Excite Truck Review

When I overhear people talk of the “good old days” (i.e. the NES), one game which is always mentioned is Excitebike. Its fame is forever, and anyone who knows it cherishes it. So it’s surprising Nintendo hasn’t capitalized on its popularity. Excitebike 64 was okay, but there has been little else to get… er… uh… excited over. Though Excite Truck shares a similar name, it is not so much a brother to Excitebike as it is a distant cousin. But it still comes from the same family, and we all know this is a pretty good group of kids.

Being a launch title, Excite Truck manages to accomplish a lot. Specifically, its graphics are among the more impressive of the Wii games so far. Despite what naysayers say (those who think every Wii game should look as good as every Xbox 360 game, which is just wistful thinking), this one’s pretty. The sprawling countrysides are brought to life with clean and convincing textures, the framerate rarely to never falters, and motion blur is used in all the right places to convey a great sense of speed. But the best thing about Excite Truck is how the terrain morphs in real-time when certain power-ups are hit. Seeing a bridge collapse and a mountain sprout up in front of your eyes as you blaze through a forest is pretty neat. There’s no denying this game is cool.

On the other hand, Excite Truck features one of the worst soundtracks I have ever heard. It kind of resembles the rock/metal of the Guilty Gear series but is much, much more annoying than it is cool. This is the kind of music that rebellious teenagers in cheesy TV shows play in their rooms while the mother pounds on the door and yells, “Turn that racket off!” You know what I’m talking about. A neat, little feature, though, is how the music fades away when you’ve just gone off a big jump, then starts up again when you land. It helps give the impression you just caught some major air. But it’s still bad music. Fortunately, you can pop an SD card in and play your own music. This isn’t anything new to video games, yet it’s a nice feature when you want to have some kind of ambience with your reckless driving.

And Excite Truck delivers on that reckless driving. This game is akin to all those racers you used to wait in line to play at the arcade. It’s over-the-top and highly unrealistic. It’s all about going fast and catching big air. It’s a game where you drive a “big damn truck.” And it’s incredibly exhilarating. Narrowly escaping a collision with a big boulder or taking a shortcut over a forest are frequent occurrences. Most of this comes from the help of your boost. You can use it all you want given you don’t overheat your engine. Boosting off a cliff helps you fly farther, and landing your truck just right gives you even more boost. Needless to say, this is an essential part of the game and increases what is already an intense experience.

Races aren’t based entirely on getting first place, though. First place is only an extra measure to guarantee you have enough stars to pass that level. Every level requires a different number of stars, sometimes upwards of 150, and stars can be obtained by doing almost anything. Drifting. Driving too close to the trees. Smashing into other trucks. Suspended rings will also periodically appear which you can try to fly through for more points. You can even spin your truck around while in the air. All of this is great fun, but it feels like there needs to be more: more ways to earn stars, more ways to reward going off the trail, more tricks!

So it’s a little basic in some regards, but this is not your typical console racer. To control Excite Truck, you hold the remote on its side and tilt it left or right to turn. It sounds a little iffy, and it feels too responsive the first few times you play. Within ten minutes, though, you’ll have the hang of it, and I’d be surprised if you don’t start loving this setup over its contemporary rivals. It really works! Although… the battery cover latch on the controller tends to dig into your fingers. But who hasn’t thrown their arms around when playing a racing game, as if such movement actually helps? Well, now it does. Excite Truck channels that instinctual desire into the closest replication of an arcade machine you’ll find on a home console.

That doesn’t make Excite Truck without its faults, though. While I love just about everything about this gameplay, I can’t deny how annoying it is to crash so easily. Obviously, slamming into a tree head first isn’t going to bode well, but even just brushing up against a tree stalls your engine, flashes CRASH on the screen, and resets your position. I don’t know about you, but when I drive a big truck, I expect to be able to plow through some stuff. Crashing doesn’t put you very far behind, but it does put a limit on just how crazy you can get. And I like crazy.

I also like the game’s multiplayer mode, which is surprising. When I first heard Excite Truck only featured a 1-on-1 mode, I was ready to denounce the game a failure. Nintendo wants the Wii to be a family/party console, but the only game out of the gate to offer a decent multiplayer mode is Wii Sports. That Excite Truck lacks 4-player support is truly boggling. My guess is time constraints, because it’s unlikely impossible. Regardless, playing with just two people is okay. Because races are based on how many points you accumulate, the competition is still fierce even though one player might be miles ahead of the other. And it’s just a fun game overall, so having a friend tag along is certainly welcome. It’s unfortunate, then, for the game to offer so little as far as the course selection is concerned. There are about 20 different levels, true, but these actually stem from only a few different areas. Four Scotland levels sound like fun, but they all look and feel the same. In fact, I’m pretty sure two of them are the same.

Final Comments

Excite Truck, as hard as this is to believe, is one of the best Wii launch titles. It looks great and uses the motion-sensing technology well, putting to rest any fears you may have had about this system’s capabilities. It also captures the atmosphere of an arcade racer perfectly and is the best time you’ll have with a racing game this year. But you can’t ignore that Excite Truck has a rushed-for-launch feel to it. Nintendo’s got something special with this new franchise, and I really hope we see a revamped sequel with a lot more content. It has to happen. It has to.