Excitebots:Trick Racing

I bought Excitebots: Trick Racing from Walmart a few days ago for $20.00.... that's the lowest I've seen it, though I heard Rogers Plus has it for $15.00-- I couldn't find any at my local ones.

Excitebots: Trick Racing is an arcade style racer with a very weird theme. You're racing with robots that are based on animals: frogs (see cover), bats, birds, grasshoppers, etc. these robots have wheels, but they can also walk (run) upright when you get a wrench power up. Speaking of power-ups, there are a bunch of neat ones that score you stars (points) while racing... you can knock a big soccer ball into a net, or run over a bunch of bowling pins, and there's a race mode where you race while playing Poker.... like I said, it's kinda weird. And they don't explain WHY you're racing with giant animal-themed robots, you just gotta go with it. Why? Why NOT, eh?? Fair enough...

One thing I really like is that it's not entirely about winning a race. You have to get a certain number of stars to get a good score to unlock the next round of play. You can collect stars by using power-ups, doing tricks and of course winning the race. But you could not win the race and still "win" by having enough stars.

It's a fun game that's fast with cheesy music.... unfortunately there's no custom soundtrack option like there was with the previous game Excite Truck..... probably stupid Nintendo's fault for removing mp3 playback support on the Wii.....

But the game overall feels sort of like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up; what is here is good, but there's not a lot to it. The race tracks are not bad looking-- there's one in Canada, yay!-- but they are a bit generic, and there's not very many of them. The game really counts on players replaying the same tracks over & over again.

If this game was $10.00, it'd be a great deal. For $20.00, it's a little high priced, compared to the play value I got out of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle which was the same price.



later
don