating what a great time I had with it, and I wouldn't have blown through the game so quickly if I weren't absolutely hooked. The music is a real treat of its own if you are the sort of person who knows Nintendo music by heart and can pick up on the nuances of what Captain Toad's soundtrack does with everything from Donkey Kong and 3D World to build its own unique aural character. There is no shortage of wonder here; just a deficit of cleverness, a reluctance to stretch my brain and not my thumbs.
 
M

Malus

Member
plank said:
ippk8UCcS3IK5.jpg


This game is awesome.
Click to expand...

I wonder if uninformed people are entering the thread thinking that this is what the game is like lol.
 
E

evilromero

Member
maxcriden said:
Played a bit more. It's a very charming game but in a way it's kind of a disappointment if I'm honest with myself, mostly because I feel like even besides my own limitations it's not optimized for enjoyment, given the tweak-ready factors I mentioned above. I feel like the most crucial of those is the mid-zoom option. When the game is zoomed in you just do not have a sufficient field of information to properly play a level. For me at least, when it's zoomed out I feel like I'm straining to see all of the aspects of the level on the screen. I think this is an inherent limitation in the game's philosophy of almost every level being an individual diorama, but since some levels do not hew as closely to this template, I see no good reason why there can't be a mid-zoom option. I dunno. I don't mean to proselytize for this. It just feels like a significant oversight and for me a hindrance in enjoying the game. (FWIW, I did find covering the screen with a blanket has helped a bit in the dizziness/headache department.)

With that said, I am enjoying the game. I'm 25 or so levels in now and it's very clever and sweet. The graphics are charming as all get out. The music is very, very similar to 3DW which is not a bad thing per se since this is a spin-off, but it does give the game a bit less of its own identity in a way. (Ah, here I go again, criticizing the game even though I really like a lot of it.) It does feel like some of the levels are over in a bit too much of a blink of an eye if you're only going for the goal.

All in all, I'm not sure what I wanted to expected from the game differently than I got. I feel like a bit of a curmudgeon critiquing the game like this, but these factors really do affect my experience with the game. The game is just so full of greatness that in some aspects of it I feel like I can't help but see some of what feel to me like missing features, at least from a technical aspect. With all of that said, as great as the great aspects of the game are, even in and of itself putting aside any flaws I perceive, I don't think this is GOTY material for me like I hoped it'd be. In a year with Shovel Knight, Pushmo World, Tropical Freeze and Kirby: Triple Deluxe, to name a few or so, I don't feel like this feels fully fledged and satisfying in the same way.

(I hope y'all know I love Toad and feel a bit guilty for critiquing his game like this. ;__;)
Click to expand...
It's a bit strange to "hope a game will be GOTY" before you even play it.
 
M

maxcriden

Member
evilromero said:
It's a bit strange to "hope a game will be GOTY" before you even play it.
Click to expand...

I don't know. If I'm honest with myself I do this often when a game is announced, and those I think will be my faves usually end up being so (thinking of stuff like 3DW, TF, and Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon to name a few recent examples). I understand if it seems odd to you, but for me I feel like I usually have a pretty good idea of what a game will be like from the conceptual trailer and/or similar previous games, and I try to know my tastes pretty well, so often I can guess fairly accurately how I'll feel about a game. You don't do anything similar? I can't imagine I'm alone in this line of thinking on GAF. ;)
 
O

OmegaFax

Member
I think I'm about a 2/3 (or maybe half way through) ... eh, wow! It's an incredibly charming game. It's on the same level as Luigi's Mansion. Least it feels that way with how it's paced. Take familiar characters, throw it in some new gameplay, and ... well, run with it (or in Toad's case, maybe speed walking).

This would be perfect on a portable. Like, maybe even a N3DS system seller if they managed to release a port of it within a year's time. The levels are short and decent in length, gyroscope/second analog functionality, and 3D stereoscope potential.
 
R

robotzombie

Member
I was almost going to not get this game...but i did and its so damn fun

now i just need to spend like $0.30 more in the store in order to get another 5 dollar digital promotion thing...
 
O

OmegaFax

Member
robotzombie said:
I was almost going to not get this game...but i did and its so damn fun

now i just need to spend like $0.30 more in the store in order to get another 5 dollar digital promotion thing...
Click to expand...

If you have Club Nintendo points, maybe get Vegas Stakes? The full cost of the title will go towards DDP ... so it'll be something like $7.99 -> 79 points and you'll get your $5 eShop credit.
 
K

Kamek Koopa

Member
I was really expecting this game to come out here in Europe, but I'm starting to worry due to the mild reception I'm reading in this thread (especially, the comments of maxcriden, who I'm aware was expecting the game with the same intensity than me).
 
S

Skellig Gra

Member
Kamek Koopa said:
I was really expecting this game to come out here in Europe, but I'm starting to worry due to the mild reception I'm reading in this thread (especially, the comments of maxcriden, who I'm aware was expecting the game with the same intensity than me).
Click to expand...

