What happens when you combine exotic locations, trucks and buggies, stunts and whole hell of a lot of turbo? Excite truck definitely comes to mind. One of the Wii’s first games to be released is actually a good one. Excite Truck was developed by Monster Games for Nintendo. The game was inspired by the old classic Excite Bike and morphed into something more.

In Excite Truck you race trucks and buggies in various locations such as Mexico, Canada, China, and more. When you race you must gain stars to continue and you do this by doing various stunts and/or changing the environment around you. The one cool thing about the game is the landmass morphing you can accomplish by driving through exclamation point symbols. The morphing usually consists of the ground dropping out or the land creating peaks which are great for jumps and giving you ample time to do stunts to gain stars. Some levels have special obstacles that appear when driving through the exclamation points. In one level you can hit the exclamation and there is an explosion that happens on a mountainside and then there is a wall of fire that is burning down through the mountain with nice fog, dust, and, particle effects that disturb your vision. Another level – a wintery level – containing a oil taker which has pushed up to an ice berg breaks through the berg when the driver goes through the special level change symbol or marker which becomes an obstacle that has to be jumped over it to continue racing.

I pretty much played through all the levels but it gets quite hard when moving up in to the higher excite levels, which are labeled as medals such as Bronze, Silver, Gold, and the all mighty Platinum. Things also get quite interesting when you turn up the difficulty level to Super Excite where the game becomes insanely hard. Even at times on the normal Excite difficulty level it is pretty hard. The game is still quite fun even with high difficulty levels.

Oh there is one power up item I did forget to mention and that is the POW symbol where you drive through it makes your vehicle become invincible for a short period of time and this also gives the vehicles a major boast in speed – major overclocking here – this POW gives the vehicle enough strength to rampage through trees and sometimes other vehicles like they were tooth picks, trailer homes in tornado alley, or even white picket fences in hurricanes.

Also, if that was not enough you do have a limited amount of turbo to use to get ahead of your opponents but be very careful as just like in Excite Bike you can overheat and that is not fun especially as your vehicle slows down just a bit. The vehicle will shoot out black smoke as a nice touch to indicate the engine is fried – do not fear though it is brief. If one of the vehicles is warning about overheating just dump the vehicle in a pool of water or in the lake and that will cool the engine down to allow for more turbo action.

Ah the controls how could I forget about the controls for the game. The game is controlled by the Wii-mote and only the Wii-mote. The Wii-mote is held in hand with the control pad under the left thumb and the one – two buttons under the right thumb. Old school gaming at its best but with tilting left to right to steer. Also with the magical Wii-mote if you twist the mote forward the vehicle nose will dive and if the reverse the twisting motion the nose climbs especially useful during those big air jumps. There are also special combinations of button presses and Wii-mote movement, which creates stunts. One such stunt is the 360 Air Spin where the vehicle spins in mid air. While in mid air or from a jump if the number 1 button is pressed together with the control pad and the Wii-mote is tilted left or right the vehicle will proceed with the 360 Air Spin. There are more stunts that can be learned through the games tutorial but the Air Spin sticks out because it is so damn hard to do in the game. Why is it so hard? There is not enough time in the air to do the stunt. The vehicle has to hit the right peak or jump to give it the right amount of time.

I honestly thought when I got this game the controls would match actual driving but alas it does not. This game is the furthest point away from Mario Kart Wii, which does this right, but hey this is a first round game for the Wii.

There are a couple different modes for the game all of the above is just the racing aspect of it or you could say it is the arcade mode. The other modes consist of the Challenge mode and versus mode. In the Challenge mode you have a choice of three challenges – Gate Challenge, Ring Challenge, and Crush Challenge. The Gate Challenge is where the driver has to attempt to go through lighted gates before the time runs out to get the best ranking and if you miss a gate the time is reduced. Pitty.

Under the Ring challenge the driver has to jump through rings to score stars and the furthest rings are obviously the most challenging and the most rewarding but you better be quick as the time adds to your score as well.

The crush challenge I can see many people liking because this is were you get to take out an opponent by crashing directly into them. Softer nicks and rams do not do jack but with a high speed direct on hit does some major damage.

Now switching gears from challenges to versus mode. In versus mode it is pretty much pretty basic 2 players split screen action. You race against your friends. There is no 4-player mode, which I found quite interesting and due to when this game released there is no online modes at all.

How is the graphics and sound for the game you might be asking? Well the graphics for the game are actually pretty amazing for our so-called Gamecube 2.5. The desert levels really show the game is up there graphically however some of the other levels look around what Waverace did on the Gamecube, sadly, but the water and water effects in this game are amazing!! Jumping to the audio department with a thud and a crash like one of the vehicles hitting a tree. The sound is all right you have the typical truck, buggy, even super tuner engine sounds for the vehicles motors and the special turbo launch sound when hitting the jumps with turbo. Pretty basic if you ask me in the sound effects department as for the music in the game it is rock-based music. I thought I heard some familiar music though it was varied to keep from getting sued but I much rather use the special feature in this game which is to use Mp3 music files via an SD memory card in game.

Now it is time for some deep thoughts and pondering about the game and then we can grade this puppy. I have played the game rather thoroughly and have come to a conclusion that this game is heavily set on using the stunts for majority of the star gathering. I find this utterly crappy, as I am a traditionalist racing gamer. I rather race in the game more than trying to pull off some wickedly hard stunt which most of the time ends up with the vehicle crashing than actually getting ahead of the opponents and if your playing the game on Platinum and in either difficulty setting you better forget about stunts as you are left in the dust of the other vehicles and rarely do you catch back up. However that is the hard part you have to do stunts to actually pass the levels to move on to the next. I mean you can do a couple of stunts and hope or better yet pray that you come in first as doing that gives you 50 stars right there.

I much rather would have had the developer make a really nice racing game with turbo and these graphics instead of trying to impress the stunt crowd. The game is basically trashed when the stunts were added. If the game were more balanced between racing and stunts I would have liked the game much more however though do not get me wrong the game is fun, I enjoyed it and I would recommend the game to others. I would say this game is tie-up between the hardcore and the casual gamer – a tween gamer you could say. The game is rated a B for the fun, the graphics, and the hectic gameplay but rated C minus on the stunt system.