Excite Truck Reviews
ByExcite Truck
- Remember tilting your arms while playing Excitebike to try to make your character land a huge jump? That experience is finally a reality with Excite Truck
- Your controller is a steering wheel – 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
- Tilt the Wii Remote controller right and left like a steering wheel to steer
- Once the truck goes airborne, tilt the Wii Remote controller every which way to line up the wheels for landing boosts
- Pick up items on the courses to make the terrain deform in real time, turning innocent bumps into massive launch pads
Excite Truck brings back grand racing tradition of Excitebike. Get ready for a big-air experience like no other! Players rocket their trucks across dynamically changing terrain in this nitrous-injected, high-flying racer for speed junkies. Showing the Wii Remote controller’s versatility, players tilt the controller on its side to turn it into a wireless steering wheel. Jump and bump your way to the highest score and highest finishIn the grand and classic racing tradition of Excitebike, get read
Rating: 
(out of 96 reviews)
List Price: $ 49.99
Price: $ 30.49
ExciteBots: Trick Racing
- The ability to exchange ghost data with friends online via WiiConnect24 and challenge them to outdo your most daring tricks.
- Insect and animal inspired off-road bot racers able to walk, fly and drive that via pick-up-and-play controls catch big-air and provide thrills at blinding speed like no other game in the Excitebike series.
- Having your vehicles drive, walk or fly around the track quickly is one thing, but it’s more important to go around in style. Players earn stars for huge jumps, cool tricks and daring feats at high speed.
- A wide variety on mini-games, including soccer, poker, bowling, darts and clowns among others, that occur during races.
- Online multiplayer support for up to six player via a Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection in both Excite Race and Poker Race modes, and 2-player multiplayer versus mode in local play.
Wii Excite Bots Trick Racing The fourth game in the Excitebike series, and the second on the Wii platform, ExciteBots: Trick Racing is an evolution in the racing genre. Featuring big-air thrills, pick-up-and-play controls, exciting multiplayer action and a dozen funky bot racers in the form of mechanical insects, amphibians, and mammals that transform throughout the race, it isn’t like any other racing game you have played. Jump into the driver’s seat and see the world in ExciteBots: Tric
Rating: (out of 27 reviews)
List Price: $ 39.99
Price: $ 8.92
10 Comments
September 7th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Review by David Warner for Excite Truck
Rating:
Excite Truck, in adding a vertical component to a standard racing game, has created one of the more enjoyable games that I’ve played in recent memory.
Controlling the trucks in Excite Truck is both unique and simple. Holding the standard Wii remote sideways (keep the d-pad under your left thumb and the 1 and 2 buttons under your right), you steer the truck by turning the controller. The courses feature many ramps from which you can launch your truck into the air and control how long it stays aloft by rotating the controller back toward you. And if you stick the landing, so to speak, by aligning all four of the truck’s tires with the ground (again, by rotating the controller), you can get a speed boost.
The game play in Excite Truck is very compelling. The game offers a head-to-head mode that pits two racers against each other, but my friends and I preferred collaborating on clearing the levels. In a twist that is, in my experience, unique to Excite Truck, you do not clear a track based just on score. Instead, you must collect stars as you run through the course. Stars are granted for, among other things, jumps with long hang-times, daring runs through trees, hard slides through curves, and smashing other trucks. You can also get points for how you place in the race, but it is much more important to collect stars during the race as you cannot get an ‘A’ or ‘B’ for a course simply by coming in first. In fact, no matter how fast you race, your competitors will likely be able to match your pace, especially in the ‘Gold’ and ‘Platinum’ level tracks. It takes deft maneuvering at the end of the race to secure a first place finish in some of these later levels. All things considered, the focus on tricks and jumps makes for a very enjoyable game, especially for a group of players.
Quibbles:The initial setup of the game — all of the game actually — requires that you hold the remote sideways. However, no indication of this is given when you are asked to create save data at the beginning of the game, so you have to figure out on your own why pressing the up arrow moves the cursor to the left. Driving the menus with the standard Wii point-and-click interface would have been a useful improvement.
