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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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20 November 2006 - 9:51 am
I got a Wii on Sunday. It took a bit of work, and I'll post some details about that in a bit, but in the meantime, here's a review of Excite Truck that I wrote for amazon.
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.
Posted by on 20 November 2006 at 9:51 AM
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