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Excite Truck: a must have game for the Wii

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 50 / 52
Date: November 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Excite Truck, in adding a vertical component to a standard racing game, has created one of the more enjoyable games that I've played in recent memory.

Controlling the trucks in Excite Truck is both unique and simple. Holding the standard Wii remote sideways (keep the d-pad under your left thumb and the 1 and 2 buttons under your right), you steer the truck by turning the controller. The courses feature many ramps from which you can launch your truck into the air and control how long it stays aloft by rotating the controller back toward you. And if you stick the landing, so to speak, by aligning all four of the truck's tires with the ground (again, by rotating the controller), you can get a speed boost.

The game play in Excite Truck is very compelling. The game offers a head-to-head mode that pits two racers against each other, but my friends and I preferred collaborating on clearing the levels. In a twist that is, in my experience, unique to Excite Truck, you do not clear a track based just on score. Instead, you must collect stars as you run through the course. Stars are granted for, among other things, jumps with long hang-times, daring runs through trees, hard slides through curves, and smashing other trucks. You can also get points for how you place in the race, but it is much more important to collect stars during the race as you cannot get an 'A' or 'B' for a course simply by coming in first. In fact, no matter how fast you race, your competitors will likely be able to match your pace, especially in the 'Gold' and 'Platinum' level tracks. It takes deft maneuvering at the end of the race to secure a first place finish in some of these later levels. All things considered, the focus on tricks and jumps makes for a very enjoyable game, especially for a group of players.

Quibbles:

• The initial setup of the game -- all of the game actually -- requires that you hold the remote sideways. However, no indication of this is given when you are asked to create save data at the beginning of the game, so you have to figure out on your own why pressing the up arrow moves the cursor to the left. Driving the menus with the standard Wii point-and-click interface would have been a useful improvement.
  
• The controls take some getting used to. Some of my friends had a tendency to try to steer with the directional pad. Others would over steer by turning the remote all the way past vertical when steering, which had unpredictable results. But a little more time with the game will probably get people used to the controls. (And, as a full disclaimer, none of the ones who had difficulty steering had completed the tutorials.)

All that aside, Excite Truck is a must-have game for the Nintendo Wii.

Excite Bike - Bike + Insanity + Truck = FUN GAME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Excite Truck is a launch game for the Nintendo Wii and is FANTASTIC! The game is perfect in nearly every way, so here's how:

PLAYING IT: Excite Truck is a simple game, really. You turn the Wii remote sideways and then tilt it left and right to steer your truck! '2' is accelerate. '1' is brake. And the D-Pad is turbo. And the D-pad is turbo. And the D-pad is turbo. And the D-pad is turbo. Get it?

GAMEPLAY: Excite Truck's winning conditions are unlike any other racing game. While it does help enormously to get in first place, the game is not a race, but a competition of points. To get these points you must do insane stuff: Going extremly close to tons of trees in a row, staying up in the air for seemingly hours, pulling off air spins, morphing the terrain and sending other trucks into the air, ramming straight into anything possible, and MORE!

GRAPHICS: Graphics are usually things that fans of other consoles taunt when it comes to Nintendo. But Excite Truck's are absolutley astounding! Water is realtisically rendered, dirt on the ground goes into the air when your truck lands, paint is thrown off of the truck when you crash, and coconuts fall from trees making the sand sprinkle when you crash into a palm tree!

COURSES: Perhaps this is where Excite Truck does not exceed so much. Each course is insanely fun and perfectly made, but they seem to be...similar. Too similar. Oftentimes, a new course you unlock is an exact replica of an old course you already beat, just taking a diffrent route every 5 seconds and then veering back to the old level.

TRUCKS: Another place. Excite Truck's trucks are made great, but almost every truck seems to have a clone. Of course, trucks like the Boulder, Dynamo and Alpine and expert cars, there seem to be wannabees of these cars, some that are short and long, which reangle the camera during a race more towards the ground.