The controls take some getting used to. Some of my friends had a tendency to try to steer with the directional pad. Others would over steer by turning the remote all the way past vertical when steering, which had unpredictable results. But a little more time with the game will probably get people used to the controls. (And, as a full disclaimer, none of the ones who had difficulty steering had completed the tutorials.)All that aside, Excite Truck is a must-have game for the Nintendo Wii.
September 7th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Review by for Excite Truck
Rating:
Excite Truck is a launch game for the Nintendo Wii and is FANTASTIC! The game is perfect in nearly every way, so here’s how:
PLAYING IT: Excite Truck is a simple game, really. You turn the Wii remote sideways and then tilt it left and right to steer your truck! ’2′ is accelerate. ’1′ is brake. And the D-Pad is turbo. And the D-pad is turbo. And the D-pad is turbo. And the D-pad is turbo. Get it?
GAMEPLAY: Excite Truck’s winning conditions are unlike any other racing game. While it does help enormously to get in first place, the game is not a race, but a competition of points. To get these points you must do insane stuff: Going extremly close to tons of trees in a row, staying up in the air for seemingly hours, pulling off air spins, morphing the terrain and sending other trucks into the air, ramming straight into anything possible, and MORE!
GRAPHICS: Graphics are usually things that fans of other consoles taunt when it comes to Nintendo. But Excite Truck’s are absolutley astounding! Water is realtisically rendered, dirt on the ground goes into the air when your truck lands, paint is thrown off of the truck when you crash, and coconuts fall from trees making the sand sprinkle when you crash into a palm tree!
COURSES: Perhaps this is where Excite Truck does not exceed so much. Each course is insanely fun and perfectly made, but they seem to be…similar. Too similar. Oftentimes, a new course you unlock is an exact replica of an old course you already beat, just taking a diffrent route every 5 seconds and then veering back to the old level.
TRUCKS: Another place. Excite Truck’s trucks are made great, but almost every truck seems to have a clone. Of course, trucks like the Boulder, Dynamo and Alpine and expert cars, there seem to be wannabees of these cars, some that are short and long, which reangle the camera during a race more towards the ground.
EXTRAS: Excite Truck doesn’t have many extras to speak of. You beat, 4 or 5 courses, and you unlock another 4 or 5. And when you do certain stuff, you get new trucks. Although working for the Diamond Cup in the Super Excite difficulty is defiently worth your frustration and time. Not to say that it needs extras,anyway. And even though not much comes from winning trophies of pulling of those 250 Super Tree Runs, you still can’t help but just think ‘but maybe..’
DIFFICULTY: Excite Truck seems to have uneven difficulty at times. The bronze cup is insanely easy, and the silver cup is a bit mixed, but the Gold Cup is INSANELY difficult, yet the platinum cup doesn’t present much challenge, although it does contain the best courses in the game (landing that jump means racing on the GREAT WALL OF CHINA!) yet the secret Diamond Cup is amazingly difficult..I reccommend the Sargon for beating it.
MULTIPLAYER: People seem to complain that Excite Truck’s two-player mode is boring. While it does seem dull compared to single player, its still a rousing good time with your friends. And there are no framerate issues!
REPLAY VALUE: Excite Truck has infinite replay value, not because of graphics, difficulty or anything like that, just because its fun. It’s a fun game for all ages.
FINAL SCORE:
Gameplay: 9.8
Graphics: 9.2
Courses: 8.7
Trucks: 7.0
Extras: 6.3
Difficulty: 9.1
Multiplayer: 7.9
Replay Value: 10.0
TOTAL (Not Averaged): 9.7
September 7th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Review by Lisa Shea for Excite Truck
Rating:
Excite Truck might seem to be a straightforward truck dirt-racing game, but they include a number of interesting features like morphing terrain, super speed, and stunts.
The graphics are rather nice. You get a variety of terrain types – deserty mountains, snowy slopes, sandy dunes, tropical paradises, and much more. There are numerous models to choose from – four by fours, buggies, SUV styles, and other styles you can unlock as you go. You get all the colors of the rainbow to paint your vehicle.
The sound is reasonably good – what do you really care in a racing game? It’s a collection of upbeat rock songs, along with the squeal-crash-wrrrrrr of the trucks racing.
