Excite Truck Review
By waving at it.
Version tested: Wii
All sports are rubbish. Football? That's crap. Once you've kicked the ball in the goal once, what's the point? Golf's even worse. You're allowed as many shots as you like. Don't even get me started on snooker. It's not just sports either. All board games ever are pointless. Babies are a waste of time. Self-betterment is an act of folly. The universe will stop expanding eventually and begin falling back in on itself, rendering all human endeavour meaningless, so why bother doing anything at all? There certainly isn't any point playing Excite Truck after you finish it. It's only incredible fun. Might as well throw it in the bin. You've finished it, after all.
Oh well, might as well explain it a bit. It's about maintaining ridiculous speed through hazard-strewn environments, skimming through the undergrowth, leaping miles into the air, and trying not to crash violently into trees. It's a bit like Burnout, really - designed to respond best to minor control adjustments, unhappy when it's thrown into wide, raging turns, but genuinely keen to give you a massive boost of speed every time you look like you could do with one. Unlike Burnout, however, Excite Truck is controlled by holding the Wiimote like the edge of a plate with a potato rolling around on top of it.
Yes readers, he's on about potatoes again, but then some of the Wii's best control schemes owe their quality to the stability of a horizontal grip and the fine, multidirectional adjustment this allows, and so I will cling onto my potato analogy until I can think of a superior vegetable. As to its bearing here, these excitable trucks may not behave the same way as Mercury's blobs, but they are best directed with the same delicacy, and noticeably similar in terms of their behaviour.
The critical thing to grasp is that these trucks aren't for turning - at least not beyond a certain, surprisingly slight angle. Not realising this on the first, second and seventeenth occasion you smash into a tree because you didn't seem to turn far enough, you mistakenly assume that you're getting the wacky gesture bit wrong and start twisting your arms round in circles like a drunken washing machine. The trick, it turns out, is to limit your movements to small, guiding tweaks. A few minutes after that clicks, the game comes into its own, which is silly really, because better-written instructions would have cleared it up before the disc was even out of the box.
With the underlying logic properly installed, you're more able to enjoy the frantic pace. Excite Truck moves at ridiculous, F-Zero-like speeds, with your right thumb clamped to the accelerator almost the entire time. Meanwhile, your left thumb's busy operating the turbo boost, which is activated with the d-pad and which is in use more or less constantly. The boost needs a second or two to cool down in between bursts, and while managing it constantly is initially awkward, it soon becomes second nature. As do the actions of timing a little stab of the button to coincide with your wheels leaving the ground, in order to gain an aerial boost, or angling your car so that it lands on all four wheels to gain another dose of speed. It's all designed to keep up the pace, and for once in a racing game you'll want to aim for the water when you see it, because it's cool enough to allow for constant turbo.

Volcanoes spit rocks that get in your way. Obviously. And they say Wii games aren't realistic.
And if it wasn't clear from all that, Excite Truck is the kind of racing game that never settles for autopilot. Tracks are designed to constantly bank and swing amongst trees, walls and rocks that crush your ride on impact. Jumps are huge, and need to be managed carefully to avoid landing on a speed-whacking upward incline, while shortcuts can be found all over the place - and will need to be found if you want to secure the best possible route and keep up your momentum. You need to be on your guard at all times, watching out for POW blocks that allow you to mow down trees, AI cars trying to bash into you, and terraform icons that reshape the environment. The latter change the shape of the course ahead of you, turning a hill into a flat, water-covered plain, or morphing gentle undulations into massive ramps that send you flying over castles. Terraforming is quite strategic when you're alone, but it's most satisfying with another player, allowing you to toss them into the air by activating a mountain beneath them. The computer-controlled racers don't make use of this stuff, but that shouldn't lead you to conclude they're a soft touch - in fact they're quite capable of leaving error-prone players for dust in the later of the four tiers of races.
Excite Truck's also the sort of game where second place is often good enough to advance, albeit never to perfect. It may look like a racing game, but there's a high-scores mentality lurking behind its main championship mode, where instead of simply gunning for first place, your goal is to reach or exceed a required number of "stars". These, a running total of which is maintained at the top of the screen, are amassed through cunning drifts, big jumps, close shaves and other noteworthy manoeuvres in increments of one to five - depending on how cunning, big, close or noteworthy your actions were. Maintaining speed while you perform is important though, because you get an extra burst of potentially pivotal stars if you finish close to the front of the pack. Achieving S-ranks, the ultimate accolade, will certainly be hard to do if you don't finish in first.
