Introduction:

 When I picked up my Wii on 11/19/06, I purchased three games. Zelda, Rayman, and Excite Truck. As soon as I popped this game into my Wii, I was about to have the best racing experience ever. All you ever did on those racing games was hold down on the A button and turn the analog stick to move, but after playin Excite Truck, I could never go back to the traditional way. In Excite Truck, you're still holding down on a button to accelerate, but you're tilting your Wii-Remote sideways as if it were actually a steering wheel! Onto my review.

Story:

No story to be had here, this is just a straight up racing game.

Gameplay:

Excite Truck isn't your typical racing game, you're actually doing other things during the race besides trying to place first. At the top of your television screen, you'll notice a star meter. The # of stars to the right is how many you need to collect in order to advance in the game's "Excite Mode". So during the race, you'll be tilting your Wii-Remote all over the race smashing into other trucks, speeding through trees without hitting a single one, drifting, catching huge air, and pulling off 360's all the while maintaining your lead. This adds to the challenge of the game and the sheer amount of innovation you experience throughout.

During your races in Excite Truck, you'll be able to attain a couple of power-ups that sweetens things up. If you hit an exclamation mark, you change the terrain. This can affect other racers and it gives you an advantage to get huge air and attain stars. If you grab a POW item, you'll go into hyper speed and zip past the competition. This power up is really cool because it makes you nearly invisible, you can smash into your opponents and tear their cars apart, you can zip past trees and attain stars while doing so, and easily make your way to the first place spot. Like I mentioned earlier, the Wii-Remote acts as your steering wheel. You tilt it back and forth to steer, and while your in the air, use it to push forward and perform 360 spins. This is a very unique racing game, and will please anyone who is a huge fan of the racing genre.

I give the gameplay: 8/10

Graphics:

There's not to much to see here. Obviously, the developers were focused on delivering a fun experience and not so much a visual experience. You will notice some detail on the trucks, as they are all different models with different paint jobs that give them their own unique flair, but besides that, there's not a whole lot to see here. The terrain is for the most part ugly, and small objects like rocks or trees just don't have any real visual appeal. If you want a stunning game, you may not appreciate this one.

I give the graphics: 6/10

Sound:

What's really cool about this game is that you can use an SD card that has your kind of music on it to play in this game. You can listen to the Goofy Goober Rock while you're playing this game. Hey, it beats listening to the undeniably repetitive southern heavy metal rock in this games soundtrack. As for the sound effects, this game sounds pretty cool. You can hear the roaring of the engines, the rusting metal when you smash into an opponent, the heavy rain drops as they strike the earth, the rumbling earth when you change the terrain, the...well, you get the picture Anyway, the ability to download your MP3 files to this game makes the sound department score a lot higher in this game then it could've.

I give the sound: 7.5/10

Replayability:

This isn't what I would call a deep game. If you're expecting a 50 hour+ game like Zelda, you won't be happy. It will take you about 2-5 hours to beat Excite Mode, and then there's Super Excite Mode, which won't take you too much longer to beat. Once you do all that, you can try to attain S ranks in every Excite Mode race and SEM race to unlock mirror mode, which I found added to the replayability. There's also a Challenge Mode, which is totally just something Monster Games threw in. You have to do certain challenges such as pass through all the gates or smash this many trucks. It's just really pointless. Also, there's a multiplayer mode, which sucks. It's hard to enjoy when the split-screen is vertical and you can barely see what you're doing, it's almost as if they expected everyone who bought this would have a big TV. This game isn't deep, but there's enough in the single player mode that makes this game last at least 1-2 months.

I give the replayability: 7/10

Challenge:

This isn't a really challenging game. The difficulty of the AI gets harder as you progress, but the only real challenge is trying to attain all the S ranks in super excite mode or mirror mode. This isn't a hard game, but it's not easy either.

I give the challenge: 7.5/10

Frustration:

This is not a frustrating game at all. The only time you might get frustrated us when you realize you only one star away from attaining an S rank during a race.

I give the challenge: 1.5/10

Value:

This isn't a long game at all, but it's certainly easy to pick up and play. Let's say you're really bored one afternoon, this is the game you may want to pop into your Wii. Maybe then it will be worth your $40-$60. There definitely could've been more in this game, but for what it's worth...well, I hope you don't feel ripped off.

I give the value: 8/10

Overall:

Excite Truck is one of those games that you could pick up on a rainy afternoon and play for an hour or two, just to pass the time. This isn't a deep game at all, but it's not a bad one. If you want something easy to pick and play, this your go to game.

I give Excite Truck: 7.9/10

Conclusion:

Excite Truck is a game worth checking out, rent or buy. This will please any racing fan and makes a decent addition to anyone's Wii library. Thank you for taking the time to read this review and I hope this helped convince you whether or not to purchase this title.

Written By: Michael
Date Submitted: April 20th, 2007

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