REVIEW: Excite Truck for Wii

REVIEW
Excite Truck
Wii
Nintendo
Monster Games

Reviewer: Eric Leamen

Excite Truck is an arcad style racer, with a ton of smashin' and crashin' thrown in! Being the Wii's debut racing game, it's not as deep as I would have liked it to be, but it get's the job done.

The main career mode in Excite Truck won't take you very long to complete, however the goal is not necesarrily to end up in 1st place. The objective in each course is to earn enough stars by performing a variety of tricks and stunts. But don't be fooled, because the 1st place winner recieves a hefty number of bonus stars to add to his total! The basic controls are 2 to accelerate, 1 to brake, tilt the Wii remote to steer, and push down on the D-pad to boost.

Since this is a racing game, there isn't really a need for complicated motion sensing controls. But steering is very responsive, although it will take a while to get used to, due to the speed of the game.

Tricks are very easy to pull off. While in the air, you can do spins by violently flicking the remote, you can perform drifts on the ground, you can collect rings while going off jumps, etc. One of the best tricks, and the hardest to pull off, is the Truck Smash. When you're going full speed, and you slam into another racer, you can earn some serious stars! All of these tricks and more are explained in the games tutorial mode, which is a good place to start off if you've never played before.

When jumping, you can boost right after take off to get and extra burst of speed and height. This is so useful when you're trying to do a 360 air spin. But boosting can be a dangerous thing. Do it too much, and you can overheat. Luckily, almost every course features some sort of water, in which you can cool down!

The graphics in Excite Truck are superb for Wii. There are little or no graphical flaws or glitches. Certain elements, like the trucks and the water, look really good, although I've seen better on the Wii. Personally, I'm not one for high def graphics, so I didn't pay much attention, it's mostly about the gameplay.

When I said the game isn't very deep, I meant that there aren't a lot of stages, little vehicle customization, and very few unlockables. You start out with a wide selection of trucks, and the others are unlockable, yet very easy to obtain. It basically happens by accident. You can select a truck based on criteria like speed and air, and then choose a colour. Race 10 times with each truck to unlock a new paint job.

There are only 6 different countries that you can race in: Canada, Mexico, Finland, Fiji, China, and Scotland. Each country has an average of 3 different stages, depending on how many times that country appears in each racing level.

There are 4 different racing levels: Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Platinum. Once each country in each level is completed in "Excite Mode", you can unlock "Super Excite Mode". To do so, you must obtain an S grade in every country in every level. Sounds complicated, huh? Throughout each stage, you will encounter little "!" coins on the track. These are called teraformers. When you hit one, the terrain will shift, sometimes dramatically. This can be good if you can use it to stall some of the other racers, like if a giant hill pops up in front of them. Or, it can backfire, say if you get hit by falling boulders?

Excite Truck also features a multiplayer mode, where you, uh, race againts one friend. Only 2 player multiplayerAnd that's it. There is also a challenge mode, including challenges like Rings and Gates.

Overall, Excite Truck is a great first racer for the Wii. It's super fun and very replayable, due to the fact that you can just pick up and play.

Gameplay: 7
Story: 0
Graphics: 8
Controls: 8
Re-playability: 10
Tilt: 8

Editor's Score: 7/10