Excite Truck review (Wii)

Excitebike was an all time classic game, great in its day and still fondly remembered now. It is arguable that it’s responsible for the mass of racing/stunt games we have today, and not just the motocross variety.

It took a break with the SNES before reappearing on the N64 as Excitebike 64, the same thing has happened again with GameCube missing out on an instalment in the series. And now we get Excite Truck which, apart from the transition from two wheels to four, is true to the spirit of its predecessors.

Keep on Trucking

At the heart of Excite Truck is it’s single player game which is split in to two modes, race and challenge. In race mode you have to work your way through a series of races, divided in to different levels, bronze, silver gold and platinum. There’s not many races to each level though, with bronze giving you four races and every other level five.

This gives you only 19 tracks, plus one more on super excite difficulty, which does make for quite a compact single player experience. But you won’t finish it as quickly as you might think, as although things start off nice and easy the difficulty of the game ramps up pretty high by the time you reach the platinum races. Most people will find it enough of a challenge finishing the game on regular excite level, super excite difficulty is really just there for the hardcore players. Challenge mode is a bit different, here you are given three different challenge types, gate, ring and crush.

In gate challenges you’ll be given a few seconds on the timer and have to pass through gates to get extra time and score points, miss more than a couple of gates in a row and that’s pretty much game over. Ring Challenges involves making jumps through giant airborne rings, each consecutive ring you pass through scores more and more points, but miss one and the score level drops.

Finally is Crush challenge, which is best described as a single player demolition derby, you’re given a set amount of time and a massive cross country arena and using a radar have to find and crash into so many trucks before the timer reaches zero. Using your turbo boost to crash the trucks will double your score for them and any time left over when you’ve met your quota of trucks is converted in to more points. These challenges are a nice distraction from the main races, it’s just a shame they aren’t playable in multiplayer.

First place isn’t everything

Unlike most arcade racers, in Excite Truck passing the finish post first doesn’t guarantee you the win, first place don’t mean jack if you haven’t got the stars to match. Much like the Xbox's Project Gotham series Kudos system you earn stars by the way you drive.

Drifting, getting air, smashing other trucks and a whole load of stunts will earn you stars, this works well in the single player races where you have to meet a target amount of stars to progress to the next race, but in multiplayer it can be quite frustrating beating a friend to the finish line only to lose because he was driving that bit more dangerously and picked up more stars. But taking the risks, going for the big stunts, is what makes the game fun, combine that with the motion controls, where you hold the Wiimote like a SNES pad and tilt it to steer, and you’re looking at a lot of fun.

There could have been so much more fun to be had though, as the multiplayer is pretty limited, supporting only two players. I can understand the developer not wanting to split the screen up more, as well as squishing each players windows up to much it could have affected the game's performance.

You really want as many frames per second as possible with a game like this, I don’t think I’ve seen another racer, bar the latest Burnouts, that convey a sense of speed so well. Still, the game could have included a wireless LAN option so you could hook up a couple of Wii, and an online mode would have been perfect for a game like this, Nintendo really need to pull its finger out and get online sorted.

Easy on the eyes and ears

Whilst the gameplay sparkles on its own, the presentation hasn’t been skimped on, graphically the game is very sharp. All the trucks are nicely detailed and shiny and the scenery is none too shabby either, although you’ll be flying past it at a fair old pace you still get a nice impression of the locale, be it swampy woodland, tropical jungle or icy wilderness. There’s no doubting the power of the Wii when you see this game in motion, with nice crisp graphics and lighting effects whizzing along at a high framerate, this isn’t just GameCube 1.5.

The sound matches up to the visuals nicely too, with some great sound effects and music. Engine noises sound nice and throaty and really convey the power these turbo charged monsters would have, plenty of crashing noises for collisions too. The sound effects are laid over a really rocking guitar soundtrack that fit’s the game perfectly, but if it’s not to your taste you have the option, for the first time on a Nintendo console, of using custom soundtracks, just stick your favourite songs on to an SD card and slot it in just under the Wii disk slot.

Don’t get too excited

With Excite Truck what you get for your money is a good arcade racer with a twist, single player is short but challenging, and although the multiplayer is limited it’s a lot of fun jostling with a friend on the sofa. It’s not the sort of game that you’ll play for long sittings though, it’s fun in short bursts and it’s got the kind of pick up and playability that will have you reaching for it when you have a few minutes spare.

The game is nicely polished and there is the possibility of the game's faults being corrected via Wiiconnect, with online play added this could be a killer game. If you’re looking for a serious racer this isn’t for you, but if you just want some quick arcade style action this could be right up your street.