The Conduit

The Conduit has been put in quite a tough position.  It's not only been pinned as "the savior for core gamers on Wii", but it's also been looked at by numerous publishers to see whether or not there's a core market worth investing in.  That's a pretty high bar raised for High Voltage, but ultimately, they do succeed... in most ways.  The Wii doesn't have many FPS titles, and the ones it does have are largely not worth anyone's time.  But this one does warrant giving a shot.

The setup is simple.  You play Michael Ford, some highly renowned operative in the FBI... or CIA... not sure which exactly.  You are instantly recruited by a faceless Mr. Adams to join The Trust, a secret organization working behind the scenes in the US Government to help "protect America."  In no time, you're thrown into a conspiracy revolving various organizations, and Hercules himself, Kevin Sorbo, to help guide you.  Oh, and this all quickly becomes about an alien invasion at the hands of the Drudge.  Unfortunately, the game's ambitions to present an interesting conspiracy fall flat thanks to absolutely no cinematic feel or immersion.  Most of the dialogue between you and two other lead characters are left to radio chatter and Metal Gear-styled codec conversations in between missions.  There are plenty of plotholes and inconsistencies to be found, and the dialogue itself isn't exactly memorable... or... y'know... good.  Mr. Ford is an uninteresting, flat character, Mr. Adams fails to portray anything beyond bad action movie-style villainy, and Kevin Sorbo is just kinda there.  Beyond acouple of twists here and there, simply put, you shouldn't be getting this game for the story.

The single-player campaign isn't anything really special either.  What you have is a simple corridor-shooter set in Washington D.C.  To the game's credit, there's an alright variety of locales, and some do look pretty interesting.  But none of the set-pieces stick out or are really memorable.  Enemy AI is pretty inconsistent.  One moment they'll flank me or go for cover, the next, they're running back and forth doing nothing while I'm standing perfectly still in plain sight.  It doesn't mean you won't get blown up by a grenade once in a while though.  The Drudge, a very insect-like alien species, will constantly spawn out of the game's titular Conduits that you need to dispatch in order to cut off the flow of enemies.  The same goes for afew egg-sack things that are hanging from the walls on occasion.  This isn't always that simple, and sometimes, just getting to the Conduits can be a real challenge, but I mean that in a good way.  Constantly getting swarmed by the Drudge makes things a bit more interesting as you start getting desperate to toss a grenade into the portal, as your health quickly depletes. 

Unfortunately, there aren't really enough boss fights in the game, and some of the ones that do show up rarely put up a real challenge.  Sure there's this one big crab-like monster, but it just sort of stands there and looks menacing, like it expects me to run rather than fight.  Well sorry buddy, but I kinda can't progress until I kill you, so just stand there and I'll fire madly at your face and we can all go home.  If there were some genuinely shocking moments, or times where I felt some actual panic like when you face the first Berserker in Gears of War, or see that enormous towering alien in Resistance 2, I'd feel a bit more... interested.  But ultimately, there's little variation in what you have to do or how you have to do it.

Not to say it's all just shooting.  The game tries to reach for a speck of originality with the A.S.E. device (All-Seeing Eye) that you find early on.  Basically, you could describe it as a glorified flashlight, but there is a bit more purpose here.  Beyond allowing you to see hidden messages on walls, hack into computers (which surmounts to little more than standing there for five seconds), or ridding yourself of invisible mines, there's not much else that's very interesting about it.  The game rarely gets across why all these different factions are after this device beyond them just saying "I want it!"  "No, I want it!"  If the game did more to show you why it's important, it might feel a bit more significant and special.  It does help break up the pace nicely, but I really wish it was used in more interesting ways. 

The guns on the other hand are pretty nice.  The weapons are split into three classes - human (shotguns, machine guns, etc.), the Trust's much more futuristic technical weaponry, and the semi-gross weaponry of the Drudge.  I still found it hard to move away from a basic shotgun, but there are certainly afew stand-out weapons in the game, like the Strike Rifle, or this one Trust-branded turbolaser... thing... it was awesome, let's leave it at that.  There are acouple interesting grenade types, and with the A.S.E. able to reveal hidden passages on occasion, there are plenty of hidden upgraded Trust weapons you can find too.  These include a special Deatomizer, or suped-up pistol with the power of a rocket launcher.  There's little doubt you'll find a favorite. 

The world just doesn't feel alive at all.  Sure, there's an alien invasion, but you never find people running for their lives.  There aren't bodies on the ground, you don't run into anyone.  The game cheats a lot by telling you over the radio "The Drudge are facing the last of the resistance!"  Soon after acouple of rocking explosions, you're told "They've lost!"  There isn't any sense of desperation or scale to this alien invasion.  Play the first 15 minutes of Half-Life 2, and you already have a greater feeling of scale and what's happening in City 17 than you do in all of The Conduit.  Sure, the game is more about the conspiracy, but its ambition to capture the spirit of an X-Files plot etc. fall flat.  With logs of scientists on the computer screens, or hints of other human beings, maybe things would've been more interesting.