EXTRAS: Excite Truck doesn't have many extras to speak of. You beat, 4 or 5 courses, and you unlock another 4 or 5. And when you do certain stuff, you get new trucks. Although working for the Diamond Cup in the Super Excite difficulty is defiently worth your frustration and time. Not to say that it needs extras,anyway. And even though not much comes from winning trophies of pulling of those 250 Super Tree Runs, you still can't help but just think 'but maybe..'

DIFFICULTY: Excite Truck seems to have uneven difficulty at times. The bronze cup is insanely easy, and the silver cup is a bit mixed, but the Gold Cup is INSANELY difficult, yet the platinum cup doesn't present much challenge, although it does contain the best courses in the game (landing that jump means racing on the GREAT WALL OF CHINA!) yet the secret Diamond Cup is amazingly difficult..I reccommend the Sargon for beating it.

MULTIPLAYER: People seem to complain that Excite Truck's two-player mode is boring. While it does seem dull compared to single player, its still a rousing good time with your friends. And there are no framerate issues!

REPLAY VALUE: Excite Truck has infinite replay value, not because of graphics, difficulty or anything like that, just because its fun. It's a fun game for all ages.

FINAL SCORE:
Gameplay: 9.8
Graphics: 9.2
Courses: 8.7
Trucks: 7.0
Extras: 6.3
Difficulty: 9.1
Multiplayer: 7.9
Replay Value: 10.0
TOTAL (Not Averaged): 9.7

Casual Gaming Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 18
Date: March 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Excite Truck might seem to be a straightforward truck dirt-racing game, but they include a number of interesting features like morphing terrain, super speed, and stunts.

The graphics are rather nice. You get a variety of terrain types - deserty mountains, snowy slopes, sandy dunes, tropical paradises, and much more. There are numerous models to choose from - four by fours, buggies, SUV styles, and other styles you can unlock as you go. You get all the colors of the rainbow to paint your vehicle.

The sound is reasonably good - what do you really care in a racing game? It's a collection of upbeat rock songs, along with the squeal-crash-wrrrrrr of the trucks racing.

The fantastic fun here is the actual racing. No, this isn't high end technical Indy car tuning. This is out and out fun, the kind where you have friends over for the afternoon and laugh yourselves silly with the moves you are making. You can play against friends, play with friends, or play on your own to get the longest jump, the most impressive crash, or any other of a number of stats.

That's because this game isn't just about who makes it to the finish line first. You have to gather up enough stars to win, too. Stars are earned by doing outrageous feats. Do a flip in the air, crash in an impressive manner, go for a long distance slide.

The courses make this fun to play and replay. There is lava rolling down at you, boulders crashing, landscapes changing before your eyes. These aren't courses you master in one pass. There's always something new to learn if you keep your eyes open.

The game is definitely family-friendly - grandparents can play with their grandkids and both would enjoy it.

Is there a downside? You could argue that the same is too "silly" - but that's its purpose. It isn't meant to be a serious racing game. Maybe the trucks are a little too shiny, but I find it hard to object. I think my biggest complaint is that you can only have two trucks in multi-player, and it's just head-to-head. It'd be cool if you had more than 2 players, or 2 players in a regular field with computer-controlled enemies, or co-op modes on the real courses.

Still, these are minor complaints. The game is quite fun.

Well recommended!

Brilliant Use of the New Wii!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First off, this game's graphics are not mind-blowing. They are very good, but they are not as beautiful as the Xbox 360 or the Playstation 3. That said, that is not the reason that you buy this game. The game has amazing replayability because of it's amazing controls and fun factor. You turn the Wii remote on its side and use it as a steering wheel. When on a massive jump, use the "steering wheel" to change your pitch and land safely. Perfect landings are met with speed boosts. Playing this game with friends is a blast. Your friends will be wowed by the controls and then wowed by the fun they're having.

I have played several of the Wii games already and this is my favorite!

Must buy!

