Review: Excitebots: Trick Racing (Wii)
Here’s a secret: ExciteTruck was awesome. There was nothing on the Wii’s launch lineup that quite duplicated the white-knuckle thrills this odd addition to the malformed franchise provided. Expecting more of the same thrills, I booted up ExciteBots: Trick Racing to much… well, excitement.
Uh. Well, once you get past the fact that the game looks, feels, and plays nothing like ExciteTruck, you’ll be in for quite a treat. ExciteBots isn’t much about the racing as much as it is being an eccentric WarioWare/racing hybrid with a few QTE portions sprinkled around. Instead of motocross bikes or big rigs you get to play as unfortunately-designed robot animals shooting at each other with cartoony weapons that involve some sort of mini-game challenge.
I guess my critique ends at the obnoxious forced minigames, gaudy art, and painfully nondescript music (they even removed loading MP3s via the SD card, what’s up with that?) as ExciteBots is one of those games whose hooks are quite difficult to articulate—I guess we here at GAME! quantify this as “fun factor,” other publications also use “tilt”—it’s easy to rag on its flaws, but there’s just some amount of puerile enjoyment to be found in things like playing split-screen or online with friends, figuring out your strategy for the meta-game of stars and stunts. See, races aren’t just determined by who finishes first—little achievements like pulling off insane stunts or rescuing all the butterflies in each level garners each player stars, which are stacked up at the level’s conclusion. The neat online experience (lifting Mario Kart Wii’s entire online system really paid off) and challenging single-player mode just tops everything off nicely.
Overall, I’m giving this game a solid recommendation. I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that wouldn’t enjoy this game after giving it a fair shake.
The Verdict
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Excitebots: Trick Racing Screenshot Gallery:
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