Captain U

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Captain U is a Platformer released on the Wii U in 2021, making it one of the last games to release on the Wii U eShop (Pad of Time and Shadow Archer Special, both of which released in 2022 are the only games that came out after this one on the Wii U). This game has players controlling the titular Captain (think “superhero” captain, not “yarr me matey” Captain) as he bouncers through levels with his own version of the Wii U gamepad, which he can bring out at any time to interact with the game itself.

The presentation here is mostly pretty good, with some nice retro-style pixel art visuals that are highly reminiscent of the classics of the Nintendo Entertainment System era, with a pretty good chiptune soundtrack to match.

The gameplay here plays mostly like a typical old-school Platformer, although there are occasionally different-style levels that shake things up a bit and do something different. However, the big twist this game adds is how you can interact with the game by using the A button to have your character stop what he’s doing and tool around on his own Wii U gamepad, which gives the player the ability to use the touchscreen and gyroscopic motion control to interact with the game, touching enemies directly to damage them, touching coins to pick them up, touching blocks to break them, and touching platforms or tilting the Wii U gamepad to move them.

In theory, this is a nice touch that could make good use of the Wii U gamepad to create a really unique experience. In practice, this game is riddled with issues that keep it from reaching this potential.

First, while the graphics look mostly decent, there’s an aggravating “skipping” that happens every now and then in the game that is very distracting and can even affect the gameplay. This is despite an oddly long loading time at the start of the game. What’s more, the use of the Wii U gamepad’s features all seem to work poorly – the detection when you touch moving objects like creatures is off, and it seems like you need to lead them to have any reasonable expectation of touching them properly. Meanwhile, the motion control mostly works fine except when your character is standing on a moving platform, at which time the slightest tilt in either directions will send you careening in that direction at stupidly fast speed.

However, it’s not just technical problems that mar this game worse. The way each level has a time limit that continues even when your character is messing with the Wii U gamepad is frustrating, especially when you’re just learning the game. Also, the game makes you choose between duplicating the TV screen’s image (needed to use the touchscreen to interact) and your stats screen (needed to see the timer and life measurements), something that seems both unnecessary and frustrating. And while I appreciate that there’s a strategy in choosing when to use the touchscreen because it leaves your character immobile while you do so, having to go into a separate mode to do it really slows down the pace of the game.

Overall, I appreciate that Captain U tries to make good use of the Wii U’s unique features, and it has an appealing retro aesthetic, but the game is riddled with so many frustrations, annoyances, and outright problems that it makes it difficult to enjoy. As a result, I can’t really recommend it.

tl;dr – Captain U is a Platformer where the character in the game can stop and use the gamepad to interact with the game as you do. While the presentation in this game features an appealing retro-style look, and some of the ideas here aren’t bad, there are enough technical issues and poor design choices here that it makes this game difficult to enjoy. I suggest skipping it.

Grade: C-

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