Making progress involves styling your performance, then, as well as stunning the opposition, but missing out is also of some value. Fall short of the goal, or short of your S-rank attempt, and you still get to enjoy the benefits of the stars, which go toward trophies in individual categories (the amount of trees you skimmed without hitting, the amount of enemy cars you smashed up, the number of times you piloted your airborne truck through five rings in a row), and unlock things like new skins for your cars. Your overall ranks per track also help unlock the harder difficulty mode. Logically, with this sort of emphasis on stars, the game ensures you don't just sit back and harvest them by enforcing a time limit during races, too.
Anyway, by the time you're shooting for the higher ranks, you'll also be about ready for Challenge mode, which is almost cruelly exacting. Here you try and navigate tracks by heading through coloured gates, hitting rings suspended in the air, or crushing other vehicles, with more examples of the same tasks to unlock if you can beat the tricky targets. Like the championship races, it's all very moreish, and the sort of thing that you could happily peck away at over the course of several days, or enjoy hotseating with a friend.

Bent teenager not included.
You can both afford to sit back from the TV, too, because accusations of blandness and fuzzy graphics carry about as much water as a witch in Oz. It doesn't look like Gears of War, obviously, but there are some very nice spray effects, the cars are good and shiny, the draw distances are smashing and it's all being articulated by the Wii's supposedly rubbish hardware with enough room left to ensure a solid frame rate - something critically important to a game that has you operating under such frantic conditions. Arguably more significant than the graphics though is the collision detection, which is almost perfect - you never feel as though you crashed because of the game's fuzzy logic; more because you drove into a tree. Numpty.
Why then, you're probably starting to wonder, has Excite Truck been so much maligned? It's been out in the US since November, and you would have noticed if it was catching everyone's attention. You're observant, after all. And it can't just be because of the horrible looping guitar music, because you can replace that with MP3s off an SD Card. Nor can it be on account of the button-mashing you have to do every time you crash, because it's a little tedious but your thumbs are pretty sprightly, and if the whole thing was a car crash on account of car crashes, I would certainly have made fun of that in the intro.
Apparently it's because it's not very big. It's the sort of game where you can unlock everything you're likely to access within a couple of days. What a shame, eh? I mean, you could go back to some of the earlier tracks and try and get S-ranks but... actually, that's top fun. Hrm. And I bet I could get another 15 or 20 stars if I didn't screw that bit up on lap two. Yep. Right, one more go at getting this over 160, then I'll try the next one. Alright, two goes. Three. Seven. YES. And every failure adds stars to the total, building towards trophies, so it's worth completing each race. Can't be bothered? There's an instant restart button on the pause menu. It's as if they knew.
And so on and on and on. Compete with yourself, compete with your friends (perhaps you can email each other scores, or use the Wii's messaging system - just because Xbox Live's made everyone lazy doesn't mean the old methods stopped working). But, amazingly, despite the fact you might have to cross the same polygon more than once to do it, the game's a source of surprisingly inexhaustible enthusiasm. Built on a moreish achievement system, around mechanics that satisfy more and more with each passing day, it's a game maligned for the usual reason: reviewers wanted to move on, and weren't being offered any incentive to redo things beyond simply enjoying the activity. If you can reconcile yourself with that, and like the sound of the game, this is 35 pounds well spent.
8 / 10
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Comments (100) Latest comment 5 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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Granted, the multiplayer looks a bit rubbish, and it could perhaps still do with a bit more fleshing out, but I was always keen on buying this, and that review's just reinforced my decision to get this over the weekend.
Nice work, Tom.
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How strange
That said I'd give it a 9
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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Best. Tagline. Ever.
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Now I have to buy it and I know I wont be able to resist Korininpa next week either. I hate this Wii Drought.
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oh.. 35 you say?
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No you're not. 10 over par in one hole and you forfeit it.
/pedant
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Forgive me for not quite buying the line "it's a game maligned for the usual reasons" coming from people who appear to get all wet and squichy over anything obscure and bored and jaded over anything not so.
That said, it does look OK.
Hmm...
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Funny thing is, I hate racing games but the wiimote makes me want to buy this.
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ps:
did anyone notice how weird everyone's been controlling this game in videos from Nintendo? In every video I see people swinging the remote around like a madman resulting in their truck being completely out of control.
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/heads off to GameStation with voucher in hand
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Wiimote is no SIXAXIS... it is not a "tilt" controller.
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Don't turn this into a fanboy debate. No one here has said any such thing so don't troll!
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although still think ExciteTruck is the silliest name i've heard in a while.
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The purpose is to remind you of Excite Bike. And yes.
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I'm off out today, might just pick it up if that's the case.
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My fave track is that Canadian one where, near the starting grid, you can Power through some trees and make an insane leap through the air and earn about 7 stars - exhilirating!
