In an increasingly unsubstantiable industry obsessed with excess and pandering it's quite nice to have a Captain Toad Treasure Tracker come out. It really is the kind of thing the larger companies should be doing more of; trying out something experimental as an extra in a high tier release that's guaranteed to do well anyway, and if people like it expand on it later in another release that's relatively cheap to develop and gives fans what they want. Honestly I'd be interested in seeing Nintendo do more of this sort of thing, maybe throwing in some weird little concepts into Mario Party or WarioWare games to see what people get into. Anyway, regardless of your opinion of Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker as a game, it's a really positive development that it exists and people seem to be into it.
Personally I wasn't really into the Captain Toad levels that were featured in Super Mario 3D World. I thought they clashed with the hard action of the rest of the game, and I got no sense of puzzles or exploring but rather "find the one straight path to the goal and walk across it". However Treasure Tracker expands on the core concept in the best way possible by pushing the focus on exploring the levels as opposed to "solving" them. The game takes cues from Super Mario 3D Land by making the collectible rewards for exploring and puzzle solving as opposed to using as a rope to drag the player from point A to B. When Treasure Tracker is actually about tracking treasure and doing this kind of thing it's pretty great.
Although it frustrates at times the central idea of having a 3D stage seen through a completely free to move (most of the time) camera really enhances Treasure Tracker. It allows the game to do a lot of clever tricks with perspective, and lets the player see what need to do and where they need to go before they can do it. It's pretty strong brain oil, it gets you thinking in 3D space (which again gives the stages more of a feel of a "structure" and not a straight line) and makes you sometimes have to think backward from your goal, and other times demands understanding of your surroundings to work forward into getting there.
But again, that's when Treasure Tracker actually is about tracking treasure. Sometimes it's a rail shooter, sometimes it's a boss fight based around greenlight-redlight start n' stop, sometimes it's a turret sections, sometimes it's just kind of gimmicky and frustrating. And bizarrely, it is a game about getting your girlfriend back.
I always liked the idea that the Toads were androgynous; maybe they were just magical weird fungus creatures that were grown in the fields outside Peach's castle to serve her, but Nintendo piddled all over that idea by establishing a girl Toad complete with a pink head and shroomy pigtails. Of course she gets captured and the plot ("PLOT"!) is to go rescue her from a giant teleporting crow with a turban. She is playable in the game too after getting saved in the first chapter, but she never gets to defeat Turbancrow and gets captured again immediately before the final boss so the status quo is restored. The second chapter does feature her on a journey to rescue the Captain, but reversing gender roles is also kind of a trope these days, and besides I'm not sure you get points for it when you've forced the initial gender roles in there for literally no reason. It's gosh darn Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, the story (assuming it should have one at all) should be the Toads racing to some treasure before some villains in some DuckTalesesque shenanigans. It's not a dealbreaker or anything, but I can't think of an example where the "dude saves the day and wins girl as prize" trope has been less justified.
I guess the reason why it bothers me so much with this game is I can't help but wonder why this game bothered with that nonsense at all. Either it's pure laziness and just sticking to what works, or perhaps it reveals a little lack of faith in the project from Nintendo, they just felt they HAD to make it as Mario as possible or people wouldn't like it. A lot of Mario stuff is in here; superfluous lives system, repeated boss battles, the story, stars, mushrooms and levels taken directly from Super Mario 3D World with half the stuff cut out of them because the levels obviously aren't designed for Captain Toad and he can't do a dang thing in them but walk to the exit. Running and picking up items also works the same as Mario by mapping them to the same button, but this a stupid idea in Treasure Tracker because throwing stuff it the only way Toad can defend himself in this game, and I can't tell you how many times I would instinctively hit the run button only to fling my turnip off the stage and lose it forever. I guess it would be weird if the game didn't resemble Mario at all, but Nintendo have been talking about Captain Toad as if it were a brand new IP, in which case they shouldn't feel so shackled to the core principles of another game.
(For the record, Mario games could do with a bit of tidying up themselves, which is another reason I bring these things up)
Speaking of having a lack of faith; Treasure Tracker has now removed all my faith in the Wii U gamepad forever. I still think it's a great idea to have a screen in the controller, the fact that it's now possible to play AAA home console games in the palm of my hand if I feel like it is something that excites me, but as a controller the gamepad has only ever frustrated me. First things first, DON'T make me blow on my controller, especially one with a screen on it, and ESPECIALLY especially not in situations where I have to react and do it quickly because that often leads to huge chunks of gob on my expensive gamepad. Secondly, it is extremely flow breaking (even if I get used to it later and can do it quicker) to make me look down into my lap to touch something on the screen. Thirdly, when you have levels that are based entirely around touching the gamepad screen, I'm just going to look at the gamepad screen the entire time because it's far easier, and when you've put so much effort into making the game 1080p it seems silly for you to waste my 50 inch plasma.
Wii U gamepad nonsense does come into play regularly in Treasure Tracker and after a while it really starts to grate. There's no reason a cannon couldn't be controlled entirely by the right analog stick rather than jerking the controller around. There's no reason why a moving platform couldn't be controlled by a switch...or been mapped to one of the many buttons the game doesn't use at all...rather than be controlled by your own phlegm. I think another part of why this got really irritating is by the end of the game I couldn't help but wonder that the Wii U wasn't the best console for Treasure Tracker in the first place. It's definitely far better suited to smaller play sessions and gets tedious if you sit with it for too long, in terms of its appeal it probably would have been better suited to a handheld all things considered.
Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker is charming, inventive and really quite smart in a lot of ways, but there is an undercurrent of annoyance buried beneath the Captain's pudgy body that'll start to give you twitches if you ride with him for too long. If you liked the Toad levels in Super Mario 3D World then you'll probably have a great time with this (and probably already have it anyway so who cares), but if you don't find yourself particularly enamored with the concept the game's occasional pitfalls might ruin your day. I LIKE IT, believe me if I didn't I wouldn't have missed an opportunity to call it "Captain Chode", but I'm definitely going to need a breather from treasure tracking for a little while before I go back for those missing gems.
No comments:
Post a Comment