Get Excited

A new burger review! Today me and Cody hit the dollar stores and this burger place we saw because it happens to be on the opposite side of MacLeod Trail from Dollarama and Cash Converters. Since we were there, we went and checked it out. Too bad you'll have to wait to hear about it because I'm too tired to write it up right now.

We hit three dollar stores today, Dollarama and two locations of Dollar Giant because the first one didn't have what I was looking for. I picked up the usual, food, candy, Spongebob iron-ons, disc shooter gun, AA batteries (damn Wii-mote), CD jewel cases, Pepsi Wild Cherry lip balm (it even looks like a bottle of Pepsi) and of course more Creme Eggs! It's not like I needed any of it, but it's too cheap to resist.

We also went to Cash Converters and I ended up buying Excite Truck for the Wii. Excite Truck is a sequel to the NES game Excitebike and was one of the launch games for the Wii. It's a total arcade racer with jumps and speed total over the top and the physics right out the door. Half the time I'm totally out of control, but like they said in The Fast and the Furious, "You're not in control, unless you're out of control." Tokyo Drift!

You control your trucks by holding the Wii-mote sideways and tilting it like an actual steering wheel to turn. At first I was swerving and sliding around all over the place, but once I got used to it, it actually became easier. The 1 button is the brake/reverse (so far I haven't even touched it) and the 2 button is the gas. The D pad in any direction will activate your turbo boost which you use pretty much non stop if you want to win. Some of the jumps are enormous and you can catch huge air by hitting the turbo right after take off and tilting the remote backward will lean your vehicle backward allowing your to fly further through the air.

You have to collect stars during races and just winning the race doesn't automatically means you will collect enough stars to beat the race, but the better you finish the more stars you get. You can collect stars for airs, jump combos, landings, drifts and smashing other vehicles off the course which can get you anywhere from 1 to 5 stars. Also collecting stars will unlock new vehicles and each vehicle has different stats like speed, grip, air, etc. All I want is speed and air, grip doesn't matter because I'm usually out of control anyway. You can gain stars by driving through stands of trees without hitting anything. I've racked up a few Super Tree Runs (5 stars yo!) but I think that was just pure luck.

The music is pretty generic, but the game lets you select your own race music from mp3s. Just put your mp3s on a SD card and put the in the ol' Wii and before you start your race you'll be able to select the music from the SD card which the game will play in a random order. I haven't tried this yet, but I need to grab a cheap SD card first because I gave my spare card away. I'll get right on it because the cheesy guitar rock has got to go.

As with a lot of Nintendo games I'd still say it's a "casual" game. It's easy to pick up and play, but lacks any real depth. I played for just over an hour and half way through the Excite mode. It's no Gran Turismo, but you do get a real sense of speed flying through the tracks and the airborne insanity is too fun.