The fantastic fun here is the actual racing. No, this isn’t high end technical Indy car tuning. This is out and out fun, the kind where you have friends over for the afternoon and laugh yourselves silly with the moves you are making. You can play against friends, play with friends, or play on your own to get the longest jump, the most impressive crash, or any other of a number of stats.
That’s because this game isn’t just about who makes it to the finish line first. You have to gather up enough stars to win, too. Stars are earned by doing outrageous feats. Do a flip in the air, crash in an impressive manner, go for a long distance slide.
The courses make this fun to play and replay. There is lava rolling down at you, boulders crashing, landscapes changing before your eyes. These aren’t courses you master in one pass. There’s always something new to learn if you keep your eyes open.
The game is definitely family-friendly – grandparents can play with their grandkids and both would enjoy it.
Is there a downside? You could argue that the same is too “silly” – but that’s its purpose. It isn’t meant to be a serious racing game. Maybe the trucks are a little too shiny, but I find it hard to object. I think my biggest complaint is that you can only have two trucks in multi-player, and it’s just head-to-head. It’d be cool if you had more than 2 players, or 2 players in a regular field with computer-controlled enemies, or co-op modes on the real courses.
Still, these are minor complaints. The game is quite fun.
Well recommended!
September 7th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Review by A. C. Ege/Acedoh for Excite Truck
Rating:
This is arcade fun at it’s best. Excite Truck is just plain fun. It takes a while to get used to using the Wiimote as a steering wheel. After you have played this game for a few minutes you get used to the non stop fun. This game is pure arcade based aderaline pumping fun. There is no realism here and that was never the intent. This is a perfect example of what Nintendo is trying to accomplish with the Wii. Simple fun…It’s hard to believe that something so simple has eluded game designers for so long. Now with the full interaction you can be steering your monster truck over jumps going crazy distances. The game has this feature where if you hit a bonus the terrain changes before your eyes. Bumps turn quickly into hills. It’s an amazing site and adds more fun to each level…Just because I have commented on the fun factor doesn’t make this game simple to beat. The non stop speed and the terrain will have you facing quite the challenge. If you are in the market for new games for your Wii look no further than Excite Truck.
September 7th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Review by C. L. Hanson for Excite Truck
Rating:
Nintendo wants you to forget about the GameCube. It was all a bad dream (except, in my opinion, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker). While Sony and Microsoft slug it out over who has the best graphics and functuality (and in the process, paint themselves into a corner), Nintendo is doing what we have waited years for: Make video games fun again.
Excite Truck for the Wii is a very fun game, and reminds me of WaveRace64 for the N64. Graphically, it’s nowhere near as crisp and grand as anything you’d see on the 360 or the Ps3. Nowhere near. But, this is what Sony and Microsoft want you to believe video games are supposed to be. That’s funny, I thought video games were supposed to be fun? That’s what Excite Truck is. This is what you seek by playing video games in the first place. If you want realism, go outdoors and experience life.
The Wii remote is your steering wheel, and you’ll be so caught up in the game, you’ll forget how to steer. Not to mention the pure speed captured on screen. You don’t have TIME to concentrate! As an old-school gamer, I am so used to controlling with the D-pad, that I instinctively try to steer the truck using that, instead of moving my wrists to steer. That’s not a bad thing, it just shows how fun it is. Give me a game like this to forget my problems, 2 hours passed by as if it were a minute.
Is the game flawless? No. The only flawless game I’ve played is Super Mario 64 or the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. I give this a fun factor of 5, with an overall score of 4.
This is the first game I’ve purchased for the Wii (which came with the fantastic Wii Sports), and by all indications, Nintendo has righted themselves and are about to strike gold again. To anyone who doesn’t want to own a Wii over the controller, you are really missing out.
In the young life of the Wii thus far, Excite Truck is a game you’ll want to own.
September 7th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Review by Halicon5 for ExciteBots: Trick Racing
Rating:
Excitebots is a unique creature. It is the spiritual successor to Excite Truck and looks very, very similar. But mixed in with the extreme arcade racing action are a host of mini-games and off the wall ideas that fly straight into you at 100+ mph. Most other games fail when attempting to pull off a wacky-racing game. Most of the ideas in this game are kind of terrible if you think about it very much. Somehow though, Excitebots manages to take some of the strange ideas and throws them into the game and it all just works. If anything, this game is what I’d expect if the people who designed WarioWare decided to make a racing game.
