Nintendo Wii Excite Truck Game Review

When the Nintendo Wii first hit the store shelves it was followed by a couple of launch games to help get your gaming experience started, Excite Truck was one of those games. Now I'm not sure whether it's universal law or not but usually when a game system is released, the launch titles that follow are usually really, really bad. The reason being that game companies are in such a rush to get their creations out in time for their consoles big debut that the games end up sucking real bad. Excite Truck does a pretty good job staying out of that well-known suck category.

Excite truck is a racing based game, with all aspects of reality tossed out the window. Driving insane speeds with your turbo boost blasting, launching a two ton, 4X4 hundreds of feet in the air and landing it unscratched, smashing through trees all in the name of coming in first and racking up major points. So if realism and driving simulators are your thing then this game may not appeal to you.

Excite truck puts you in competition against five other computer-controlled trucks across a variety of off road, mountain terrain. Holding the Wiimote like you would the classic NES control pad you steer your truck by tilting it left or right (simulating holding a steering wheel), brake and accelerate with the 1 and 2 buttons, and turbo boost by pushing on the D pad. It's a pretty simple control scheme that's easy enough to learn and get you into the game right away.

Turbo boosting is the most important skill that you will learn in this fast paced game. It's the only way that you will be able to keep up with the other super charged competition and do crazy insane tricks. The only thing you have to watch out for while your going nitrous crazy is that your engine over heats very quickly, so you have to search out lakes and streams to drive through in order to keep the temperature of your engine cool.

Because of the furious fast pace of Excite Truck this game ends up being more luck than skill as you attempt to launch your truck off of mountains and jump through rings, landing your two tons of truck on top of the competition and just trying to stay in control and win the race. All in all it's a sit on the edge of your seat fast paced game.

Even with all the focus on super fast game play, Excite Truck has pretty good graphics with lights glaring off of the lakes and trees, smoke and reflective water. There are times when annoying glitches in the graphics show up as the Wii has trouble keeping up with the insane pace of the game, the frame rate slows down at times and it gets a little choppy but all in all it does well. The Music could also be much better but fortunately the creators of Excite Truck designed the game so you can insert your own music filled SD Card and listen to your own homemade soundtrack, (Insert Top Gun Theme Song Here).

I would have to say that biggest disappointment with Excite Truck is the lack of any type of multiplayer gaming. Yes, you can play two players but it's only a one on one race without the computer players involved and played out on your typical split screen layout. The biggest component missing is the ability to play online. With online play being so popular these days you would think that the creators of Excite Truck would have expanded into this new and exciting realm, but as I stated earlier this is a launch title and wasn't given enough time to throw in the extra options that we are all dying for.

In the end, Excite Truck is a really fun and challenging game to play and no doubt gives you some real bang for your buck.