The Conduit (Wii) Review

Could this possibly live up to the hype it’s been given?

On the gaming communities I frequent, the seemingly few remaining ‘hardcore’ gamers that own the Wii have been hailing The Conduit as the saviour for hardcore gaming on the Wii.  However, they said the same about MadWorld and sales for that haven’t been too stellar.

And so, it’s arrived.  The Conduit is a first person shooter set in a near future Washington DC.  You play the part of Michael Ford, a Secret Service agent who has been inducted into a group known as ‘The Trust’ in order to uncover the truth behind the invading alien force know as the ‘Drudge’.  It’s pretty much cookie-cutter conspiracy theory story, and it’s told in the form of MGS-style codec based cut scenes and in-game radio communication between you and your contact within The Trust, with some pretty bog standard voice acting.

When they were developing this game, High Voltage were confident that their specially designed Wii graphics engine, Quantum3, would give the game Xbox 360 quality graphics.  To be honest, they haven’t lived up to their boast.  The character models are certainly well designed and look great, but the endless corridor environments are somewhat bland and lifeless and don’t jump out at you at all.

The single player game itself is pretty standard shooting fare.  The ‘objectives’ basically amount to ‘go to this place’ or ‘kill these things’ and that’s about it.  The human weapons are pretty standard, what with your shotguns, assault rifles, pistols and the like.  The alien weapons are a bit more interesting, including my favourite, a pistol that will down anything in one shot.  As you’d expect, there isn’t a high ammo capacity for this.

One of the big features in the game is the ‘All Seeing Eye’ which you use to uncover hidden mines or open locks on doors.  You’ll be able to tell quite easily when you need to use it, as the Wiimote will start to make horrendously annoying beeping noises, that get less spaced out the closer you get to the problem.  I’ve always found the inability to turn the Wiimote speaker off somewhat annoying, and the ASE doesn’t help.

The AI is somewhat inconsistent.  Sometimes, you will walk into a room and the enemies will immediately turn on you and start shooting.  However, sometimes you can walk into the same room and shoot two enemies dead before the rest will even notice you’re there.  Sometimes if you damage an enemy but can’t finish them off quickly enough, they will run away and hide to try and recuperate, which is a nice touch.

The default control scheme for this game has been extremely well thought out and is one of The Conduit’s strongest points.  You point the Wiimote to aim, the Z button to lock on and the B trigger to shoot, which is totally natural.   Melee attacks are performed by thrusting the Wiimote forwards, and you throw grenades by moving the Nunchuck as if you are going to throw an actual grenade.  Also, the sensitivity of the aiming is absolutely spot on.  High Voltage abandoned the idea of using Wii MotionPlus for this game as they felt it wouldn’t add much to it, and they were correct.    You can completely tailor the controls to suit yourself, which is a great feature.  However, the default controls are so well mapped out that you won’t need to make any changes.

The game has a brilliantly epic soundtrack that is so well suited to the game.  Some of the music is quite atmospheric, and would be more so if the environments were atmospheric to match.  More’s the pity.

So, the story so far.  The campaign is pretty average, and a top grade FPS player would probably wrap it up in about 8 hours or so.  (It took me just over 12 hours, to give you a guide)  The graphics are pretty good on the whole, the story is generic and the AI is questionable at times.  However, the soundtrack is great and the controls are fantastic.  So far, it’s a totally average experience so far.  But now onto the final part of the game, the multiplayer.

The online multiplayer aspect of The Conduit has been the focus point of a lot of the marketing.  You can play online with up to 12 people in a match.  There are several game types, from your standard deathmatch modes, capture modes and control modes.  There’s also an ‘ASE Football’ mode where you have to hold the ASE for as long as possible without getting killed.

You can customise the look of your character and create an ID for yourself, which makes it a lot easier.  You gain experience and rank up as you play, and the matchmaking pits you against similarly ranked people.  You can use WiiSpeak to talk to people, although I don’t actually own it so I couldn’t try it out.  All in all, the multiplayer is very well built and actually reminds me a lot of Halo with the options and features, even down to the ’2 guns, grenades and a power up’ gear set up.  I suffered little to no lag, and the matchmaking was quick and worked extremely well.  The different modes are varied and fun to play, and the maps are designed quite well.

FINAL THOUGHTS
In the end, The Conduit is a pretty good game.  The single player experience isn’t the best and the AI isn’t much better, but the superb control scheme and the robust, solid and downright fun multiplayer save this game from being completely middle of the road.  Certainly, the multiplayer in the Conduit is the most accessible online game on the Wii.  You can tell that this game is targeted at the gamer who only owns a Wii, and if that gamer is you, you’ll get a lot out of this game.  If you own other consoles, though, you’re probably better off just renting it.

Find other The Conduit reviews over at Test Freaks

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