Mild reception? Seems like most people in here love it. Including me.
 
blu

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Kamek Koopa said:
I was really expecting this game to come out here in Europe, but I'm starting to worry due to the mild reception I'm reading in this thread (especially, the comments of maxcriden, who I'm aware was expecting the game with the same intensity than me).
Click to expand...
My PAL-ish desire for this game has not dropped one bit. I'm looking towards two games by the end of January, and CT:TT firmly remains one of them.
 
T

TheSpaceBetween

Member
I FINALLY beat
Mummy-Me Maze Forever
. My mistake was
thinking the only objective was to collect 5000 coins. The "Forever" in the name implied to me that it would just keep going on and on... After all, the mazes themselves seem randomly generated aside from specific enemies. So when I got 5000 coins at around level 33 I just died and was shocked that nothing happened. From then on it was fairly simple to clear just making my way straight for the exits picking up coins along the way
. Anyways, all that I have left to do are the time trials in
Episode 3
and I'll have done everything there is to do.
 
T

TripOpt55

Member
Played about ten levels including the first boss. Really fun game so far. Super cute. Not exactly a mindblowing experience, but a really neat game. Really happy I'm able to play this.
 
T

The Bankslammer

Member
3 attempts at
Mummy-Me Maze Forever
and my wrists are killing me. I really want to finish it because I think it's all I have left, but this is gonna have to wait for another day, lol.
 
B

bart64

Banned
maxcriden said:
Played a bit more. It's a very charming game but in a way it's kind of a disappointment if I'm honest with myself, mostly because I feel like even besides my own limitations it's not optimized for enjoyment, given the tweak-ready factors I mentioned above. I feel like the most crucial of those is the mid-zoom option. When the game is zoomed in you just do not have a sufficient field of information to properly play a level. For me at least, when it's zoomed out I feel like I'm straining to see all of the aspects of the level on the screen. I think this is an inherent limitation in the game's philosophy of almost every level being an individual diorama, but since some levels do not hew as closely to this template, I see no good reason why there can't be a mid-zoom option. I dunno. I don't mean to proselytize for this. It just feels like a significant oversight and for me a hindrance in enjoying the game.
Click to expand...
Charming indeed. Allow a stranger to help with e camera thing.

The reason the camera has two levels is a gameplay thing. You noticed that in this game controlling the camera is just as important as controlling the captain. Your ability to manouver the camera aoround obstacles is the point of the game, so why not make zoom be another obstacle?

When your're zoomed in, you have to rely on your ability to remember parts of the stage and anticipate things you can't see. Zoomed out, you can see how the level works but it's easy to take the wrong step. With a camera in the middle, you eliminate all that and you're probably fiddling with the camera even more trying to decide which zoom fits.

Playing with perspective, hiding things from your view, creating challenges around the console, that's just what wii u is about in general. It doesn't always click with me but good on them for paving the way to new gameplay ideas. No?
 
K

krae_man

Member
It was so cute and Captain Toad took a nap.

Only played 5 levels so far. 100%ing that 5th stage really ramped up the difficulty. There's zero room for error.
 
P

petethepanda

Member
Where in the hell is the golden mushroom in the
episode 2 prologue
? This is driving me insane

I think I'm going to put the game down for a little while, finally starting to burn out. I've had a ton of fun with it though. Got all the stamps on the standard levels, about a third of the time trials, and I've done probably about 80% of the bonus stuff. Looks like 12 hours played. Well worth $40.
 
J

jholmes

Member
So I beat the
mummy maze
and am feeling understandably through with the game. Does anything happen if I get all the time trials?
 
M

Malus

Member
theprodigy said:
Toadette/10

what that means, don't ask me

so who here has beaten all the challenge times :p
Click to expand...

Time Trials weren't as tough as people made them out to be. There were a handful of super strict ones but I thought they were all gonna be like that lol.
 
T

TripOpt55

Member
Finished the first book. Pretty fun game so far. They seem to make good use of the mechanics and have some clever level designs.
 
C

Camjo-Z

Member
I did it, I finally beat the final level! I was shocked when the last floor gave me an easy route to the exit with no hassle from any stupid Fire Piranhas.

So ends my time with Captain Toad... for now. Hopefully that amiibo support is something cool!
 
D

DizzyCrow

Member
I really hope this becomes the norm, imagine if from every major Nintendo release spawned a title like this, that would be beyond awesome.
 
T

TripOpt55

Member
I'm in Book 3 and enjoying it. The characters are too cute and the puzzles are pretty interesting. I do kind of wish there wasn't touch screen or stuff like that. I'm normally not opposed to that sort of thing, but I don't like taking my eyes off the big screen. Plus with the gyro camera, using the touchscreen is usually the only time I end up moving that around. Usually I'm pretty stable, so that is a slight annoyance. Still not a huge issue in the grand scheme. A fun unique game so far.
 
TheMoon

TheMoon

Member
Hollywood Duo said:
Anyone have any guesses on what the Amiibo support is going to be? Different skin for toad or something?
Click to expand...

Skins would be incredibly inconsequential, especially post launch. While I don't expect something as crazy as new levels, it would have to be something more substantial than just a Mario hat or something. I also expect it to be limited to Mario-universe characters.
 
I

ironcreed

Banned
I appreciate how sometimes you will not realize what you missed until after you beat a level when it shows you. It just adds to the replay value of an already replayable game.
 
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