Excite Truck

In the grand racing tradition of Excitebike, get ready for a big-air experience like no other as players rocket their trucks across dynamically changing terrain. Remember tilting your arms to try to make your character land a huge jump? That experience is finally a reality with Excite Truck, a wild, off-road race in which players 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 right and left like a steering wheel to steer. Once the truck goes airborne, tilt the Wii Remote every which way to line up perfect landings for turbo boosts. Pick up items on the courses to make the terrain deform in real time, turning innocent bumps into massive launch pads that affect not only the player's route, but that of his or her rivals. Players jump and bump their way to the highest score and highest finish.

The fact that you can launch a two ton 4x4 hundreds of feet in the air and land it unscathed, earn points for taking out the competition, and cool off an overheating engine simply by driving through a mountain stream should tell you that Excite Truck is not for the fans of realism. This Wii launch title isn't designed to be anything more than an adrenaline rush of a racing game, and it definitely achieves this focus. It is, however, a title that suffers a bit from launch title-itis: its presentation isn't quite as fleshed out as far as current generation racers go, but even with a few small gaps like its weak multiplayer component, the game is a hell of a lot of fun to play in its solo outing.

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