Supah Excite! Bots! Impressions!

[runesword forger]

Just bought it! Alright, I'll stop the exclamations.

Brief Impressions (keep in mind that I luv Excite Truck, so YMMV):

Graphics are a definite step up. Both tracks and vehicles. I like the bat at the start.
The transformer bug bot thing works for me. Kewl.
Speed is still extreme, though I have not figured out good spots for tree runs yet.
The swingy bars don't get in the way of the racing, which I was slightly worried about
Control is easier, though in normal mode, the buttons of the wiimote face up (not at you)
Difficulty is pretty easy for an Excite Truck vet. Schooling the game so far.
Online is sooooo nice to have.

By the way, not sure whether I beat street date on this by one day.

PS: Some dude named IGN showed up in online, I assume an editor. Schooled that Bum and 4 others to cash in a huge bet. Qt3 shall defend the Excite crown!

PPS: You bonk soccer balls into goals, bonk football thru uprights, get poker cards to get the best hand, smash into bowling pins, craaazy power ups, and if you go into godzilla stomp mode off a ramp, you can freaking glide forever.

[rattasak]

Man, I totally thought that said Super Excite Bike when I first read it :(

Still, glad it's a good game.

[runesword forger]

A few more comments, on the (questionable) theory that someone besides Tom Chick likes arcade racers around here.

Good Things:

So with Monster Games, their instincts haven't failed them in Excitebots. Steering and mid-air spins have more responsive controls. A brief wiimote shake has replaced the button pressing to recover a crash -- much better. Boosting doesn't overheat as quickly.

Don't believe the label "mini games" during racing. There's no interruption on hitting a soccer ball into a goal or whatever, you're just rewarded for steering precisely at the right spot as you hurtle through the course. Several additions fall into that category. The only thing that pauses you from racing is the occasional red horizontal bar, and the better you do it, the shorter it is.

The tracks seem excellent so far, but I haven't explored them enough to give a definitive evaluation. In Mexico, I got up on the mesa one time and found all sorts of goodies, but I haven't pulled it off since. I'm always wondering if there's a better route and I suspect there often is. It seems like the exploring might be even better than in Excite Truck. I raced against one guy online who took different routes way up ahead and he destroyed me... he must have known secret, treasure laden pathways....

Better graphics all around. Excite Truck could have been done on a Gamecube, I don't believe the same is true for Excitebots. Also, less pop-in with long draw distances.

Online is awesome, but tracks with such epic scope could easily support 10+ competitors. It's a shame that it's capped at a max of 6. The other online limitation is that you can't have 2 players both go online in split screen mode -- single player only. One really cool feature is that you can bet stars on race outcomes. Other goodies include the ability to send replays to friends, or challenge them to beat one of your replays and reward them with stars for doing so.

Bad Things:

I'm not sure about the "poker races" yet, there's some mental processing of poker hands that I've got to do quicker. I could see this feature going either way, but I'm not sold on it yet. You can't play head to head poker races on the same Wii for some reason.

You can't use your own music. You know, Nintendo being Nintendo.

Speaking of which, the online doesn't support Wii Speak. This is a Nintendo published product, with a cool online mode, and no support for the new online peripheral. How hard would this have been, seriously? Give a couple programmers 4 weeks on it?

I haven't gotten into Super Excite races, but Excitebots seems easier than Excite Truck. I suspect that they're counting on online to provide longevity for good players, and they're probably right.

Depressing Thing:

I don't think most reviewers appreciated Excite Truck, the previous game in the series. It aggregated to a 72 rating. I'm not optimistic that Excitebots will fare much better because the additions will seem strange and niche-y and superficial at first. It isn't a smooth racer for the masses like Mario Kart. But there are deep rewards in this one for the true believers. And it's only $40 for some reason. If you like arcade racing games, don't let middling reviews keep you away.

[Tom Chick]

I don't think most reviewers appreciated Excite Truck, the previous game in the series. It aggregated to a 72 rating.

What the hey? How on earth did that happen? Sheesh, I don't even want to know the aggregate review scores for Eve of Destruction. Stupid videogame reviewers!

-Tom

[Dave Long]

The excitement of EXCITE Truck really all came from GAF after release (and a few people here). Nobody got it but a few of us, and most people just dismissed it out of hand. I'd say they're all sorry and lame, but I don't think they care. They're probably going to slag this game too.

[David Hellman]

Thanks for the impressions. I like arcadey racers and am kinda intrigued by this.

[Rod Humble]

Question: is there a mode in the game where you can just drive around without crashing into trees just bashing dumb AI players?

My son hates Racing in Excite truck but loves those two track/modes where you just drive around.

[JD]

You can't use your own music. You know, Nintendo being Nintendo.

Funny thing, since you could use your own music (from SD card) in Excite Truck, IIRC.

I'm not optimistic that Excitebots will fare much better because the additions will seem strange and niche-y and superficial at first.

