Excite Truck shares a few similarities with Nintendo's Wave Race Blue Storm. Both launched or will soon be launched alongside a console, Wave Race with GameCube and Excite Truck with Wii. Both graciously bowed to a more advertised launch game, Wave Race with Luigi's Mansion and Excite Truck with The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. Both provide plenty of thrills, lots of speed, and slick looking effects. They also feel so 2001.

Excite Truck provides the same thrills as Wave Race, with its speedy vehicles, heavy reliance on turbo, and exotic locales, whisking gamers away from the city environments that have become the standard in most racing games. Almost nothing beats launching hundreds of feet off the sand dunes of Fiji, rocketing down the mountains of China, or busting through cacti in Mexico, especially when it involves the Wii's motion sensitive controller. Whereas Wave Race featured standard left analog stick control, Excite Truck's vehicles are steered by tilting the Wii's remote left and right, then pulling the controller back to catch big air after launching off a mountain. It's not the most perfect setup, as the trucks slide all over the place (a problem when the landscape is dotted with trees), but the appeal of waving one's arms around to drive makes up for the sloppy controls.

The game takes things a step further by offering terrain that morphs whenever someone runs over an exclamation point trigger. Once activated, the ground dramatically shifts. Mountains rise and fall, boulders crash onto the track, and waters surge. Not only does this slick looking effect greatly impact gameplay, since freshly triggered mountains can be used to catch some big air, but it sabotages opponents, which will be unceremoniously propelled into trees and walls.

Crashing plays a huge role in the game, though the effects fail to impress. Wheels pop off and chassis's crumple like old leaves, but Nintendo failed to capture (heck, even come close to) the high intensity wrecks that populate Electronic Arts' Burnout franchise. Considering the Burnout series dates back to 2001, Excite Truck's tepid level of destruction brings with it a feeling of emptiness.

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