The Duc Pond

I headed out towards a nearby EB Games during lunch, looking for a Wii-osk. Score! I handed over my driver’s license as collateral, and got the Wii-mote.

It’s small, but shiny and well-designed. I originally had mixed thoughts about Excite Truck, but I can now say it’s pretty fun. The Wii-mote works great. You steer by tilting, and the controller registers those tilts very accurately. When you hit a token on the road, the “collect” sound comes out of the Wii-mote’s speaker. The sound quality out of the speaker is pretty poor, but not a big deal. The controller rumble is very weak. Weaker than Gamecube’s, if you can believe it. Still, if you like rumble force-feedback, it’s not terrible. It’s just not all that convincing when it’s so weak.

Screenshots of Excite Truck are pretty bad, but in motion it looks better. Barely above Gamecube, though. Racing is simple, but the dynamically transforming land is pretty cool. It’s fast-paced and crazy, which I like. It’s definitely an arcade racer. The music is annoying, so I hope the rumors of being able to stream music off an SD card are true. I wasn’t going to get this, but now I think I’ll put it on the X-mas list.

I then hit the Home button to try out the Wii interface. As you know, the controller isn’t a direct pointer in the menus, it’s relative. But it works quite well. Every time you float the cursor over one of the icons for a channel, the controller rumbles a bit. I’m not sure if I like it, but I’m sure it’s something you can turn off. I didn’t spend much time in the menus, because the EB guy looked at me disapprovingly.

In short: the Wii-mote rules. I’m so sold on this system, it’s not even funny. 2 more weeks, dudes and dudettes.