Makes You Want To Crash!
So, there you are, driving along a loose dirt road in the middle of nowhere, trees lining the road. Suddenly, you lose control of your vehicle veering off the road. Much like a speeder bike from Star Wars, you barely miss tree after tree, catching air on the small terrain inconsistencies you drive over. Your luck runs out when you total your vehicle head long into a massive oak. Moments after this happens, a police car pulls up behind you - in the thick of the trees! The officer gets out of his vehicle, slowly strides over to your window, which by the way is broken now anyway due to the crash. Instead of asking for your license and registration, he begins writing on his pad and hands you the ticket he has just written. It states the following: “Award five stars for a wicked-awesome feat of dodging 7 trees before a really impressive crash.”
This is Excite Truck. No, no police officer, but you ARE awarded stars (points, in any other game) for performing feats like these. Ramping off of a huge hill, landing in a massive thick of trees and actually making it back to the road is probably a better outcome, but you do actually get points for crashing! It it was done with style, that is.
I got to play with the Wii for the first time yesterday, which was a terrifically exciting experience for me. My wife whooped me a few rounds, for which I was extremely proud. The strange thing about this game is this: Even if you reach the finish line first, much like Harry Potter’s Quiditch, you have not necessarily won the match. For instance, in the last round, during which my wife had clearly reached the finish line first, I had more stars by far by the end of us BOTH reaching the finish line so I won that round. This is a very different system which actually encourages players to ramp, crash and swerve around things instead of just staying on the beaten path.
I must admit, there seems to be a pretty steep learning curve when it comes to proficiency on the controller using this “steering wheel” approach. Now, I DID find it to be a LOT nicer than a standard analog control stick and would much rather play using the Wii remote if I had a choice. Nevertheless, it is just one of the many observations which I was able to obtain while playing.