Excite Truck

"It's like the best parts of Mario Kart and Burnout mixed with Monster Trucks"

The arcade-style racing of Mario Kart, the speed and thrills of Burnout, and big trucks... definitely a great combination. Here's my thoughts on it.

Graphics: 10/10
First off, I'd like to get one thing out of the way - comparing Wii graphics with Xbox 360/PS3 graphics is pointless. Not only is there no component cable yet (which I highly look forward to), we've known for a long time that the graphics in the Wii are not as powerful as the other next-gen systems. I give the graphics a 10 based on their strengths rather than giving them a low score by comparing them to other systems. They'll only get better when that component cable is released, assuming you have a TV that supports 480p of course.

The draw distance in this game is great. You can see quite a ways down the track as you're flying through the air. The detail in the levels is impressive as well. There's plenty of leafy trees to drive through, shiny reflective water, fire coming out of exhaust pipes, dust flying through the air as you whip around corners, and fun environmental effects such as a volcano shooting flaming rocks that crash into the course. Also, the frame rate is great and the game moves at a very fast pace without lagging.

Gameplay: 10/10
Excellent. All the elements of the gameplay come together quite nicely, so I'm gonna briefly go over how it works and how it comes together.

First off, the turbo system. In this game there's no turbo limit, but rather there's a temperature gauge. If you turbo too much you'll overheat and slow down. If you don't turbo enough you'll fall behind. The trick is to cool yourself off as much as possible by flying through the air and driving through water, which makes your gauge cool off much faster. Also, you can get a free turbo if you press the button right after you jump (Turbo Jump) and if you land with all wheels evenly on the ground after the jump (Nice Landing). With these two types of turbo, it won't heat up your gauge and you get a nice burst of speed. Managing turbo effectively is critical to get good rankings in the races.

Next, there's the land changing icons. If you hit the icon with your car the landscape will deform in real time, which can create new jumps, lower roads to reveal puddles of water, make things explode to alter the track, put rings in the air to fly through, and more. They can be a help or a hindrance, and sometimes require you to change your tactics on the fly to take advantage of the new terrain. You can also get a bonus for sending other trucks flying by altering the ground below them, but that's more reliant on luck than on skill.

There's plenty of driving techniques in the game. The most important one is airtime. In the air your turbo gauge cools off faster, you can perform tricks and fly through rings for bonuses, get a nice landing for a huge boost, fly over other vehicles and parts of the track to save time, etc. Plus, when you're flying through the air you can get a good look at what's coming up which is nifty. Another technique in this game is crashing. Wrecking other vehicles gets you a bonus depending on how much you wreck them, and if you crash or get taken out by someone else you can hit the 2 button repeatedly to reenter the race with a free turbo. You'll still be behind in the race, but the turbo helps to get you caught up quite nicely. Also, there's bonuses for drifting, dodging trees, and how well you place in the race.

Finally, the star system. This is how all the other elements of the game come together. You get stars for many of the things I mentioned earlier, such as tricks, rings, drifting, tree dodging, wrecking, airtime, etc. Also, you get a star bonus for your rank in the race when you finish. First place gets you the biggest bonus of 50 stars, followed by 25 for second and so on and so forth with 6th getting you nothing. The key to finishing higher in the race is turboing, and the key to getting a good score is getting lots of stars. So you have to turbo as much as possible and use as many techniques as possible simultaneously to get the max amount of stars. To pass a race you need at least a "B" rank, and the ranks range from D to S (as far as I've seen, they could go higher/lower than that). It's a very clever way to have all the aspects of the game come together, and it balances out quite nicely. Overall I love the gameplay system.

Controls - 9/10
The controls are nice and easy, yet effective. You accelerate and brake with the 1 and 2 buttons, turbo with the D Pad, and turn the remote to steer. It's simple and effective. I've heard complaints about the sensitivity of turning, but I've had no problems with it myself. Some people would have liked to adjust the sensitivity through an options menu, but I feel that it's fine the way it is. Adjusting to the sensitivity is just part of the learning curve. My only complaint comes from the air spin technique. I think it's a bit awkward and hard to pull off, but it's such a minor part of gameplay it hardly makes a difference.

Multiplayer: N/A
I have only played multiplayer a little bit so far, so I'm not gonna score it quite yet. Instead, I'll give my initial impressions and thoughts.

I had tons of fun with it, but not enough playtime to give it a thorough analysis. As fun as it is to charge through the courses in single player, it's also quite satisfying to do it in multiplayer and mess with your friends. There's nothing quite like sending your truck 500 feet into the air only to land directly on top of your friend and annihilate her, or to activate a terrain change at just the right moment and suddenly launch your friend's truck.

Audio: 7/10
The music is okay. It suits the game well but didn't really thrill me all that much. If you don't like it at all you do have the option of playing your own music off of the SD card, which is nice. I really like the sound effects, although hearing some of them through the Wii Remote is rather odd. I'd prefer if all the sound effects came out of the TV for this particular game, but it doesn't detract from the gameplay at all - it's just my opinion.

Rent/Buy?
I'd say buy it. I really love this game and I highly recommend buying it, but if you're unsure there's always the option to rent it before you drop $50 of your hard-earned cash on it.

Overall: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/06