Were you worried that Excite Truck sequel ExciteBots wouldn’t be as ridiculous as its gloriously out of control predecessor? Worry no longer – this game sounds completely over-the-top.
What’s the best way to top a game that had monster trucks flying hundreds of feet over valleys and gorges while doing 1280 degree flips? Easy. Replace the trucks with robots. You’re done. ExciteBots, the sequel to Wii arcade racer Excite Truck, drops the Grave Diggers for a cast of robotic critters like a ladybug, grasshopper, bat and more.
“This time, we’re bringing more insane tricks,” Richard Garcia of dev Monster Games told Nintendo Power. “However, when we raced the new tracks with the trucks, we felt that the two elements didn’t match up quite as well as we hoped, and we couldn’t get immersed in the game like we wanted to. So, we really wanted to create an offbeat, unconventional design that no one would find anywhere else and would fit with the wacky action.”
“Wacky” seems to be the operative word here, as the game looks to include these robots walking on two legs, throwing pies at each other and ramming into other bots on the track. Otherwise, the game seems to be keeping with the Excite Truck formula: you race against a field of opponents, but getting first place isn’t just a matter of just finishing first but doing as many tricks along the way, like driving within inches of trees or doing spins in the air.
The game will control in the same way as Excite Truck, with the Wii Remote held sideways and tilted to steer and move in mid-air. One new feature that makes use of the Wii Remote are red bars that bots can hook onto during races and then gain speed boosts from if you spin the Wii Remote in the right way.
If it all sounds a bit kiddy and ready for mass merchandising to you, you’re probably not far off the mark. Excite Truck was just a sort of generic XTREME arcade racer that was surprisingly fun and got a bit lost in the Wii launch shuffle. With ExciteBots Nintendo plans to package in a Wii Steering Wheel peripheral, suggesting that they might be giving it a bigger push for a more large audience. Still, if it’s as fun as Excite Truck, Wii owners starved for something interesting should be able to look past the kiddy veneer for the excitement inside.