My feelings on the single-player are simple - it's alright.  There's very little actual variety, and there aren't any real stand-out moments that make the game feel special.  I was never wowed, or even just impressed on some level.  I wouldn't call it a bore, I did in fact have fun.  And the game didn't feel dumbed down; there is a solid level of difficulty here.  In fact, there were afew moments where I was tempted to turn down the difficulty to get passed acouple sections.  But frankly, there was rarely anything special or really stand-out about this game that hasn't been done before, or better.  It doesn't have the scope of a game like Halo or Killzone 2, it doesn't have that immersion or desperation like Half-Life 2, and it doesn't have those moments that just feel totally badass.  The campaign here is uninspired.  It's just a corridor shooter.  Simply said, First-Person Shooters have moved on.

But this game certainly isn't all on a completely average level.  On the plus-side, the online multiplayer is excellent.  There are three general setups - Free for All, Team Deathmatch, or Team Objective.  Within these, up to 12 players can meet up together and duke it out in a very frantic, fast-moving FPS.  It works really well.  Before each match, players can vote for whichever guns they want to limit the game to (I had one match that was all shotguns and rocket launchers), which arena, and which ruleset they want to play under.  One of my favorites was an FFA match called 'Bounty Hunter'.  You are given a specific target to hunt down, but kill anyone else, and you'll lose points.  At the same time, there's a target marked on your back, and you don't know who is out to get you.  It can get very interesting. 

The game does also offer WiiSpeak support, which is great considering the only other game to have it is Animal Crossing: City Folk.  But this is where Nintendo's archaic online infrastructure comes into play.  WiiSpeak is disabled unless you are playing with friends, or with your friends' friends.  You can't just go through everyone listed in your match and add them simply, but instead are forced to add people via friend codes.  This shouldn't surprise anyone, but it's a huge waste.  High Voltage did try everything they could to avoid Nintendo's online rulebook, but ultimately, they're still hampered by it.  Still though, this is the best FPS on the Wii with online, and if that sounds good to you, the game is worth just about every penny. 

Now, one of the key features of The Conduit are how incredibly customizable the controls are.  You're able to remap every button, and are given plenty of sliders and 'on/off' switches in the Options menu to change the Wii's FPS control scheme to how you see fit.  It can take a while and quite a bit of tinkering until you find something that really feels right for you.  The button layout was fine for me, but I made the bounding box incredibly small (99 tall, 134 wide) in order to get a bit more of a mouse and keyboard feel.  There's a lot of options here, but sometimes it can feel overwhelming.  Still, it felt good, and after I got it working the way I wanted it (after about 20 minutes of messing around), I was racking up headshots like it was nobody's business.  I still would go for a mouse and keyboard first, but after finding the control scheme right for me, I was really liking how the game feels.  The ability to lock on to enemies did help (it is a soft-lock, so don't worry about feeling like it's cheating), but after a while, it was a feature I realized I wasn't even needing to use, the controls felt so good.  What's sad though is that the controls are probably the biggest selling point beyond 'it's on the Wii'. 

The game looks... okay.  From a technical aspect, there's a lot of cool effects that do make this game look quite good.  Some nice lighting here and there, some good-looking reflective surfaces on occasion, and some cool particle effects do look great.  But frankly beyond that, the game looks pretty drab.  It's clear that High Voltage is a tech studio, not an artistic one.  I'm not asking for over-stylization, but the environments largely look pretty boring.  The Drudge themselves are interesting in concept but they don't present themselves as anything special.  Some open spaces are nice, but if you're in a building and look out the window to the building opposite, you'll find something that looks like it was made out of cardboard, it looks so flat and uninteresting.  The animation isn't anything special, textures, while crisp here and there, look uninspired.  In comparison to Retro Studios and their work on the Metroid Prime Trilogy, I can't say The Conduit is anything interesting visually.

There is little-to-no environmental destruction.  I found myself in an airport, and none of the windows would break, nor did the TV screens or anything.  The luggage didn't go flying around with physics, it doesn't matter if I toss a grenade at a car, it'll be just fine... it all just feels incredibly static and that really pulls you out of the experience when you are faced with what is probably the strongest glass known to man.  Hell, a vase on a pedestal will be fine when facing the destructive force of a rocket launcher. 

So?  How do I ultimately feel about The Conduit.  I think that ultimately, the game is very uninspired.  The look won't wow anyone, although there are some nice technical effects.  The story is a total throw-away, the single-player campaign is pretty one-note, and if you have another console, I find it hard to recommend the game beyond a rental.  But I still found the game to be pretty fun.  It gets some stuff right for sure, and the online adds a lot of replay value, and is the real reason you should be buying the game.  The guns are cool, and the controls can be perfect with a little effort.  If you have another console, there's nothing The Conduit offers that you can't find in a more impressive way on another console beyond the controls.  But if you are a Wii-only person, I'd say you certainly should give the game a shot if you're starving for an FPS.  This game shouldn't blow anyone away, but atleast you'll have a fun time while playing it.  It's just a shame that Wii owners will have to settle for something that's only good as opposed to something that's truly great.