At first glance it seems that Excitetruck is merely a direct clone of the Burnout games. It's true that the two titles do have a bit in common; both games have an incredible sense of speed as well as a star rating system for achievements like drifting, air time and crash severity. Despite the similarities Excitetruck manages to maintain it's own unique style, mostly due in part to the Wii's control system.
The Excite Truck control scheme uses the same sideways Wii-mote control style as Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. Tilting the the controller from side to side like a steering wheel controls the direction your truck travels and tilting forwards and backwards adjusts the pitch of the vehicle when airborne. The 1 and 2 buttons are used for braking and acceleration respectively, with the D-Pad handling the all important boost.
Unfortunately one of the only pictures we currently have of the game.
As you would expect, boosting plays a huge role in this game. If you hold the boost button down while simply travelling around the track then your engine will overheat. The real benefit of boosting is when you can time your boost for when you come off the many bumps in the track. If you can come off a hill and then time your boost perfectly then you'll go faster and possible get an edge against your opponent. If you manage to land with all 4 wheels on the track then you'll also achieve a 'Nice Landing', doing so will give you a greater boost of speed as well.
Nintendo has stated that the environments in the game will be interactive, there are trees and plenty of obstacles littered throughout the tracks. The tracks will also deform in real time which should make every race different from the last. If you actually do happen to wrap your truck around a tree you can actually repeatedly tap the acceleration button, which will build up a gauge which rewards you with a boost once your truck is on the course; the emphasis here is on speed.
Graphically the game looks really impressive for a Wii launch title (we mean this in the best possible way). The environments look good and the real time deformation sounds promising. There are also a few other graphical touches in the game like motion blurring and lens flare. The game also has a zero draw distance so you'll never be staring into fog. Despite everything that was happening, the frame-rate seems very steady as well, which is impressive considering we played the game at E3, when the game still had six months of development to go.
Unfortunately, Nintendo have been rather coy about Excitetruck, so we're not sure yet whether the game will include multiplayer support, or how many vehicles or tracks will feature in the final game. We assume that Nintendo will be adding tracks and cars right up to the games release. Despite the fact we don't know much about Excitetruck we're pretty excited, if the game is anywhere near as addictive as Excitebike then we should be in for a treat.
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