Review: The Conduit

Nintendo mentioned The Conduit as being part of the holy trinity of hardcore games to appease players not happy with the seemingly lightweight fare offered up at their E3 press conference. While The Conduit does deliver first-person shooter goodness on the Wii, does it live up to all the hype and expectation that has been placed on its shoulders?

The Story

X-Files fans will feel right at home with the storyline in The Conduit. You play as Secret Service agent Michael Ford, a lone-wolf agent who becomes embroiled in an alien conspiracy to take over Washington D.C. and assassinate the president. You will come into contact with The Trust, a shadow organization working within the government, but it becomes apparent very early on that you shouldn’t put a lot of trust in The Trust, as it seems that they are helping to facilitate the alien invasion. And those aliens are The Drudge, a spidery race of alien warriors, outfitted with weaponry that mankind has never been exposed to before. You will be steered along for the majority of the game by Prometheus (voiced by Hercules and Andromeda star Kevin Sorbo), the “terrorist” you are assigned to capture in the opening levels of the game, who comes to your aid after a ruthless betrayal.

Here come The Drudge

Intrigue and deception take high priority in this plotline, told through voiceover transmissions in-game and mission briefings before every level. There are no CG cutscenes to speak of; you never get to see what your character looks like (besides his hands) or even the people you’re in contact with over the radio. You don’t really miss the fact there is no CG mostly because the excellent writing and voicework performed by the cast really fleshes out a broad, sweeping story. Those of us who can’t possibly believe there might be aliens out there will be rolling their eyes throughout the story’s nine chapters.

The Controls

Developer High Voltage Software really made an effort to make this title a first person shooter that used the Wii’s unique control scheme to its fullest extent and it shows. Controls are similar to Metroid Prime:Corruption with the Wiimote used for precision aiming and a targeting lock-on button assigned to the nunchuck. Grenades are tossed by flicking the ‘chuck and melee attacks performed by thrusting the Wiimote. Firing is assigned to the Wiimote’s trigger, jump to the A button… I could go on and on here as every single button on both the Wiimote and Nunchuck are used for vital inputs. The first time I put the game in, the controls felt a little awkward, but I started to get a grip on the finger-gymnastics needed to be effective before the first level was over. But, you may feel like you’re rubbing your belly while patting your head at times.

The good news is that the game comes with multiple control schemes, and if those still don’t feel right for you, you can completely remap each of the buttons to do whatever you want them to do. Don’t like tossing grenades with the ‘chuck? Move it to a button on Wiimote. You can even change how you move your character and how camera pans. It really is a testament to the thought that the development team put into giving you, as the player, complete control.

There's plenty of human scum to blast too

The Weapons

You will pick up well over a dozen different weapons as you blast through The Conduit’s nine chapters, some lasting well over an hour depending on your inclination to explore for secret unlockables. The weapons come in three flavors: conventional (shotguns and assault rifles), Trust weaponry (high-tech human-based weapons like Deatomizers and Carbonizers) and Drudge weapons (alien-based organic technology like the Hive Cannon or Warp Pistol). Most of the weapons feel good in your hands, deliver decent damage and even offer some tactile surprises. Some, like the Deatomizer and Hive Cannon, respond to how you’re holding the Wiimote. That is, if you use the Deatomizer with the Wiimote twisted on an angle, your charged shots will shoot out on that angle. With the Hive Cannon, if you can keep the Wiimote fairly level, your shot will be more focused and less spread out. Neat. Plus you can pick up overloaded weapons that deal extra damage if you can sniff out the secret puzzles that litter each level. More on that in a bit. Three kinds of grenades (frag, flash and radiation) round out your arsenal and deal fantastic damage.

One note that I have to say (and I did mention it to the developers at E3 who basically just shrugged their shoulders at me) is this: each weapon sounds like its being fired through a can wrapped in a sock. It’s just my opinion, but it detracts from the whole experience when each weapon has a similar tinny sound.

You’ll also be using the All Seeing Eye (ASE), a glowing, floating orb of alien technology to interact with the environment, solve simple puzzles, and find secrets. You’ll be disarming ‘ghost mines’, finding ‘organic keys’ to locked doors and even using the ASE to find invisible enemies. You can’t have a weapon armed while using the device, so you can equate using the ASE to using the flashlight in Doom or a visor mode in Metroid. It’s a nice touch, but ultimately uninspired.

You'll use the ASE to look for more than just jokes on the bathroom walls

The Gameplay

You’ll be blasting and hunting down Trust humans and Drudge throughout the length of the game. For those of you wondering, the name of the game comes from the various portal-looking regenerating bug-machines where the Drudge will constantly respawn from once you clear the area. Only an explosive will take out a Conduit, so you better have at least one on you when you need it. Smaller, more annoying enemies will spawn from hanging egg-sacks scattered throughout the environments as well, so you better clean out the nests as you come to them, otherwise you can get overwhelmed fairly easily.

