The Conduit (Wii)

6/26/2009 5:37 PM | 4 Comments | Page 1 of 2

The Conduit faces a classic chicken/egg conundrum: Which came first, the belief that the Nintendo Wii can't support a hardcore gaming experience, or the reality that publishers and consumers are perfectly content to crank out and gobble up shallow mini-game collections? Regardless of what you think, a cloud of skepticism has settled around the Wii and what it can or can't do.

High Voltage Software's first-person shooter raises the admittedly low bar for first-person action on the Wii in a few significant ways. It looks good, feels good, and gets around some multiplayer annoyances.

The Conduit's biggest failing comes in the form of its story. It trots out well-worn clichés that will seem banal to anyone who's seen a big-budget science-fiction flick in the last 15 years. You'll play as Michael Ford, an agent working for a security organization called the Trust. In the course of running down a terrorist named Prometheus, you discover that he's been in league with a clandestine invasion by an alien race called the Drudge. The threat escalates and soon all of Washington, D.C. becomes a battleground as you work to repel the extraterrestrials' onslaught.

The action's almost entirely linear, but once you get the feel for the game's rhythm, shooting down the insect-like bad guys will come fairly smoothly. The enemy artificial intelligence does tend to act rather dunderheaded at times, though. Enemies pop out of cover predictably and wander around in the middle of a firefight, but they still manage to provide a decent level of challenge for most of the game.

As you'd expect from an FPS, Conduit's got a gaggle of human and alien weapons for players to wield. They're fun and varied, from the guided projectiles of the Shrieker to the homing energy bursts of the De-Atomizer. Still, nothing here's quite as visceral or revelatory as the Gears of War Lancer or the inventive armaments that Insomniac cooks up for the PlayStation 3's Ratchet & Clank or Resistance franchises.

Conduit takes a cue from the Metroid Prime series -- the other FPS highlight on the Wii -- by implementing an environment-scanning technique to drive exploration and puzzle-solving. By using a gadget called the ASE, you'll be able to reveal hidden traps, open certain rooms, and unlock collectibles. (Nerd alert: The game's ASE looks and acts much like the All-Seeing Eye of Agamotto used by Marvel Comics superhero Dr. Strange. Coincidence or conspiracy?)

Most impressively, The Conduit executes a level of graphical sizzle that rivals anything else on the Wii. It's not in high-definition, but you won't mind. The textures, animations and designs all look stellar.

It also fulfills the promise of the Wii's gestural revolution. The first time I played Ubisoft's Red Steel in a demo, I thought to myself, "Hey, you know what? This feels easier and more natural than I would've thought." Of course, the final release turned out to a buggy piece of crap, setting the tone for many other FPS games on the system.

The Conduit bucks that trend. The standard controls thankfully don't use any kind of waggle, and the gestures are kept to a minimum. A Wii-Remote thrust executes a melee attack and a throwing motion with the Nunchuk lobs grenades. Moreover, the game's controls are fully configurable. You can tweak everything from turning speed to controller sensitivity to the bounding box that starts a turning rotation. It's an obvious feature that more console developers should provide.