I think what I like most is its lack of pretension - it's just a good old-fashioned racer with the accent on crazy excess... in fact, it reminds me a lot of that VW Beetle game that EA did on the N64 yonks ago, which I also loved...
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16-Feb-07 10:14:03
IT'S MY BIRTHDAY AND I WANT THIS FOR MY BIRTHDAY!
__________
No need to shout old timer (ah the hearing is going)! Happy bday!
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Only it is also a tilt controller with motion sensors similar to that of the sixaxis
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Nice to see someone here with good taste - and, if your name is literally true, who tastes good too!
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@Mogamer
I thought BAR was one of those games that people who don't like racing could get into (but skillful/demanding enough to satisfy those that do like racing games).
Like Burnout and hopefully Excite Truck
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e.g. "Compete with yourself, compete with your friends (perhaps you can email each other scores, or use the Wii's messaging system - just because Xbox Live's made everyone lazy doesn't mean the old methods stopped working)"
seems a touch unnecessary
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Nice Crash!
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Although this looks good as well.
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Trust your instincts. Reach out with your FEELINGS.
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'No you're not. 10 over par in one hole and you forfeit it. '
Can you show me where it says that in the Rules of Golf. I'm pretty sure that's not the case at all. Or do you mean golf games, like Tiger Woods?
/uber pedant
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The Wii controller isn't capable of reading your position in 3D space. It can tell where you're pointing (as long as you're pointing in the direction of the sensor bar), and it can detect acceleration and tilt.
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I noticed Teletext (which can be equally splendid, but got it wrong today) moaned about lack of a 4-player, but how many people play 4-player at home? 2%? 4%? Four screen on one telly looks shit, and I've never, ever played any console game like this because of its distractions. Give me my own telly for 2-player mario and I'd never leave the building.
I'm going to stop buying edge to celebrate (that's only 30 notes to find before the game is mine!
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Not trying to diss the wii, but this review for neglecting something that counts to most gamers. And also some of those do happen to own on the wii.
And of the provided screenshots there's only a single one of the actual game...
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I cannot say the same for the audio however.........
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So don't read them.
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Seemingly not that much to it, but well-done for what it is, great fun nonetheless and enough there to be picked up the odd session time and again.
Tom and others who've actually played the game for more than a couple of hours - am I right??
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Fair point, and the wii certainly seems to lack that oomph in the visual department. But isn't it refreshing to see games which have had so much more resource put into tuning and handling, as opposed to an extra dollop of surface make-up which becomes redundant in no time at all.
I for one bought into wii to get away from the graphics arms race and games like Gears'. Well done EG for looking at things from a new perspective. Okay, it's probably a seven. But one man's seven is another man's nine etc, etc...
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now do you see? How is "so don't read them" an even remotely sensible attitude?
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So I was suggesting that rather than moan ineffectively, just don't read them...
Anyway, I don't wish to get into an arguement as I'm not an arguementative chap.
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As for me, I wish the writers would keep the fourth wall up a bit more, and not spend half the review loudly trying to anticipate, announce and wrong-foot the comments thread.
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and i like eurogamer reviews. they are the best of many sites i know
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EG aren't above altering scores based on graphics if there's a compelling reason to do so, but it seems that the graphics in ExciteTruck are both pretty and functional, so who cares?
And if this *isn't* as good as Gears Of War, I'll be seriously disappointed, because GOW is a humdrum, monochrome bore. I'd still rather play Halo.
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Granted, EG reviews do go on a bit, but the comments thread is the most exciting thing to happen to games reviews since they went online (and the sole reason future and co are up sh*t creek), so you can understand why the reviewers want to take part in this revolution too.
I'm just happy, as a 30-something, that the site is 1.up-to-the-minute 2.free and 3.rightly nintendo biased. Wahooo!
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I think 8/10 is a fair score I personally would score the game 7/10 but that would be back in the day when a 7/10 was a great game.
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This comment sums up why I believe Eurogamer is the best gaming review site on the web.
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Not just trying to wrong-foot the comments thread, but often trying ironically to wrong-foot the (style of) review itself. EG coverage would run about 500 words shorter if they cut out all the self-deprecating 'gee whiz I'm doing an introductory paragraph' bullshit. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just feels indulgent.
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It only knows you're moving, not where you actually are.
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A better example would be to note that without the sensor bar, you would lose the ability to "reach" into the games, as the Wii knows you are doing this as (evidenced through the SB calibration screen) by the ends of the sensor bar moving closer to each other.
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That's significantly cheaper than, gameplay, play and amazon.
