Excite Truck [Wii]

Every system has to have a driving/racing game when it launches. It's one of the Ironclad Rules of System Launching. So Nintendo is dutifully offering Excite Truck for the Wii. On the surface, it seems like an obligatory nod to the old Excitebike for the NES. Ho hum. A colorful truck racing game. Swell. But then you actually play it.

The first good sign is how well the Wiimote works. You hold it sideways in your hand and tilt it left and right to steer your vehicle. Surprise! It works great. If you had doubts about the viability of the Wiimote for traditional control schemes, this should go a long way to dispelling them. Unlike the typical 'click-click-click' you often do when you're turning with an analog nub, tilting the Wiimote gives you a much better sense of guiding your truck. It can get a bit disorienting when you're trying to pull around a tight corner; you're liable find your arms twisted up and your Wiimote all but upside down. But Excite Truck isn't a game about hairpin turns.

Instead, this is more in the style of EA's Burnout games. You're not driving so much as guiding a rocket, thrilling to the crazy speed and constantly on the verge of losing control. In fact, considering the amount of time these trucks spend in the air, they might as well be rockets. Consider, too, how generous this game is with turbo boosts. You have an unlimited reserve of boost juice, but you have to watch a temperature gauge to keep from blowing out your engine and slowing yourself down. Otherwise, Excite Truck seems always eager to give you a special boost. Driving in water? Here, have unlimited boost power. Good jump? Here, free boost. Nice landing? Free boost. Aw, did you crash? Have a free boost. For a game about trucks, there are a lot of high speed shenanigans going on here.

But unlike the Burnout games, Excite Truck takes you into open outdoor environments. You'll hit invisible walls if you stray too far, but there's a lot of latitude. This is almost never a game about driving along a pre-determined ribbon. And the physics are top notch. The collision detection is crisp and precise; you'll almost always see that tree coming or know when you're about to slam another truck off the road. The air control and drifting feel tight and interactive rather than scripted. And the little visual tricks, such as the way coconuts fall out of trees or how vehicles show dynamic damage after a crash, are a nice treat.

Excite Truck was developed by Monster Games, the people who made the tragically underappreciated Test Drive: Eve of Destruction. You can see here Eve's sense of free-wheeling playfulness and generosity. The tracks themselves are interactive, with trigger points that deform the terrain or unlock some sort of event. You'll get collapsing towers, crumbling castles, forest fires, erupting geysers, tornadoes, and even an oil tanker running aground. Captain Hazelwood, we presume. The sense of spectacle is admirable, particularly for how it folds into the different tracks. At first glance, it might seem like having to drive a Scotland track again is dull. But once you realize each track has its own gimmick, you'll be champing at the bit to unlock them.

Excite Truck is also very generous with career progression and unlockables. You don't have to win to win. Each track has a star requirement. You accumulate these stars during a race based on style, wrecking other cars, jumping through hoops, and so on. At the end of the race, the first four places get a star bonus. This means you can "complete" a track without necessarily winning the race.

In the course of accumulating stars, you'll also earn achievement trophies for jumps, wrecks, perfect runs through trees, and so on. As you use a particular vehicle, you'll unlock new paint schemes for it. The idea here is that you should never have to bang your head against a tough race and get nothing in return. Excite Truck wants you to play, and it will reward you accordingly.

The game progression for unlocking new tracks is pretty easy at first. Within a few hours, you'll have a dozen distinct courses to drive. Eventually, you'll be able to unlock a tougher difficulty mode. There are also challenges which are as brutal as the easy races are forgiving. Drive through increasingly narrow gates before time runs out, launch yourself through floating rings, or destroy AI cars. The multiplayer is limited to two players on a splitscreen, and unfortunately, there are no AI cars. These duels lose Excite Truck's single player jostling about, and they feel a bit feature anemic, especially considering how robust Monster Games's Eve of Destruction was.

The graphics are fantastic, and proof that you don't need uber-hardware to draw a beautiful environment at fast frame rates. The sense of speed is superb and pure. Excite Truck has none of the annoying hitches you get in the Burnout or Most Wanted series. The artwork for each of the different regions is distinct and the environmental effects are lush. These tracks have atmosphere and character.

Excite Truck is a fast, fluid, and gorgeous game, with a remarkable control scheme, a gratifying sense of progression, and its own unique sensibility. With a launch title like this, the Wii comes out of the gate swinging, demanding to be taken seriously. What could have been proof of concept for using the Wiimote as a steering device is instead a full-featured and compelling game. You other driving games for the Wii are going to have a tough act to follow.