Excite Truck [Wii]

"Excite Truck is an off-road truck racing game, in which all realism is thrown overboard. You are driving all sorts of jeeps, trucks and buggy's, over hills en through water, through forests and over snow and ice. There's no tarmac in sight. This game is some kind of sequel to the classic ExciteBike, a motor racing (and jumping) game, originally released on the NES. Some of the ExciteBike elements are returning here, like the overheating turbos and the method of jumping and landing.

The game looks quite detailed, of course the Wii is not a powerhouse like the 360 or the PS3, but this still is one of the better looking games on the Wii. The framerate is high and never drops, everything keeps moving smoothly throughout. The sound of the trucks is fine. The music is terrible (bad Japanese guitar noise), but you can insert an SD card with your favorite MP3 tracks in your Wii and use that as background music.

That's it for the obligatory graphics and sound stuff. Of course it's all about the racing. How are the controls and the handling? How are the tracks? And that's where Nintendo delivers the goods.

The controls
Do you remember Mario Kart on the SNES? And on the N64 Wave Race and 1080 Snowboarding? In those three the controls where perfect, easy to pick up and still deep enough to keep getting better at it. And now we can add Excite Truck to this list. In this game we find the superb drifting of Mario Kart, the continous tweaking of your steering as found in Wave Race (there as a reaction to the waves, here reacting to the off-road environment). And finally the delicate jumping and landing system of 1080 (and ExciteBike of course).

The controls are quite different here though. You'll probably recognize this: Your girlfriend, your little sister or maybe your dad joins you for a few laps on your favorite race game. And while they're bouncing from side to side on screen, they're swaying themselves too, tilting the controller left and right. In the heat of the battle you may be doing this yourself too. If so, then you'll have to try Excite Truck, because there you must steer like that.

You'll use only two buttons of the controller, the "2" button on the right for the throttle and the "+" button on the left for the turbo boost (no need to brake here). The steering is done by tilting the control: tilt to the left to go left, tilt to the right and you'll go right. The car even responds to this while it is in the air (I already told you there's little realism here). You can also tilt the controller backwards to make it jump farther or forwards to land nicely on four wheels (which gives you a free boost).

It takes some time to get used too, but after a few minutes it feels very natural. The controller can detect very small movements, so it is possible to make subtle steering corrections, better than using an analog stick.

The racing
Before you can start on the races you have to complete the first part of the Tutorial. As long as you haven't you just cannot choose the menu option "Excite Race". Seems weird, but during the Tutorial you'll understand why. If you would just start with the Excite Race then you would miss half of the fun, it's essential to learn all ins and outs of the controls first. But don't think it'll be easy after that. It'll take many laps before you will win your first race.

The Excite Race exists of four cups (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum), each having several races. Initially only Bronze cup is available. By completing all races in the Bronze cup you can unlock the Silver cup, etc... And I am saying "completing", not "winning". One completes a race by scoring the necessary number of stars (this is a Nintendo game after all), usually this is between 100 and 150 stars. Winning a race gets you 50 stars, arrive second and you'll receive 25 stars. Other ways to score stars are long jumps, long drifts, crashing into your opponents, jumping through rings and a few other stunts.
The result of this setup is that you can complete a race without winning it, just by scoring many stars with stunts and jumps. And once in while it even happens that you win a race without completing it. The latter is quite rare though, because in most races you have to go all out to win (taking shortcuts by long jumps, pushing your oppponents of the road, picking up powerups, etc...), so you will automatically score many stars doing that.

Speaking about powerups: On the track you will find "POW" icons. When you drive through you will be a bit faster for a short while and you will be able to drive through trees (Nintendo fans will recognize the principle). Even more bizar are the exclamation marks, if you pick these up the terrain will change: a hill suddenly appears, a bridge opens, a tower collapses, etc... This serves two purposes: annoying your opponents and enabling short-cuts and super jumps.

And so?
You have probably gathered by now that Excite Truck is not aiming for realism. But that's exactly what makes this game great. All those bizar jumps, turbo boosts and especially the short-cuts are great. It's so cool to finally find out where you have to jump off the track to make the perfect landing a little farther, perfectly lined up for the next curve. And grabbing the last second that was needed to win the race.

This sure isn't an easy game, one seldomly completes a race on the first try. Sometimes it will take you twenty tries, but it never gets annoying because each run you will be just a little closer to the minimum score and because you keeping discovering new short-cuts.

Do you own a Wii and are you prepared to let go of reality? Then I recommend to run to your nearest video game store to get Excite Truck. I won't go as far as saying that this game is worth buying a Wii for, but it's pretty close."

"I reserved Excite Truck the day I got my Wii. I got the chance to play it before it was out and I quite liked the handling of the steering. When I started playing Monster 4x4 a few months ago my hopes for Excite Truck went down. That game sucked. So a few weeks ago I got the game, but I put it with my other Wii games. I wasn't going to play it anytime soon. Two days ago I finally got around to putting it in my Wii. I was happily surprised.

The game that got me excited the first time I played it was back. This is pretty cool. Ofcourse steering in mid-air and alot of other stuff just isn't possible in the real world, it's a great fun arcade racing game. Playing the tutorial got me going. With the Bronze Cup to start with I was on my merry way. I heard from Alwin that you don't need to finish 1st (as with most racing games ofcourse) but you had to get a certain amount of stars to complete the race.

This is new to me but to some of you PGR fans this looks a lot like kudos right? Anyway, you score stars by jumping through rings, making good airtime, nice landings, timing your boosts, crashing down other trucks, driving near trees and doing stunts in mid-air. When you finish first, as a bonus, you get 50 extra stars. This usually boosts you to the right amount you need to get in order to finish the race. The A.I. is pretty simple to beat at first, and it does get harder later on in the game. The first 2 cups are do-able without retrying one single race. I got in trouble in the 3rd race of the 3rd Cup - but still managed after one or two more tries.

It's weird to finish second or even third and still completing a course, but that's the game and it's fine with me. After finishing all cups you unlock the Super Excite Mode with the same cups. Finish them and you get the Diamond Cup which only contains the Crystal Road on Nebula (in space). I'm not there yet, but I want to get there :) - sounds like a fun course. I've also heard you can unlock Mirror Mode, but I don't care much about that.

I've played the 'jump through rings' or 'drive through small gates' or 'ram other trucks' special modes, and I'm not very excited about them, I'll probably not touch them anytime soon. I do like the multiplayer mode, cause it gives you a little bit more competition than the A.I.

I'm giving it a 7. It's a fun racing game and you should get it if you haven't already."