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It does know how far it is away from the sensor bar - but only if you point it at the screen. If the wiimote is able to see the sensor bar it can calculcate the distance to the TV by using the leds in the sensor bar. However, if you turn it sideways like this it has absolutely no idea where you are. It would be possible to point it at the screen thus registering where you are, then turn it sideways and then go by the detected motion to calculate the position in 3d space. Complicated but possible - although I have no idea how accurate this would be.
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Unless other markers in 3D space are available...
Like a game telling you to quickly put the remote behind the couch....
So...Wait...Why was this point raised again?
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I generously give it a 5.
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BOO HOO!!! A GAME NOT ON MY FAVOURITIST SYSTEM GOT A GOOD SCORE.. BOO HOO!!! I THINK IT SHOULD GET A 5 OR A 6 BECAUSE ITS NOT ON THE CONSOLE I MASTURBATE OVER EVERY NIGHT.. DESPITE THE FACT I'VE NEVER ACTUALLY HAVE PLAYED THIS GAME.. BOO HOO! NINTENDO SUXORS, NINTENDO ARE FORZ KIDZ, THEY'RE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE GOOD GAMES.. THIS SHOULD GET A 4.
Reet.. There.. i've said it in nice large print.. now any guy who's about to post and falls into the above category can save their poor little fingers, and not post.. And go back to masturbating over photographs of the ps3 they're going to be getting wondering what brilliant games may be available for it .. when sony get around to releasing something half decent for it.
..
back on topic..
"Er, yes it can detect position in a 3D space"
erm.. no it cant.
" - for example the games on Wii Play or WarioWare where you have to reach towards the screen / away from to alter the depth in the 3D game space."
That'll be reading it's acceleration in the z axis then.
But I fail to see what this has to do with this game, which just reads the acceleration of the tilt?
and it can detect acceleration and tilt.
Actually from what i read, it just reads acceleration (in each axis, so can have that corrospond to tilt).. Which means it's far more better for this kind of thing than just reading tilt.. As the speed your rotating matters (just like in real life)
.. erm.. not that this is anything like real life though.
But does any of this matter? Is it fun? Yes.. Is it worth buying? Yes (if you like fun games).
If you dont like fun games.. then gawd knows what yer doing PLAYING games...
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BTW: Who are the retards that have gave the game a 1 in the 'Average Readers Pole'? I think each vote should be registered to the voters account and if readers keep giving ridiculous scores for games that are not on a platform of their choice; then their account should be banned.
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While I agree that people giving 1/10 in the readers rating makes them an arse, I totally disagree with banning them for expressing a view.
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But they're not expressing a view if they havent actually played it are they?
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I bought Excite Truck today and am now up to the gold cup. It's a fine game. Good sense of speed, very solid framerate, clean, arcadey fun. Including an sometimes unbearable arcadey rock soundtrack - but so cheesy and fitting you'll still listen to it. At least the first couple of hours. The controls work fine, landing is easier than I originally thought (the game seems to be very forgiving concerning your vehicle's angle I guess) and steering is not overly sensitive as I often read. The vehicles respond quickly and at first it's hard to hit a straight line after a long drift, especially with the quickly responsing trucks, but you will get used to it in a short time. Besides it's more about jumping than cornering, cornering is quite easy but hitting a perfect jump needs skill.
Glad I bought it, it's really fun.
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Okay.. i'll let you have this one
I guess you could calc the tilt and the position to get the exact 3d location in space.. as long as you were pointing towards sensor bar.
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This game actually looks fun. I might consider getting although I had written it off with bad reviews. I may wait for SSX Blur though which looks even better maybe.
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The same as loads of the 360 games shortly after launch. Released with missing features.
Excite truck should have online multiplayer amongst other features.
Won't be paying full price for games missing features in 2007.
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The sensor bar is functional when it is being pointed at. some games use the sensor bar, some dont.
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Seemingly not that much to it, but well-done for what it is, great fun nonetheless and enough there to be picked up the odd session time and again.
Tom and others who've actually played the game for more than a couple of hours - am I right??"
Basically, yeah, it's diverting fun, which is what people are looking for in a game like this, so yep, a decent buy.
"Just picked this up instore at Tesco's for £29.99 this lunchtime.
That's significantly cheaper than, gameplay, play and amazon."
Got you beat: £27.99 at ASDA.
"For £35+, I'll wait. I've read that it's great in short bursts, but not really a full game.
The same as loads of the 360 games shortly after launch. Released with missing features.
Excite truck should have online multiplayer amongst other features.
Won't be paying full price for games missing features in 2007."
You're quite correct, but then my comment above makes that a moot point.
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The trick with the Baron's Course (right name?) seems to be linking together turbo jumps for some serious air. Trying to add in Air Spins results in less Air and slows you down.
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