GAMEPLAY: Uhhh… crazy? Although this game is a racing game, simply racing around the race tracks simply won’t cut it. You are expected to pull off tricks and stunts, go bowling, play soccer, throw pies at clowns, race dangerously close to trees, play darts, and play poker… all while racing in a frog. Or a beetle or a turtle. If that sounds strange, that’s because it is. The “vehicles” are all animal themed robots, but their designs fairly forgettable and lack real personality. Little mini-challenges pop-up all over the place in the races. Best of all, the game has an insane sense of speed that is only rivaled by the likes of classic games such as Wipeout or F-Zero. My only serious complaint about the game is it suffers from “Invisible Wall Syndrome.” The levels look huge and open and the tracks are quite wide, but invisible walls are annoying.
CONTROLS: Solid. The controls are surprisingly good considering it is entirely motion controlled. Definitely better than Excite Truck, and I honestly feel the controls are much more responsive than Mario Kart. I haven’t played a lot of racing games on the Wii, but overall, this is one of the better racers as far as controls are concerned. The game supports the wheel accessory as well and a version of the game is sold with the peripheral packed in. I don’t personally recommend the steering wheel because I think it’s an overpriced piece of plastic, but that’s just my opinion. Each to their own.
GRAPHICS: Good and Bad. When the game is going slow the game looks pretty plain. The textures are lo-res and some of them are downright ugly. Kick the speed up a notch and the motion blur kicks in. When the game is blazing past you without a hint of slowdown, it shines and you quickly forget the low-res textures.
MULTI-PLAYER: Very good but it could be better. Although the game has a 2-player split-screen mode, I’m not impressed. As a general rule though, I don’t like split-screen in most games though unless I can get 4 players in on the action. The other side of the coin is that the online mode is great. I was able to hook up with a match in minutes and found myself playing with 5 other players. While playing online you can bet your stars, which are used to purchase various unlockables throughout the game. There are two online modes, Excite and Poker. I’m not a fan of Poker, but I think my reflexes are just a little to slow to be good at that one. My only two complaints about online multi-player are that the game uses the horrid Friend Code system and doesn’t give you the opportunity to just add any of the people you meet online to your list of friends. The other complaint I have is a lack of voice chat, which is a glaring omission since I have the the WiiSpeak peripheral gathering dust.
SOUND: Oh please make it stop… I’m going to have nightmares about being trapped in an elevator. I can’t believe someone recorded this music let alone actually paid someone to include it in the game. The music is annoying, lame, and extremely repetitive. Thankfully, a music volume option is available in the game. Sadly, the Excite Truck feature that allowed players to put their own play lists together on an SD card is no longer present. That terrible music just makes the absence of the SD music card that much more noticeable.
REPLAY-VALUE: High. The game has 20 levels, multiple mini-game modes, and a solid multi-player element. At launch the game was priced at two levels ($40 by itself and $50 with the wheel accessory), but I would have bought the game at the higher price even without the accessory. The fact that it is more affordable only makes this game more attractive.
All in all, I recommend this game to just about everyone. At the very least, give this game a rental. The arcade action is frantic and crazy. The sense of speed makes this just about the fastest game available on the Wii. Online multi-player is very good. Best of all, the game is just plain fun.
September 7th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Review by Bonds for ExciteBots: Trick Racing
Rating:
This is an addicting arcadey fast-paced racer.
One of the best Wii games of the year so far. And one of the better Wii games overall.
I really love taking jumps in this game or doing 360s in the air or kicking a field goal or making a sandwich or running on 2 legs or speeding through the trees. It is truly over the top arcadey action. And what a videogame should be.
It plays really smooth and they’ve done a great job of seamlessly incorporating all this whimsical over the top videogamey non-sense into the game. It works really well.
The online mode is seamless as well and smooth.
In addition there is head to head racing and a few others modes like Poker Racing where you try to make Poker hands as you race along the track.
Don’t be fooled. This is a very solid game.
The lows are the graphics and personality of the game can be a bit generic. But it would be a shame if you ignored the game because of that.
Must buy!!!
