Why You Can Trust CNET Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Wii U) review: Toad's time to shine
It's not the meatiest offering that Nintendo games usually offer, but Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is totally accessible and undeniably fun to play. The games ends a little sooner than we expected and a few control scheme decisions have us wishing for more customization.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Nintendo's last big game before the holidays, feels like an advent calendar of a game. Broken up into dozens of short levels, it's an expansion of the Captain Toad 3D puzzle games studded throughout last year's fantastic Super Mario 3D World .
Its price of $40 is a direct recognition of this because as a whole package, Treasure Tracker is a tad light on features. Completing the standard game will take most players no more than six to seven hours, but completionists may find more play time in collecting each stage's gems or bonus challenge.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Read GameSpot's coverage of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Imagine a Super Mario that can't jump, and you have Captain Toad. The familiar mascot is cute, small, slow, and super-charming, with his high-pitched voice shrieking out adorable nonsense all along the way. Each transparent diorama level can be rotated with the right stick or by tilting the GamePad and turning each puzzle in different directions reveals hidden treasures that Toad can pick up along his way to finding the star goal that takes you to the next challenge. We really wish the GamePad's motion control could be turned off though -- it's really frustrating to use and even worse when you accidentally bump the pad.
In fact, using the GamePad to play Treasure Tracker is probably our least-favorite part of the whole experience. Being forced to touch areas on the screen to move objects is cumbersome and the first-person aiming levels that turn the GamePad into Toad's viewpoint would be much better enjoyed with just a standard game pad. These features feel tacked on and ultimately unnecessary. Most other Wii U games give players a choice with how they'd like to control a given game, Treasure Tracker does not.
Some levels feel like brain-teasers and others like lost stages of Super Mario Bros. There are creative boss battles, too. As new stages get uncovered, pages of a book become filled in with more to explore. All of the environments are gorgeously rendered and encapsulate colorful chunks of Nintendo mythology within each. Most of the time we found ourselves zooming into the play area though, as a lot of the stages seem too far away from the game's camera.
It's not a ton of gaming, but again, Captain Toad costs $10 less than the typical Wii U title. On the other hand, at $40, it doesn't offer up nearly the same level of game that last year's Super Mario 3D world did which can probably be picked up used for about as much at this point.
Captain Toad is a lot of fun, but its simple puzzle-style action gaming might not be for everyone. It does, however, reinforce the Wii U as an excellent kid-friendly console. But, weirdly, it seems like Toad might have been a better fit on the handheld 3DS as opposed to the Wii U. Actually, the way things tend to go with Nintendo games like Treasure Tracker, we may see this game on the 3DS next year.
CNET Verdict: A lovable complement for the Wii U
It's not the meatiest offering that Nintendo games usually offer, but Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is totally accessible and undeniably fun to play. The games ends a little sooner than we expected and a few control scheme decisions have us wishing for more customization.