The fact that Nintendo doesn't really seem to market the game and also kinda announced it out of the nowhere two months ago does't help it.

[BobJustBob]

Yeah, this is really good. Despite all the extra stuff it still feels like Excite Truck.

[Eduardo X]

I feel like a total tool for buying this over House of the Dead, Da Blob, and others, but I did. Impressions to come!

[Eduardo X]

I am enjoying this quite a bit! It's racing, but easy. Very Mario Kart like, but with more unlockables. The mini games in races really adds a lot, though at times it's hard to hit the items due to difficult controls. I tried to play Mario Kart with the wheel too, but couldn't get it right. This seems like the same issue, though I think it's just inexperience here.

[Gendal]

I bought the original on launch day, liked it, but not enough to buy a sequel unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Racers are not my thing, though it was divergent enough to hold my interest for much longer than most.

[Eduardo X]

Did the original have tricks?

[sam and the firefly]

Yeah. Well, one at least. If you held down a button and shook the remote in a certain way you'd do a 180 spin, and you could link them together on big jumps for massive starrage.

I really liked Excite Truck, but I don't know that this sequel is totally what I'm after...

[DeathMonkey]

I love the gambling aspect in multiplayer; that's brilliant.

Does anyone know why you'd want to challenge someone and put stars on the line other than to provide them an incentive to attempt your challenge? I'd be kinda cool if I could profit off my brother not being as totally awesome as I am.

[Eduardo X]

The MP is really fun. With the gambling aspect, you win even win you lose. Unless you lose, that is.

That said, this is one of those games that fucks me thumb up! I feel like my nail is about to fall off.

[Eduardo X]

I keep posting. Forgive me.

I had a friend over tonight, and she is not a gamer at all. However, even though I warned her this game is a bit hard, she dove right in and got pretty good. She loved the wackiness, and even the red swinging bar got her into it. She'd jump off the coach and jump up and down trying to swing the bot around the bar. It cracked me up!

[BobJustBob]

I finally tried some multiplayer last night and it's crazy how many stars you can earn. Though I guess crazy is this game's thing. If you care about unlocking stuff you'd be stupid not to hop online and do some random (no friend codes required) races. Which sucks if, like me, you prefer singleplayer to multiplayer (in everything, always; take that Tom!).

Here's how it works. Singleplayer, you do a race and it takes 3-5 minutes and you earn a few hundred stars. Online, you do the same race in the same amount of time but you bet stars. You can bet up to 2500 and they're immediately spent; I wonder if a disconnect means you lose your bet. But you're not gambling with the other players -- you're betting with the house. At the end of the race, your bet is repaid according to a random multiplier which is weighted by your performance. If you got first place, you might win 3x to 5x your bet. If you got last place, you might get 0x to 2x. So even if you come in last place, there's still only a random chance that you'll permanently lose your stars. You might even win some. It looks like only the last two players in a six-player game have a chance of 0x.

So I did four races online last night. First one, I bet 1k stars, took third, got a 2x. The next three I bet 2.5k stars, took two second places and a first place. Got a 4x, 2x, and 5x. In about twenty minutes of racing online I spent 8.5k stars in bets and won 29.5k stars. For comparison, in several hours of singleplayer races I earned around 10k stars.

[runesword forger]

Yeah, online mode showers the stars upon ye.

I find myself playing both modes a lot. Super Excite mode is challenging on a few tracks to get an S rating.

When I'm learning tracks, the game's insane personality rubs off on me -- I try a lot of ridiculous stuff going off the rails just to see whether's there's anything interesting on the river bed at the bottom of a cliff.

Or I don't concede a wreck and try to blast back onto the course when I'm tilted 80 degrees on the side of a mountain.

[Cubit]

yikes, only 13,000 copies on april.

http://gamasutra.com/news?story=23644

also in this article

News of Excitebots’ initial sales comes after NPD said that the M-rated Wii exclusive Madworld from Sega sold 66,000 units in the U.S. in its March debut. In February, Sega's other gory M-rated Wii game, the light gun shooter House of the Dead: Overkill, sold 45,000 units in its debut month in the U.S., according to NPD.

its sad these decent wii games aren't selling.

[MSUSteve]

Excitebots only had 10 days to sell in April, but if one figures most sales of a game occur in the first week, then yeah, 13k is bad. The weird thing about Wii games is that initial sales don't seem to be an indicator of future sales. I get the impression that Wii games, good Wii games, tend to sell steadily over a long period of time.

[BobJustBob]

That is wretched. :(

[Dave Long]

I think it's going to do ok over time. Nintendo is really focused on Punch Out!! right now.

[Eduardo X]

I'd imagine this is a kids game, but it's too hard, I'd imagine, for kids. So, then, who is the audience for an animal/robot wacky racing game?

Besides me, of course.

[runesword forger]

It may end up being a small party, but it's a fine online party.

I am a purple cockroach to be reckoned with.

[JD]

I feel sorry for Monster Games. Nintendo's marketing was a joke; and not a very funny one.