A truck racing game from Nintendo? I thought it was strange too.Excite Truck is an interesting title. It is even more interesting that Nintendo decided to use it in their press conference this year. The game itself just screams arcade. It’s very fast, has floaty physics, and big crashes.
You control the game using the Wii controller on its side with no attachments. You rotate the controller to steer as well as adjust your pitch/yaw when you are airborne. Just how you rotate the controller caused some confusion. Picture yourself holding the controller buttons face up. Many expected to steer by rotating the controller like a clock when looking down at it. You actually rotate it on a different axis entirely. To turn right, you push the right side of the remote towards the floor and pull up on the left side. To turn left, well, you get the idea. After you get the steering figured out, the d-pad is used for turbo, the 2 button is used for gas, and the 1 button is used for break (which you won’t be using much).
Excite Truck is, at its core, an easy to pick up racer. It makes for a great tech demo to show off the gyroscopes within the remote. There are two aspects of a race, style points and overall time. You are racing against five other opponents. On the show floor they were all computer controlled. Obviously, goal number one is to come in first. While racing though, style points are awarded that will affect your overall rating for the race. These points are awarded for many things, from perfect driving, to extreme crashes.
The tracks are openly laid out. Even if you don’t stick to the main road, you can still win. You actually receive bonus style points for driving through shrubs, trees, and cacti. The game feels quite fast. At times, it almost feels F-Zero like if you can get a good head of steam behind you. Certain aspects of the terrain are destroyable, others will send your car into a “Great Crash" camera angle. This acts as a car reset and feels a bit strange.
Last but not least, the main twist that Nintendo spoke about in their conference. The terrain can be deformed in real time. At first I took this to mean that trucks would leave tracks behind them that affected other trucks. This is not the case. What actually happens is that you can drive through blue question mark switches. These switches will make a mountain grow in front of you. This can be advantageous as you can achieve speed boosts by hitting turbo as you go over jumps. The scale is impressive and adds an interesting twist to game.
Excite Truck was fun and had a couple cool ideas in it but it felt a lot like a tech demo. It definitely doesn’t compare in scale to many of the other games on the show floor. I heard people saying “This is a Nintendo game??!" on more than one occasion.
Topic: IMPRESSIONS: Excite Truck (Read 2583 times)
