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Excite Truck

Posted November 29th 2006 by Jared Thomas.

There are games for men, and, for some odd reason, there are games for ladies. The advent of the Wii console, marketed towards "everyone" (which really means everyone who isn't a man since we already own every video game console we can afford), struck fear in the hearts of the burlier sex the world over as it held the distinct possibility of a market saturated with shiny happy games marketed towards toddlers and thirty-something women. Fortunately, Nintendo's "for everyone" campaign clearly only referred to Wii Sports and a handful of forgettable ports; a quick glance reveals that Nintendo has targeted stereotypical, violent gamers more with Wii's launch than with any other launch in their history. High school and college-aged males are pandered to with games based on such testosterone-driven wells as Marvel Comics, Dragonball Z, first-person shooting, and of course a game that honestly I will give you ten dollars if you show me a woman playing and enjoying: Excite Truck.

You know Excite Truck snubs the entire female and metrosexual demographic right away just from the title, because it's not only a racing game without koopa shells, but it's a racing game without cars, or for that matter any other conveyance other than big redneck trucks. The sissy Fast and the Furious movement in racing games toward car customization that goes beyond performance and into aesthetics is completely ignored as there are only about a dozen stock vehicles to chose from and the only custom selection you can make is color. Just for good measure, all given colors are so garish that it's unlikely anyone could desire or even find an actual car painted with any of them but black. Of course, after earning top scores three times with one vehicle the game grants you a bonus paint job, but surprise! – all the trucks' bonus paint jobs use the same set of racing stripes and automotive logos, with that monster truck-style row of lights on top like something off of Marty McFly's dream car. Punks and others who despise rednecks will automatically hate this game. In fact, the only people who are likely to enjoy its style are actual hicks or hipsters who find the hyperbolic Team America vision of patriotism endlessly amusing. I can't decide which one I am.

Another amusing twist is that you don't win the race by being in first place at the end. You win the race by accumulating points in such fields of skill as crashing into other players, getting "mad air", driving off course through trees, skidding for extended periods of time around turns, and driving off ramps through rings. It's a great change of pace because whereas most racers boil down to an almost exact science of cutting this turn at such an angle and hitting the brakes at whatever principle time, Excite Truck is the practice of trying at all times to be doing the awesomest possible thing, and taking advantage of surroundings to make sure that thing scores lots of points. So if you're a nice courteous driver like Desiré and you try to stay on the road and not drive too fast and avoid contact with other drivers, congratulations for losing: Go play Gran Turismo. There's a hefty 50-point prize to the first place finisher, sure, but most races require around 100-200 points to complete, so the best strategy is just to grab the biggest truck available (I prefer the aptly-dubbed Summit) and be the biggest badass on the track, smashing into opponents wherever possible, boosting off ramps into the woods, and keeping an eye out for power-ups that make all this easier.

There are only two power-ups in the game: a POW and an exclamation point, or some other random emblem that doesn't look like the giant letters P-O-W emblazoned on a bright orange spinning crest. Drive into a POW are your car is granted a short period of inexhaustible and non-negotiable boost; your truck goes out-of-control fast and if the power-up didn't also grant you near-invincibility (read: drive through trees) you'd crash almost instantly. POWs are great because they're typically hidden somewhere that if you miss it you drive straight into a thick wooded area, but if you get it you can either smash through the trees or smash through any opposing trucks ahead of you.

The non-POW item triggers drastic topographic changes such as perhaps suddenly a mountain is in your way for convenient boost-and-get-air opportunities. Sometimes the huge jump is already there and the item merely triggers rings to ramp through and get points, and occasionally it mixes things up and creates a valley rather than a mountain. This is always disappointing and the only reason it's included in the game is probably to avoid letting gamers get spoiled and unappreciative of the huge jumps.

Huge jumps in question are fun but they're also a responsibility, which is twofold: before a jump, use your turbo to gain speed, and after a jump adjust your angle of landing so that it's as parallel to the ground as possible, thus warranting the game to declare it "Nice!" and award a free landing boost. Completing these operations is so easy that I'll explain the controls in one half-sentence: hold the Wiimote sideways like an NES controller and steer like you did when you were playing some racer as a kid and thought moving the controller moved your car, using the 2 button to go and any direction on the D-pad to go faster.

The initial use of turbo requires you to make sure your temperature gauge isn't too hot or your run the risk of overheating, but this is easy if you remember that this is just Excite Bike with a truck. When landing, tilt the Wiimote to adjust your truck's angle for a nice landing, which might not make sense if you still aren't remembering that this is just Excite Bike with a truck. Basically, keep in mind that in nearly every way the game mirrors its NES roots: crashing into anything means immediate breakdown and resetting, during the resetting phase you can tap the gas button to get a boosting rather than standstill reset (akin to tapping the gas button to make your little man run back to his marooned bike), and of course the turbo and jump nuances I just mentioned. Other than the fact that you're encouraged to crash into opponents rather than pitifully spinning out of control when coming in contact with other racers, it's surprisingly faithful to the mechanics of the original. If Excite Bike is Bruce Banner, Excite Truck is The Incredible Hulk.

I have to be honest: I threw in that last bit purely for soundbite value. But in equal honesty I love this game with the same part of me that loves The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

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