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Excite Truck Review - Wii

Introduction

For some inexplicable reason, Australians are still waiting for all the Wii launch titles that the US got day one. We’ll be getting Elebits in May – a full five months after the Australian launch and six after the system’s American release. Worse still, Trauma Centre is nowhere to be found. Again! We’re still waiting on the DS version, for God’s sake! Luckily, we can wipe away the tears for a little while and dig into Excite Truck, which has finally made it to our shores.

Gameplay

Excite Truck is the spiritual successor to Excitebike, that classic title from way back on the NES (well, and the N64). In the game you manoeuvre trucks, which range from actual trucks to vehicles more reminiscent of dune buggies, around six different locales. To do this, you hold your Wii remote on its side, using the ‘2’ button to accelerate and tilting the remote to steer your truck. When you’re in the air, you can position your truck by tilting the remote so that you land with all four wheels on the ground at the same time, giving you a boost. You can also hold the '1' button and seesaw the remote up and down to make your truck spin in mid-air.

The track has the occasional pickup or activation icon. There are little exclamation marks dotted over the tracks that cause the terrain to deform in real time right in front of your eyes. Hit an icon, and the flat track your driving across will suddenly shoot upwards, forming a steep ramp and launching you into the air. If you’re lucky enough – and it is luck, not skill – to have a computer player in the wrong place at the wrong time when you hit an icon, you can literally hurl them into the air, completely out of control. It’s very satisfying. Some icons will knock down trees, destroy cliffs or otherwise throw obstacles in your path, so it’s worth remembering which ones help you and which ones will hinder your competition. The only other type of icon is POW, which gives you constant boost and invincibility for a limited time, letting you slam through those pesky trees that before always had you madly pressing the ‘2’ button to reset your smashed car.

The key technique in Excite Truck is boosting, which is activated by pressing any direction on the d-pad. If you turbo up a ramp and then hit boost again just after you leave the ground, you’ll perform a turbo jump, giving you greater distance and longer air time. In a throwback to the previous titles, however, boosting increases your engine temperature, and if you use it for too long your engine will overheat. When you’ve overheated, you can’t boost (obviously), you’ll slow right down and most irritatingly, smoke covers your truck and what’s coming up on the track. Luckily, there are ways to keep the engine temperature down. It will gradually lower by itself (continued next page)