Excite Truck review video (Wii)
In the grand racing tradition of Excitebike, get ready for a big-air experience like no other as players rocket their trucks across dynamically changing terrain. Remember tilting your arms while playing Excitebike to try to make your character land a huge jump? Well, that experience is finally a reality with Excite Truck, a wild, off-road race only possible on Nintendos Wii console.
Players hold the Wii Remote like an NES controller to control the truck. The 2 button is the accelerator, the 1 button is the brake, the + Control Pad is the turbo… but that’s just the beginning. Tilt the Wii Remote right and left like a steering wheel to steer. Once the truck goes airborne, tilt the Wii Remote every which way to line up perfect landings for turbo boosts. Pick up items on the courses to make the terrain deform in real time, turning innocent bumps into massive launch pads that affect not only the player’s route, but that of his or her rivals. Players jump and bump their way to the highest score and highest finish.
Inexact controls and lack of depth relegates this game to rental status. Find out more in this Excite Truck video review.
To quote the video review: “Playing Excite Truck will get your blood pumping for a while due to its incredible sense of speed, but the speed is also what ultimately kills it. With the controls not where they should be, it can be incredibly difficult to keep your 4×4 on the course, and not wrapped around a tree.
Excite Truck has about as much in common with Excite Bike as Mario Kart does. Looking at the game on its own merits, it’s a shallow experience with a simple, yet finicky control scheme. We’d be lying if there weren’t more than a few times where we wished we could simply use an analog stick. Its high-flying sense of speed is something to experience, but there’s not enough here in terms of depth or tight gameplay to recommend someone spend their money on it, making Perfect for a Rental Truck a more apt title for this one.”
Design — 5.5
Gameplay — 7.2
Overall — 6.5