September 7th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Review by C. Kruschke for ExciteBots: Trick Racing
Rating:
I purchased this game strictly because of how incredible Excite Truck was – and if you don’t have that you are really missing out on something great. You can unlock several different types of animal/insect types of car-type “bots” and then you race these throughout several different series’ of tracks that are sited throughout the world – Scotland, China, Tasmania, near Mt Kilimanjaro, Mexico, etc. It also has a great multi-player option and mini-games that allow you to hone or enhance your skills at different parts of the game.
One drawback is that you have to complete many many races in order to build enough stars (IOW points) to purchase the bots beyond the starting few that you get off the bat. Bots cost 2000 stars, 5000 stars, and up. For each race you get 100-200 or so stars based upon your skill and the race difficulty, so you can see that it may take 30-40 races before you can unlock another bot. Add in that you have to unlock about half of the bot colors that you can use plus an assortment or other “add ons” and it may take over 1000 races to unlock everything – not exactly for the faint of heart. For this reason only did I mark this as 4 out of 5 stars.
September 7th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Review by Michael Kerner for ExciteBots: Trick Racing
Rating:
When it does come down to the Nintendo Wii, they definitely have raised the bar when it comes to innovation. That has been shown in their appeal of the way video games are played very strongly, even when it does come behind the wheel. With the success of racing giant Mario Kart Wii, as the biggest-selling video game last year, many wonder how Nintendo is going to keep that stride to the checkered flag. That sadly wasn’t the case when Excite Truck was launched for the Wii back in 2006. The game was sadly overlooked by gamers, in favor of other gems like The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wii Sports. Well, the Excite series is set to take a more extreme turn again on the Wii, and this time, it is a bit strange trying to stay extreme.
Excitebots: Trick Racing for the Nintendo Wii, feeds off of the appeal Excite Truck had, and brings it in to a whole new level of gaming. The gameplay is as similar to Excite Truck was, but with a few interesting twists. The biggest twist is as you race your way as one of many animal-inspired robotic cars, including the grasshopper, frog, mouse, and beatle. While it might seem weird, it is actually a surprise. The control is similar to what Excite Truck had to offer, by steering with the Wii-mote like it was a steering wheel, but also can be compatable with the Wii-wheel attachment that came with Mario Kart Wii as well.
The gameplay is similar to Excite Truck as well, as you make your way racing to the top by scoring stars by pulling off extreme stunts like mid-air jumps, pulling off 360 spins, crashing into other vehicles, pulling outrageous stunts, like ring jumps, and new twists like swinging on metal bars, and more weird, but surprising things like scoring a soccer goal while driving, to attempting to make a bowling strike, and even throwing pies at clown faces. That is important, because it isn’t just about getting 1st Place, it is also about scoring more stars, to unlock newer vehicles and getting newer places to race like Egypt, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and China. I also do like the idea that now you can race against others online here too see if you are #1.
Sadly though, there actually are a few disadvantages with Excitebots: Trick Racing. The biggest disadvantage is that unlike Mario Kart Wii, where you can race as many as 12 different racers online, here you can only race against as many as 6 different racers through the Wi-Fi connections, which honestly doesn’t pull off all the stops. The second disadvantage is that I was surprised to find out that you can’t control the game with the Classic or Nintendo Gamecube controllers here, unlike Mario Kart Wii. Although staying similar to what Excite Truck had to offer when it came out in controls and gameplay, yet it still might leave gamers feeling like they wanted more.
All in all, despite a few faults, Excitebots: Trick Racing feels a bit weird in the race at first, but actually is a big surprise that is sure to please racing fans, who want strange and trippy-tricked out racing to a whole new level of fun. I think the game is challenging, but is sure to please Wii fans that might felt that the Nintendo Wii hasn’t offered enough in awhile for the need of great games.
Graphics: B
Sound: B
Control: B 1/2-
Fun & Enjoyment: B- for solo players; B 1/2- for multiplayer
Overall: B-
September 7th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Review by N. Riley for ExciteBots: Trick Racing
Rating:
You will not find many games better than this for the Wii. I suggest this game for everyone! It is only two players on splitscreen, but it supports up to six players online. The game is very very fun. This is actually even better than Excite Trucks. Please do yourself a favor and buy this game. If you are not sure about it, watch a video review on ign.com, and give it some thought… then buy it.