"Remember how you always tilted the controller like handle bars when you played Excite Bike? Well now you're holding the steering wheel of a big damn truck." This is how Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime introduced Excite Truck at E3 2006. I'll be honest - my initial reaction was "I could care less." Leading up to the launch, I really didn't have any interest in the game, but after being recommended the game by a number of friends, I decided to give it a try.

The single most major thing that holds this game above being a standard racing game is the controls. Instead of controlling the car with a joystick (which, lets face it, you don't need full rotation if you're only turning left or right) you hold the Wii Remote horizontally in your hands. By tilting it left or right you turn, and pulling backwards holds you in mid-air jumps longer, while tilting it forward drops your truck faster. It may not sound like that big of a deal, but once you sit down and actually try it the game becomes incredibly fun to play.

You can activate boost power by pressing any direction on the D-Pad. This obviously gives your truck a jolt of extra fuel that propels you forward. This is especially awesome when activated immediately after going off a jump, as it blasts you even further into the air and you try to control your landing as you fall a ridiculously long ways back to the ground. I'm not kidding, either. There are some outrageous jumps you pull off sometimes. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good screenshot to match the kind of incredible rush you get when you're dropping thousands of feet through the air while trying to angle yourself just right for the landing.

Truth be told, I started out loving the game because the controls made it so much fun. They make the first few sets of levels ridiculously easy to win - making you feel like you're the master of video games. (well, I know I am, but...) Pretty soon, though, you start to feel the crunch of trying to win the races. Then the game becomes even more fun when you put amazing controls with challenging races. Placing first isn't everything this time around, which is a really big part of why this game is more fun to me than casual racers.

The real objective of each course is aquiring the number of stars required. As shown above, they need 120 stars to beat the level, and they currently have 15. You earn stars by accomplishing amazing feats: crashing, dodging trees, drifting, flying through hoops, and having lots of air time. So even if you finish in third, as long as you have the total number of stars required you'll still beat everyone. Man, sucks for that first place driver, though. I won't try to sell this game the wrong way though, since I often needed to get first to win thanks to the generous 50 star bonus you're awarded for doing such.

What's interesting to me is that my first time through the game it was easy to get first place (thanks to my mad skills, once again), but difficult to earn enough stars on the side to make it to the number needed. But during my run through the hard difficulty on my second time through, getting the number of stars I needed was easy - trying to take first for the needed 50 star bonus became difficult to do at the same time. This style of racing is much more entertaining to me since it forces you to focus on doing something other than just being fast and taking turns correctly.

There are "!" symbols hovering over the ground, and driving through it does something unique. It actually alters the terrain in front of you into a new shape. In other words, a slope can morph into a jump, or a high slope can drop down below water - helping to cool off your engine. These aren't required to be collected, but driving through them creates terrain change more suitable for earning stars. It's a really cool touch to the game that I found enjoyable. It also gives people watching the immediate reaction of "I can't tell what's going on!" while the screen violently shakes and the terrain starts shifting in front of them.

One thing you can tell from these screenshots, is the sheer amount of land that you can drive on. Sure there's the "marked path" on the ground, but you can pretty much drive on everything. It's pretty forgiving, and really makes it a lot of fun. These trucks are pretty much magic - I can't tell you how many times I flew off the edge of a cliff and pretty much drove my truck straight up the side of the two-hundred foot hill to get back on the course. It takes out the stress of needing to drive "perfect" as you can just cruise over everything with incredible traction. A lot of fun.