Good, Clean, Addictive Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As someone who grew up playing Excitebike on the NES, I harbor a lot of fondness for the series. When I saw that there was a new installment on the Wii, I couldn't resist trying it out. Just as its predecessors, Excite Truck is a triumph of playability and fun, and a worthy addition to your game library.

Before you start playing, you're forced to create a profile and take the tutorial before you can start racing. You'll cover the basics and get a feel for the controls, which definitely take a couple races to understand and become comfortable, but once you've got that out of the way they'll really feel intuitive. It really tickled me time and time again to sit down and play this game simply due to the controls; turning the remote like a steering wheel is really satisfying, more so than any steering peripheral I've used for PS2 or Xbox. The same freedom of movement can be debilitating, though, as you have to hold the remote fairly still if you want to go straight, and if you turn the remote too far you can lose control of your truck momentarily. These are small gripes, but my younger brothers (10 and 12) had these problems with the controls, so take note if you plan on buying for someone younger than 13.

Most of my big complaints have nothing to do with the racing itself, but rather with the game's interface. As I mentioned before, you have to create your own profile before you can start racing. What I'd hoped when I saw this was that I would be able to have multiplayer races against my brothers, each of us representing our own profile on the game, but this is not the case. (Maybe Wii Sports has spoiled me.) You have to choose a profile, and that's the one you're stuck in. On a similar note, the game will let you know when you break a record within your profile for longest drift and air. However, rather than making these exclusive to the track, motivating you to get the biggest air you can off that one jump, these records pertain to every race you do. What could have been a great source of replay value instead feels irrelevant.

Trifles aside, Excite Truck is an extremely fun game. The graphics are similar to the PS2's more recent Burnout titles, which is fine by me. There's an option to load your own music in place of the soundtrack if you have some sort of data card, but I don't know anything about this, and the in-game music was pretty good anyway. There are tons of different trucks with different stats, allowing a multitude of different playing styles, and the tracks are equally diverse and well designed - it ranks with Wii Sports in sheer playability and fun factor.

I recommend it to anyone who owns a Wii.

Embodies what the Wii is supposed to represent -- FUN!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Although it make take a little while to get used to the controls (especially seasoned gamers), this game is one of the best games on the Wii and epitomizes what the Wii is supposed to be -- emphasizing fun over everything else. The greatest thing about this game is that it levels the playing field between casual and "hardcore" gamers. Because there are so many ways to gain stars (winning the race only gives you a measly 15 points against another player) I am a casual gamer who prefers less involving games to play in my free time, and I found myself regularly beating very experienced gamers.

Complaints: The manual leaves much to be desired and doesn't explain gameplay very well. I really wish there were more environments (those that are included are AWESOME though). And despite the amount of replayability on this game, I pretty much exhausted all of the unlockables in less than a week.

A really FUN game - my favorite so far!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I picked this up along with Zelda when buying the Wii. This game is not for those who like realistic driving games, the physics are nothing short of just silly/insane.
...but it is SO FUN! I love how you get stars for "nice crashes" and running other trucks off the road. The action is fast and the driving is very intuitive. (provided you use the tutorials - they teach you all the stunts). It's not too hard, anyone can play, and it's just fun. I love flying through the air and morphing the terrain of the track around me.

Highly Recommended, don't overlook this game!

Really fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A lot of the online reviews say that this game is only half good, but it is my favorite game to play on the Wii. Doing tricks and stunts with a truck is just a lot of fun. And you get bonus points for ramming your opponents.

If it were only like that on real roads...

Excite Truck is "next-gen" gaming material....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: November 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have only played this game for what 20 minutes and in the first 5 fell in love w/the game.I liked the stage where you can get on to the Great Wall of China(I think thats what it is).And my dad played this and for 4 minutes and gave the wii a 8/10!He said it could go up if he played more.The controls are so easy and fun!!!I highly recommend this to any wii gamer or person who is getting a wii.

Funtastic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is just plain fun. Controls work very well and there is great intensity because of the speed the game creates. I've only played one player mode, since I can't find a second wiimote, but I likes what I've seen.

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