The Conduit Review
The Conduit for the Wii is a First-Person shooter where you'll be taking the reins of an investigation into the mysterious. You'll get to see Washington DC as you've never seen it before, war torn, and pretty blown up. You'll be recruited by a shady figure working for the president, but it won't be long before you will find that he only needed to use you and then planned to end your life. It is then that the at first villain becomes your ally to help you stop what is happening, and unravel the mystery of just what is going on.
Graphically this game feels like GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64. There's nothing that really looks over the top amazing. The enemies are very generic, there are a couple small differences between some of them with a palette change, but overall the characters really lack anything. I understand that for the soldiers and the secret agents they might want them to not look different, but it makes the game feel flat. The level design suffers the same fate. I do like the hidden objects that you can reveal with your orb, but it usually doesn't lead to too much excitement.
The music and sound of the games are basically like the graphics. They feel aged. The one thing that I did enjoy, which I find quite odd, is the random radio stations playing throughout the game. I do commend them for going the distance/volume route on that one.
The controls at first glance appear to be the PERFECT setup. Now you can control your gun with the Wii-mote, and move around with the nunchuck. Unfortunately this game does not feel comfortable. I kept getting disoriented while trying to get through the game. It would have been nice to allow your character to continuously spin if you accidentally aimed the Wii-mote off the TV, but instead you get stuck and then you're left frantically trying to get the Wii to recognize where you're pointing before you die. The other thing is that I felt that I either had to stand directly in front of the TV, or be seated in a chair right in front of the TV to actually be able to navigate, at all. If you're playing at a slight angle the difficulty of getting your character to do what you want becomes exponentially harder.
Overall the game has promise, but with bland graphics, sounds, and rough controls this game is more of a headache than an enjoyable game. I hope that this game doesn't discourage other companies from trying to get the FPS formula right on the Wii, but one never knows. All I can say is you're better off not testing out this game, unless you have a friend who is willing to let you borrow it. This game gets a 5.1 out of 10.
