Excite Truck - 2nd Play

I select the Alpine in nighthawk black, a special paint job that I earned by getting three S scores while driving the same truck. I’ve finished the bronze and silver cups and have only one race to complete in order to move on to the platinum and final cup. I select China and prepare to race alongside the Great Wall through the hills and forests of the countryside. 3 … 2 … 1 … I hit turbo and nudge a couple of the other trucks to earn some truck smash points. After a big turn where I drifted for three more stars I run through an exclamation trigger and the ground begins to rumble. In front of me I see the earth rise to form a huge hill and I notice one of the leader’s trucks flipping over in the air after the ground underneath it popped it up and tossed it about. That means a couple extra stars for me. As I hit the top of the hill, I hit the turbo again and launch forward into the air, flying down for a perfect landing and super nice speed boost.

As I have progressed and spent a few more hours with Excite Truck I’m having a good time. Most of my enjoyment comes from the new controls and the more I play the more I improve and appreciate them. The fun continues with a great sense of speed and entertaining course layouts. One moment that stands out is when you are in Fiji and there are two stretches of sand filled track that are like tunnels surrounded by palm trees. The experience of barreling through these shootswhile  making subtle adjustments with the Wii Remote to maintain control is completely exhilarating. It’s a good sign when the fun lasts over time; however, there are some things about this game that have not aged so well.

The visuals were something that during the Bronze and even Silver cups I found to be pretty good. There are definitely some nice graphical details like draw distance, car reflections, lighting, and some cool speed tunneling blur-like effects that make a great looking presentation. However, as I was racing in the Gold cup I started to notice some ugliness. Some notable issues include when you catch some serious air and are soaring above the track, which happens quite often in this stage, there’s an awful lot of pop-in of both scenery objects like trees and bushes as well as just general ground textures. The weather effects are another feature with an implementation that is pretty lacking. Rain appeared as lines coming down and had a really technically dated look to them.

In addition to the graphical blemishes above the music is just simply no good. It’s just one bad guitar riff after another. With some rare exceptions, hard rock game soundtracks just don’t do it for me; often rock tunes come out on the cheesy side. Game music bias and genre preferences aside, these tunes are just not good. On the bright side, if you have an SD card and load some MP3s on it you can play your own tunes. I sure wish I had an SD card as I could see adding a little rock spice of my own to the mix. I’d likely give The Faith Healers or Swervedriver a go. Those are two favorites of mine for some heavy driving music.

The scoring system where you earn stars for different tricks is also tied to game achievements and trophies that you can rack up. When you get a five star super air score for gliding for a long time it gets logged as an achievement. All of the super moves do that including the drift, truck smash, and tree runs to name a few. The problem is aside from keeping track of your records it’s not clear at this point what if any effect on the game these achievements have. The only one so far that has done anything is when I won three races with the highest S rank with the same truck; it unlocked a new paint job. Nothing too exciting. I’m hoping that there will be some more interesting unlockables, but for some reason I’m not holding my breath.

I have yet to try the multiplayer mode as well as the challenge modes as I have been focusing on the single player Excite races. There is an inactive Super Excite mode for the single player that I expect completing the platinum cup will unlock. It’s my hope that this mode will add some depth to the game and extended play beyond what I have experienced so far. The multiplayer is two-player offline only; however, none of the Wii launch titles are online so I’m not feeling that strongly about it. Though as an arcade racer I have a feeling that the way this game will last is for relatively short bursts, every once in a while simply to have fun controlling these trucks as they bounce, fly and zoom across some fun tracks. I’m looking forward to some more game time and hope to share some thoughts about the other game modes as well as track design in my final play coming soon.