Signal to Noise

Well, I took my son up to GameStop to use up the rest of his birthday giftcard and was pleased that the store’s Wii demo system was up and running with a Samsung display. The game that was running was “Excite Truck”, which seems like an odd combination of 4×4 Evolution and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.  It’s not just about racing, but about grabbing bonuses and hitting certain objectives while you race, almost like performing tricks in a skateboarding game.  The more objectives you hit, the faster your truck goes, and so forth.  Very cool.  The graphics were on par with any modern racer, but what I really liked about it was the controls. Instead of steering your truck with a joystick or directional pad, you hold the wand-shaped controller sideways and tilt it left and right, like a steering wheel. This alone made the experience interesting, though my son and I only played for about five minutes each.  Oddly, I was able to come in first place on my first attempt. I say “oddly” because I’m not usually very good at racing games.  But overall, based on this limited experience with the Wii, I think the machine has some real promise, and Excite Truck seems like a lot of fun.  Incidentally, the store was out of Wiis (out of PS3s too).