HawgWyld's Full Review: Excite Truck for Nintendo Wii
At long last, Nintendo has released a spiritual successor to the classic Excitebike for the old NES. The only things Excite Truck shares with its distant cousin is that it's a racing game, it takes place on primarily dirt tracks, using too much turbo will overheat your engine and there's a lot of attention paid to jumping things.
Having said that, Excite Truck is the best single person racing game I've seen for the Wii. Yes, that's right -- a great single player game for the Wii. That's worth mentioning considering the console has a lot of multiplayer stuff available for it and is in need of more single player titles. Oddly enough, the flaw in Excite Truck has to do with the so-so multiplayer mode (more on that in a bit).
Excite Truck is, simply put, an off road racing game in which the player controls various four wheel drive vehicles and engages in comic book-level stunts. The main modes here include one in which the player can pick a course and a truck and challenge the computer to a single race. The game lives and breathes, however, by its cup mode in which the player competes through several levels in hopes of earning that particular "cup" and advancing to the next, more difficult cup level. How do you earn a cup? Well, you earn a set number of points through races in each cup level with the goal of grabbing enough points to unlock the next track in the level.
The points system is a wonder to behold. The goal is to earn points through placing well in races and, essentially, doing wacky stuff the rest of the time. The player earns points by smashing into opponents, executing particularly gruesome power slides around curves, zipping through wooded areas and pulling off spectacular jumps.
And, yes, jumps are a huge deal in this game. The larger than life jumps are nothing short of spectacular and are the most impressive component of the game. The jumps allow players to send a huge truck (or dune buggy) flying off 100-foot cliffs and such and emerging unscathed. The jumps allow the player to see incredibly far in the distance, thus providing a grand sense of perspective. You feel like you're on a huge track and it's particularly gratifying to see that you're about to land right in front of an opponent (and, preferably, right on top of one of them). Players get points for picking up "rings" while in the air, pulling off stunts like 360 degree turns and can get turbo boosts by hitting the "turbo" button just right when starting a jump and another boost for landing on all four tires.
To emphasize the jumps even more, there are power-ups available that actually transform the track. Usually, a ramp will pop up that can be used to take you ahead of your opponents if used right, and those power-ups also put the aforementioned rings in the air, thus offering major points if you can grab them. Another power-up provides a boost that makes your truck both go fast and become invincible (particularly useful for running opponents off the road and mowing down trees).
And, that brings me to the use of the Wii's motion sensitive controller. The game makes the player hold it rather sideways and you steer your truck by tilting the sides of it like a steering wheel (it feels awkward at first, but becomes intuitive after a time). You rock the controller back and fourth in midair to tilt the truck up or down (thus allowing for positioning so that you can land your vehicles on all four wheels). The "A" button accelerates, the "B" button brakes and hitting the D-pad provides a turbo boost.
The controls are a major draw here as this game simply couldn't be played without that motion-sensitive controller -- it's integral to the game. One thing that might drive some people nuts is that you really do have the sense that you're barely in control most of the time, and that has more to do with the outright speed of the game than the controller. When you're zipping around at over 100 miles per hour and throwing a truck through all kinds of wacky stunts, I suppose it makes sense that you would be barely in control most of the time.
Fortunately, you get the hang of the controls pretty quickly, but just count on a lot of wrecks (fortunately, points are awarded for particularly spectacular crashes -- the game seems to favor accidents that leave your truck tangled up in the top of a tree). Ah, but you'll never wreck your vehicle so often that you can't start again. What is a bit confusing is that the game forces you to hit the "A" button repeatedly after a wreck in order to be awarded a turbo boost so you'll be off and running hard after the vehicle is reset on the track.
The turbo is a crucial element to the game, too. If you use it too often, you'll overheat your engine and have to wait for it to cool down before you can reach normal speeds again. But, you do have to use the turbo to get the edge on opponents and win the game, so you'll be hitting that thing quite a bit. By the way, your engine won't overheat when you're in the water, so holding it down while cruising through a lake or a river is a good idea.
Earning points, placing well and all of that is mighty important as you unlock new vehicles when you reach certain goals (winning a set number of races, running over opponents "X" number of times and etc.) The vehicles here are very different in terms of handling characteristics, turbo power, top speed, acceleration, the ability to say airborne and etc. My advice is to find the trucks with "slow" or "moderate" handling as those are easier to control than the other, more fidgety vehicles. Players can choose their own vehicle colors (my wife says I ought to use "Plum Crazy" every time because I drive like a maniac in the game) and additional paint schemes are unlocked when you win a set number of races with one vehicle. I can't stress enough how much difference choosing the correct vehicle makes in a race -- I've had a few cup races I struggled with until I switched to a different vehicle.
As for graphics, you get a three-dimensional environment that will become a bit pixelated when the action heats up and there's a lot happening on the screen. That doesn't really matter so much as this game is about speed and insane stunts, and Excite Truck absolutely delivers in that regard. The graphics are pleasant enough, the vehicles look great and the scenery is impressive. However, I can't help but think that these graphics could have been pulled off on a Game Cube with no problem. The sounds are of the typical revving engines and crunching metal variety (for wrecks), but it works well enough.
Now, there's one major flaw in this game -- the two player mode leaves a lot to be desired. The split screen view just feels inadequate in that it's hard for both players to see what's going on (I have the same problem with the Tennis game in Wii Sports). I have the feeling that the "viewing problem" might be taken care of when I break down, head to Best Buy and buy a wide screen television. The sides of the screen appear to be cut off quite a bit, and I believe that has a lot to do with the standard, "4:3" aspect ratio setting on the Wii and I do believe a wide screen television will remedy that problem. I should have known the filthy corporate bastards would trick me into buying a wide screen television at some point, and I'm stupid enough to shell out the cash for one so I can enjoy my Wii more as the "split screen view" problem seems to pop on Wii games from time to time. Bitter? Me? Hell no!
The two-player mode is fun enough, but rather uninspired. It's simply a head-to-head race with a lot of computer opponents involved. Nothing groundbreaking there. Even if the "sight" problem is remedied with a wide screen television, the two-player mode just doesn't offer anything that we haven't seen from racing games for the past decade. You'd expect something better, considering how well done the rest of the game is.
One feature I do wish would have been incorporated is the one on Excitebike that allowed players to design their own tracks. You can't do that here, and I felt a bit let down. Oh, well.
All in all, this is a great off road racing game with a couple of forgivable flaws. Pick it up if you have a Wii.
Excite Truck Nintendo Wii FAST SHIPPING RARE NEW SEALED YOU'LL LOVE HTMAXPOWER FAST SAME-DAY SHIPPING!* Mammoth selection of excellent products Person...More at eBay
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