I have a long history with this game. When Nintendo announced this and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse and fully unveiled Yoshi's Woolly World at E3 2014, that was basically my personal E3 of dreams. I loved 3DW and the Captain Toad sections were a great change of pace.
Unfortunately, my experience with the game when it came out in late 2014 was a bit mixed. We had a 26" TV and if you've played the game you know the default camera view is very zoomed out. This is to facilitate the puzzle diorama gameplay, but they really could have used a midzoom option. I often ended up zooming in, but it zooms way, way in, too far in to navigate the levels very well...and the issue is similar on the Wii U GamePad. I also found the spinning of the diorama slightly nauseating or motion sickness-inducing with the level at the default zoom. Not something I usually have found in games.
But, the game is so charming, that I learned to stop worrying and love the Todd. The game design is wonderful and the levels are clever, unique and compelling. There are a massive number of levels, too, way more than it seems at first. So I ended up playing the game on and off through 2015, and through a semi-cross country move. I got used to playing it on the Wii U GamePad. By late 2015, I had beaten the game and went back through the first set of levels to get the gems.
I always intended to go back and get the rest of the gems, because I wanted to unlock all the bonus levels and then play through them all at once. I played the first 3DW level included and it wasn't very exciting but I had heard the other bonus levels were more exciting and that Mummy Me Maze Forever, the equivalent of Champions' Road, was tough but fun.
I played a few levels here and there over the ensuing years. When the Switch port was announced, and it included a midzoom option, I was greatly interested... but the demo revealed an ever-present blue cursor that was kinda immersion-breaking for me, so I passed on it. Plus, there is a tangible benefit to playing on Wii U and being able to interact with the environment using the GamePad, even if it comes with some detractions to the experience.
In November of last year we finally got a new TV, 4K HDR, 55", and one of the first things I thought was, now I can play Captain Toad with the default zoom and actually see what's going on. I've been playing a bunch of other games, and mostly play games with my wife but the motion sickness thing is much stronger for her with Captain Toad, so, I finally got back into it last month. And it turns out I only had the last 11 or so levels of Book 3 to do, before moving onto the Bonus Book. The other day I finished Wingo's Whackdown with all 3 gems and moved onto the bonus levels.
I have to say, too, the music in this game is a delight, the art style is amazing to me and a nice evolution of the 3DW engine. The presentation makes it so nostalgic to play back through. When I flip from page to page, and year to year, it feels like a scrapbook of gaming memories across these levels.
-The 3DW levels are like a glorified demo for that game, but ironically I believe they were only available if you already have 3DW. Still, they were okay to play through.
-The Toad Brigade levels were a tricky spin on existing levels and I genuinely struggled through some of them because it got challenging to not have one fall in lava or get hurt.
-Finally, I reached the Mummy Me levels I'd be waiting to play. I played a few of them and they were awesome...
...and then I saw that 10 are still locked. It turns out that I needed to get all the gems *and* all the secret goals in every level. But I'd only been getting the gems. I'd put a half effort into getting the goals, and had them on a handful of levels. But I'd pretty much half to play through the whole game again to get these levels unlocked. And then it turns out that beating all of those will unlock time trials. And I want to do that, too.
But I think I'm gonna put the Captain back on the digital shelf for a bit. I really enjoyed my foray back into the world of Todd but there are other games to finish up or play anew, and even though some of these levels I haven't played in 5 years, they'll be even fresher when I go back to the game. And it's nice to be able to look forward to playing the game again. I found playing on a big TV made a massive difference in being able to appreciate the details as well as just navigate the game in the intended way.
So, hopefully I will get back to it in a year or two and then I can update this thread with my progress. Mummy Me Maze
Forever, indeed.
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