Excite Truck for Nintendo Wii
- ESRB Rating: E - (Everyone)
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Genre: Racing / Driving
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Excite Truck - A fun and innovative way to play a racing game
Pros
Fun
Cons
Conrolls take getting used to - try the tutorial first.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
A fun way to play a racing game.
One of the first games we purchased for the Wii was Excite Truck, mainly because both my youngest son and I love racing games and he thought it looked neat.
Excite Truck is a good showcase for the new Wii Remote and makes it a bit more challenging for a racing game, but still loads of fun.
Story
As with most racing games, there is no story, you just race trucks to advance in the game and unlock new trucks and tracks. No complicated puzzles to figure out or anything like that, just good old truck racing.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics are OK, nothing spectacular here, but that's not what they were aiming for. I would compare it to older PS2 games as far as the graphics go. As far as the sound goes, I haven't really paid too much attention to it, at least it's not annoying music. One thing they added though, you can listen to your own MP3 music files, just load them on a SD card, pop it in and go to the sound options and choose your own music. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Gameplay
First thing I suggest you do is go through the Tutorial, it will help with the tricks you have to do in the races to earn stars.
Other than the Tutorial, you have three options Excite Race, Challenge or Versus.
Most of what you will be playing is the Excite Race. You get to choose your Cup, you start with bronze and unlock the others, Course, Vehicle and color. Once the race starts you'll be racing against five CPU trucks. The point is to not just win the race, but gain as many stars as you can. You gain the stars by the tricks or stunts you do during the race and by the position you finish in the race. You can gain stars by getting air, drifting, tree runs, air spins and truck throws, just to name a few. This is why I mentioned doing the tutorial first, it will show you how to do these tricks.
If you gain enough stars, you will unlock the next level and you can unlock even more things. They will tell you at the beginning of each race how many stars you have to get to unlock the next level, so keep that in mind, you may want to do more tricks to earn the stars and finish second instead of going for the win with less tricks.
Other modes of the game are Challenge, where you can choose from three different types of challenges or the Versus mode, where you race against another person via split screen. One warning though, the challenges can be pretty hard if you don't have the hang of controlling the truck via the Wii Remote.
Controlls
With the Wii Remote they took racing to a whole new level. Instead of using the D-pad or an analog stick, you hold the controller horizontally (buttons face up) and steer the truck by tilting the controller right or left. Sounds fairly simple, but it takes getting used to. You use the 2 button for the gas and the 1 button for the brakes, the way they have you hold the controller makes these buttons easily accessible. The other two buttons you'll use are the plus button, to pause the game and the D-pad for turbo boost. A note about the turbo boost, don't continuously hold it down or your truck will overheat! Also, tilting the controller forward or backwards will move the nose of your truck up or down, a helpful hint when trying to get those perfect landings for an extra turbo boost.
Conclusion
While it does take getting used to playing a racing game this way, it is a lot of fun. Our favorite mode is the Excite Race mode, I'm not good at the challenges and I just don't like the split screen with the versus. Even my 8 year old son has fun playing this, he doesn't focus too much on the gaining stars, as the rest of us do, but he likes to do the tricks like tree runs and truck throws.
This is a game where if you play for hours on end and are good at it, you can get through the game fairly quickly from what I've heard. We haven't overplayed the game yet and still seem to have a while to go. This is just a game to have fun with.
If you're looking for a game, especially for kids, to add to your game list for your Wii, I definitely suggest you take a look at Excite Truck. It's not made to be realistic or anything like that, it shows what the Wii Remote can do and you can just have fun with it.
Excite Truck is a good showcase for the new Wii Remote and makes it a bit more challenging for a racing game, but still loads of fun.
Story
As with most racing games, there is no story, you just race trucks to advance in the game and unlock new trucks and tracks. No complicated puzzles to figure out or anything like that, just good old truck racing.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics are OK, nothing spectacular here, but that's not what they were aiming for. I would compare it to older PS2 games as far as the graphics go. As far as the sound goes, I haven't really paid too much attention to it, at least it's not annoying music. One thing they added though, you can listen to your own MP3 music files, just load them on a SD card, pop it in and go to the sound options and choose your own music. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Gameplay
First thing I suggest you do is go through the Tutorial, it will help with the tricks you have to do in the races to earn stars.
Other than the Tutorial, you have three options Excite Race, Challenge or Versus.
Most of what you will be playing is the Excite Race. You get to choose your Cup, you start with bronze and unlock the others, Course, Vehicle and color. Once the race starts you'll be racing against five CPU trucks. The point is to not just win the race, but gain as many stars as you can. You gain the stars by the tricks or stunts you do during the race and by the position you finish in the race. You can gain stars by getting air, drifting, tree runs, air spins and truck throws, just to name a few. This is why I mentioned doing the tutorial first, it will show you how to do these tricks.
If you gain enough stars, you will unlock the next level and you can unlock even more things. They will tell you at the beginning of each race how many stars you have to get to unlock the next level, so keep that in mind, you may want to do more tricks to earn the stars and finish second instead of going for the win with less tricks.
Other modes of the game are Challenge, where you can choose from three different types of challenges or the Versus mode, where you race against another person via split screen. One warning though, the challenges can be pretty hard if you don't have the hang of controlling the truck via the Wii Remote.
Controlls
With the Wii Remote they took racing to a whole new level. Instead of using the D-pad or an analog stick, you hold the controller horizontally (buttons face up) and steer the truck by tilting the controller right or left. Sounds fairly simple, but it takes getting used to. You use the 2 button for the gas and the 1 button for the brakes, the way they have you hold the controller makes these buttons easily accessible. The other two buttons you'll use are the plus button, to pause the game and the D-pad for turbo boost. A note about the turbo boost, don't continuously hold it down or your truck will overheat! Also, tilting the controller forward or backwards will move the nose of your truck up or down, a helpful hint when trying to get those perfect landings for an extra turbo boost.
Conclusion
While it does take getting used to playing a racing game this way, it is a lot of fun. Our favorite mode is the Excite Race mode, I'm not good at the challenges and I just don't like the split screen with the versus. Even my 8 year old son has fun playing this, he doesn't focus too much on the gaining stars, as the rest of us do, but he likes to do the tricks like tree runs and truck throws.
This is a game where if you play for hours on end and are good at it, you can get through the game fairly quickly from what I've heard. We haven't overplayed the game yet and still seem to have a while to go. This is just a game to have fun with.
If you're looking for a game, especially for kids, to add to your game list for your Wii, I definitely suggest you take a look at Excite Truck. It's not made to be realistic or anything like that, it shows what the Wii Remote can do and you can just have fun with it.
