PAX PRIME 2014: Searching for adventure in Captain Toad's Treaure Tracker

henever I think of must-own games for the Wii U, Super Mario 3D World immediately comes to mind, and my absolute favorite thing about the game has nothing to do with the main game at all.

Nope, the one thing I praise about it before anything else are the Captain Toad levels, the endearing yet immaculately crafted collection of distractions from 3D World’s main game that surprisingly became one of its biggest highlights. So when Nintendo announced that the adorable adventurer would be getting his own title later this year, I naturally became a little more than excited.

The big question though is whether or not Nintendo can really pull off an entire games-worth of content around the quirky puzzle-based dynamic of Captain Toad. The answer is a resounding, obnoxiously loud yes guys and gals, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker could very well be one of the most whimsically charming games that the Big N has crafted in years.

Nintendo had three types of stages on hand to showcase, the first one being awfully similar to the same kind of stages in SM3DW, and the other two showing off new features and elements that upgrade the stand-alone spinoff into a full-fledged package.

Applying some queues that are normally more at home with the Wario Land series, Captain Toad’s revolving mini-courses are not only the usual string of puzzles and trials to reach the goal, but a plethora of secret routes and collectables that expand the depth of level navigation to another degree all together.

The structure of the levels mainly comprise of three super gems for the Captain to acquire much like the green stars of its original source material, and a star at the end to finish the level. While the previous incarnation of Captain Toad was engineered around collecting a number of star fragments or pieces to get to the finish, Nintendo went on to say that collection quests like these and other gimmicks will gradually appear to change up the theme and flow of gameplay to round out the levels into completing like a full stage.

The newest addition were the on-rails gyroscope levels that broadcast the main perspective, assigning the television screen to a more peripheral role that compliments the action going on from the gamepad instead.

Captain Toad hobbled into a mine cart armed with turnips, the screen was displaying my descent down a spiraling cliff in a first-person view while I physically had to shuffle around through the use of gyroscopic motion on the gamepad and aim my cursor to throw turnips with the left thumb stick. Doubling back in forth between the two screens was an active and organic exercise all at once. Keeping attentive to the perspective of the map displayed on the TV screen was necessary because it functioned as a means of reference for what I was to anticipate in my ride on the Gamepad screen, and the whole ordeal was an engaging and thought provoking challenge. This mine cart level alone was a testament of how to ingeniously use the unique utilities of the Wii U to fuse the two different styles of fast-paced action and eagle-eye exploration into one surprisingly magical, coherent experience.

While Nintendo was pretty vague over the exact release date, they confidently assured me that it will come before the end of 2014, sometime in the Holiday. The little time I was able to spend with Captain Toad Treasure Tracker left a good taste in my mouth that only managed to wet my appetite even more for the game’s finished release—look out for what may be one of the defining reasons to own a Wii U this holiday.