Excite Truck

"The Best Game No One Played"

IGN voted Excite Truck as the Wii's best game that no one played for 2006. Even though I find the idea of awards for a system that's been out a month a little silly, I couldn't agree more.

Excite Truck mostly reminds me of F-Zero GX for the truck lover inside. It's a lot more casual too. F-Zero GX was brutal and required hours of game play to even hope to get anywhere, and, despite the title's speed, you usually didn't get anywhere fast.

When I first read about Excite Truck I heard about it being pretty shallow. And honestly, on my first two times sitting down and playing it, I found myself tearing through all of the tracks with relative ease. When I decided to sit down and S-rank all of the courses on Excite Mode is when the game got great for me.

The number of trucks almost doubled (up from 10 to 19) just entering Super Excite Mode, and each truck has an alternate paint job to unlock as well (through either racing 10 races or S-ranking 3 races), which leaves a lot of stuff to unlock. Add in the fact that all of your achievements get totalled into trophies and you'll find yourself playing this game just for own personal achievement.

The graphics are simple but get the job done. The game runs at a blistering 60 FPS and doesn't slow down. Similar to F-Zero GX, the textures don't NEED to be beautiful when they're blurring by at that speed. My only two griefs are you can sometimes see textures "re-rendering" while air-born (which is difficult to notice, usually) and that water can be extremely polygonal and blocky while viewed from the air (but it gets smoother when you come close). Neither of these are enough to effect game play or make me want to turn the game off.

The sound effects and music are all great. Nothing's over-the-top and overbearing, and even the sounds coming from the Wiimote speaker are never distracting. I'm personally a fan of music with heavy guitar work, but even if you aren't you can play your own music from MP3s stored on an SD card.

The only huge drawback is the tacked-on design of both stunts and the multi-player feature. Spins are just a nuisance to pull off, especially to chain, but luckily you can accomplish most without them. The multi-player mode is a simple 2 player mode with no computer racers, and of course, no on-line play. But all of these are bound to be improvements when we see a sequel.

Aside from the minor gripes, I strongly suggest Excite Truck as a release title. It's easy to pick up and play, and a load of fun, with a surprising amount to do. Especially if you enjoy racing, Nintendo, and Nintendo racing, I recommend this title.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/07