The Excite franchise should be known by most Nintendo followers, and it's easy for these followers to be a bit apprehensive about controlling trucks over the tried and tested dirt bikes they would be used to. But never fear, the jumps and boosts the bikes were known for have been successfully transferred to the four-wheeled monsters. In fact, the only thing that didn't make it across was the level editor, and while we would have loved to have seen one in there, we understand the difficulty in adding such an option to a game with such varied courses.

The game is played with the Wii controller held horizontally (like an NES controller) with the 2 button acting as the accelerator, any button on the D-pad controlling the boost while tilting the controller takes care of the steering. It isn't uncommon to find yourself reaching for the D-pad for steering through your first couple of races, but that's what the tutorial area is for. The guys at Monster Games realised that a new way of control means a new way to confuse consumers, and the rather extensive tutorial mode will teach you absolutely everything you will need to know to ensure you unlock everything you possibly can.

During these tutorials you will learn that almost everything except accelerating will see you collecting stars. A small drift might see you earning 1 star, where a five-second drift could see you earning 5 stars and one step closer to earning a drifting trophy. Everything has a trophy, from getting air to narrowly missing a bunch of trees; if you score a star doing something, there's a trophy for it, and the stars are there to help you unlock more tracks, higher difficulties and a few more trucks to annihilate. Don't think you'll get to the next level just by coming first, every track has a star quota you need to reach.

Just like previous iterations of the Excite franchise, boosting is essential but can also be dangerous to use. Keep the boost held too long and you'll find your truck's engine overheated and it'll be a few seconds of slow racing before you can use your boost again. Thankfully, everytime you get air - with the boost jump of course - your engine will slowly start to cool. The other way to ensure your engine doesn't overheat is to drive your truck straight through any nearby water. As long as you're wet you can boost without any fear of a broken turbo.

The biggest flaw with the control scheme comes in the form of pulling off spins in your truck. The tutorial breaks it down for you fairly indepth, but you'll find yourself accidentally pulling them off every fifth attempt until you find the sweet spot. It requires you to tilt the controller one way, and then flick it back in the other direction. If you succeed, your truck will rotate 360 degrees in the air; manage to flick another one at the right time and you'll turn it into a 720. Expect to spend a good five or ten minutes in this tutorial level while you try and find what works for you, and it is suggested you don't try the harder levels until you have this manoeuvre sorted - as you will need it to get the high star quotas.

The game may come off a little simple in screenshots, but the game really does need to be seen to be believed. A solid 60 frames per second ensures that there is never a drop in action and you'll find it hard to actually worry about any level of detail - be it good or bad - while burning around these tracks. While the game could have used a few more environments, the ones included look superb. It may not push the Wii to its boundaries, but we'd rather have the game keeping its speed than a few extra details that slow it down. The trucks looks great, the environments look great and the dust effects and water look great too. The only major flaw here is the lack of decent TV style replays and what seems like a rather slow loading of trucks on the truck select screen -all in all, minor gripes.

Excite Truck offers something no other Wii title has yet to, and that's the ability to customise the soundtrack with your own music. If you happen to own an SD card, chuck some of your favourite tunes onto it and chuck it into your Wii. In fact it's probably best you fork out for an SD card if you don't already have one as the music that comes with Excite Truck is some of the most generic rock music ever created. While the guitar riffs do sort of go hand in hand with a good old fashioned truck race, they really don't suit the style of game Monster Games is trying to create. Thankfully the engine sounds - while over the top - sound convincing enough that we don't have the need to turn the volume off completely.

What's strange is that where the development team felt it neccessary to include the option to stream your own music they decided the one vital part of this game didn't need any options at all. The multiplayer mode is a simple 1 vs 1 game mode. You can select the track and the trucks, but that's it. It would have been nice to have some of the challenge modes included in here to see who could drive through the most rings or survive the longest through ever-shrinking gateways, but instead we get a simple race to the finish with no computer controlled trucks. If only Nintendo had rolled out their online services with the launch of the Wii, we may have seen a completely different multiplayer mode.