Enemies move about the playing field fairly smartly, moving from cover to cover and can sometimes drown you in surprise rush. The A.I. doesn’t make any really ridiculous mistakes, besides sometimes just sitting there while you fill them full of lead.

The environments themselves are almost always low-resolution closed-off halls and corridors, with the odd arena-like set piece. Claustrophobic is the right word when describing where you’ll be dealing your damage. I also had to notice how paper thin the environments come off when staring up into the corner of a room; I saw bits and pieces of the room beyond it tearing through.

Hit-detection can be a bit spotty, but this isn’t the rule. It works really well when zoomed in with a scoped weapon (you better not have any coffee-shakes playing this game… the control is completely precision/accuracy-based) but sometimes I’d let a bullet fly that was way off to the left or right of an enemy and it would still connect. I’d prefer not to have any help.

Another thing that takes some getting used to are the grenades. You better not have to scratch your nose if you’re using the default control scheme, because you’ll die many unexpected deaths from the booms of your own explosives. You can adjust the sensitivity of the nunchuck, but I don’t want to have to bang the ‘chuck on the table to let a grenade fly. Also, getting used to the trajectory that your grenades will fly takes a LOT of getting used to. Trying to make that long-distance throw, more often than not, results in your throw bouncing off of some flat corner and right back in your own face. Melee attacks (performed by thrusting/shaking the Wiimote) will always throw off your precision aiming, just by the pure fact that you have to physically move the Wiimote to get your melee attack to happen. But, if you don’t like how you melee, move it to a button. It’s just that sometimes there aren’t enough buttons to go around.

Protect the Presidential helicopter

The Multiplayer

Now this is the real meat that Wii fans have been staying hungry for. A fully online-enabled multiplayer component for up to 12 players THAT DOESN’T REQUIRE FRIEND CODES. That’s right… no goofy 12-number codes needed. You can jump into a fragfest with people you’ve never met before. Finally, Nintendo Wii owners can get a tiny, tiny taste of what Xbox Live players have been taking for granted for almost a decade.

Right off the bat (after getting your Nintendo WiFi Connection set up of course), you pick your enemies (friends, regional players or worldwide), your appearance in-game and toggle whether you want to use your Wii Speak peripheral. Yep, you can voicechat without a headset. The only caveat is that only people registered on your friends list can hear your gibberish.

WiFi multiplayer is the real reason to pick up The Conduit

You’ll be moved to a lobby, which pairs you with others available to play, but sometimes places you in a match already in progress. You’ll stick with this group until you leave or they ditch you. You’ll have the gameplay options of Free-For-All (deathmatch), Team Reaper (team deathmatch) and Team Objective (more team-building, capture the flag-type games). It’s fairly limited but we’re not complaining. You vote for your favorite weapon-loadout, vote for your map of choice and rule-set, and you’re off to the races.

When I played, there were plenty of people using the service and, therefore, willing to punish me. Lag wasn’t a big issue; sometimes the framerate dropped below the constant 30fps the single player runs at, but no dropped connections or any major issues presented themselves.

The Bottom Line

The Wii is a console that been slowly suffocating under the weight of poor-quality shovelware designed for the ‘casual’ crowd and the lowest common denominator. That means the spotlight shines that much more brightly on Wii titles that embrace a more hardcore esthetic with a focus on multiplayer. But when the light shines that bright, the flaws shine just as brilliantly as the attributes.

The Conduit is a great first-person shooter that features intuitive motion-controls and a compelling, mature storyline. The design elements are in place to give you more control of how your character controls and allow you the freedom to play the way that feels most comfortable to you. While the graphics don’t push the envelope of what available across all platforms, the game looks decent and runs well on the hardware, which is exclusive to the Nintendo Wii.

On the other hand, the graphics don’t look THAT great… even for a Wii game. Jaggies abound in dull grey environments. The motion controls will leave you with a claw instead of a hand after prolonged playing. Some of the gameplay mechanics, such as the ASE, are welcomed but unexciting. But do these flaws overshadow the rest of the game?

Without a fully fleshed out (online-only) multiplayer component, I probably would have dropped the score for The Conduit at least a full point… maybe more. But Wii owners have been starved for competitive first-person action for so long. So long so, that a drop of water in the desert can look like an oasis. It may be a bit of a mirage, but The Conduit satisfies.

The Good:

Goldeneye-esque ONLINE 12-player multiplayer without Friend Codes, unique and intuitive control schemes, decent graphics for the Wii, excellent voicework and writing, supports Wii Speak

The Bad:

Clipping and hit-detection issues, indoor environments are sparse and bland, online can lag a bit, online maps picked by vote not by amount of players, lack of CG cutscenes, derth of diversity in enemies, tin-sounding weapons, grenades in my f-ing face