About an hour before the game came on I decided to take my brother to Gamestop to play the Wii. They were only allowing people with IDs to play the system, and kids could only play it if their parents were there; since I know the manager there she let my brother play with me.
When I touched the controller I was amazed at how good it felt. It's very comfortable and fit very well into my big hands. Button placement was also good, although I had to look down to see which button to push for a bit; this happens with any new controller though.
As you know, Excite Truck is the game that's showcased at all Wii kiosks. First off, let's get the looks out the way: although the game was running on a widescreen TV, it clearly was not in 480p. This was suprising considering the 360 and PS3 kiosks both were running in HD and looked great. Graphically the game was very unimpressive, and I couldn't help but think that I've seen countless Gamecube and PS2 games that looked better. This was especially evident when I could turn to my left and see a 360 running in all it's glory, and people flocking to it every couple minutes.
But graphics certainly aren't the most important aspect of a videogame: gameplay is. In this regard I felt Excite Truck was rather...unexciting. The controls were spot on, and my movements translated to the screen rather quickly with little to no noticeable lag. But the game still managed to feel uneven. Slow movement of the controller seemed to work pretty well, but the more deliberate turned needed for drifting seemed off, and I constantly crashed into trees. Overall I couldn't help but think the game was interesting for awhile, but I'd rather play Burnout with analog control. It simply was not an improvment over any racing game I've played. Was it easy to control? Yes. But it certainly wasn't better, at all.
To make matters worse, the courses seemed to be designed rather poorly. It feeled and looked like the cheap arcade racing game no one pays attention to. None of the courses I played had any sort of hook or interesting point in which I could say "wow, this is pretty sweet" like in a Burnout or even Mario Kart.
Overall I felt the game wasn't special at all, and if it wasn't on the Wii no one would care about it at all. Definitely a rental type game, not a purchase. And after a couple races I got quite tired of it. My brother liked it, but like me he felt it didn't really control better than an analog racing game.
Different is not always better, as I learned today. To be honest, I found Guitar Hero 2 for the PS2 to be far more innovative and fun than Excite Truck, and many other people seemed to agree considering lots of people flocked to the game to watch others play it. While I was playing the Wii, a few people came in and and uttered "oh that's that Nintendo thing" before waking up to the counter to enquire about a DSL or PS3.
