OneMetal.com REVIEW:
The Conduit (Wii)

The Conduit is the much hailed first person shooter developed exclusively for the Wii by High Voltage Software.  You play as ‘Michael Ford’ an operative of ‘The Trust’ organisation running about various locations in Washington DC to the clichéd collage of government conspiracies and an Alien Invasion to boot.  You’ll be up against human opponents and various Alien types all pretty much bent on making your day as nasty and short as possible.  But what is the game like, especially one that’s been highly anticipated by fans of FPS’s (first person shooter) on the Wii and has been heralded as having some of the best graphics on the system and the best control schemes in the genre?

I think that guy with the red eyes wants your attention.

The gameplay isn’t particularly complicated, it’s pretty much run-and-gun and each level is as linear as they can get without being a straight line.  Compared with other shooters on the Wii and other systems, The Conduit has no vehicle combat, hardly any scripted scenes nor any large maps where clever tactics can be employed.  One interesting item in the game is a little device called the ASE (All Seeing Eye) which is a floating can-do item that will allow Mr. Ford to solve puzzles, reveal cloaked enemies and hack into computer terminals to name a few uses.  However, one of the most annoying aspects of interacting with ASE is the invisible mines, which you will not be able to avoid, that can only be disarmed using the ASE.  The mines either slow down the pace of the game (to its detriment) or are found in extended combat zones where the mines are closely packed together.  The mines take about five seconds to defuse, which is kinda humdrum and even more annoying when you’re out in the open while enemy characters are infinitely spawning from a specific point and you cannot fire back.

Graphically, The Conduit does really well in some areas and very average in others.  There are some great bloom and lighting effects with some levels looking extremely impressive as you do your thing, but there are other levels where the walls, buildings, tunnels, etc. are just very, very plain.

One of the strongest aspects of The Conduit is its fully customisable control schemes.  During the game you can adjust a plethora of settings to suit your experience of the single player or multiplayer games, examples include fine tuning of the turning speed (of the camera), the dead zone of the IR control, the placement and items on your HUD (Heads Up Display) and the remapping of actions to the remote and nunchuk.

But whilst finding that control scheme nirvana is a highly desirable in any FPS, The Conduit is just very bland.  The gameplay is OK with the AI not really posing any credible threat, the campaign took me around six hours to whizz through, albeit without finding the various unlockables which I didn’t care for.  The graphics as mentioned do have some great moments, but they are let down by vapid textures and insipid maps where you’ll find yourself running down the same identical corridors, tunnels or stairs; time and time again.  It was only on the penultimate level that the maps perked up a bit, but it was hardly stimulating.

The multiplayer, which is something I was really looking forward to, turned out to be just as bland with dull maps and, surprisingly, hardly any background sound apart from the weapons making the multiplayer seem quite monastic at times.  The Conduit’s multiplayer does feature ‘WiiSpeak’ but is only enabled if a) you’ve got WiiSpeak and b) if you’ve traded friend codes with the other players (and it should be noted I don’t have WiiSpeak).

Overall, the Conduit is bland and for me is similar to the likes of Quake 2 and Doom from the late 90s in the style and design of the multiplayer maps and some elements of the campaign.  It is a shame that in a well established genre like First Person shooters that they didn’t incorporate some of the big selling items such as vehicles, multiplayer classes, more open world maps, cinematic events, etc.

Bottom Line

If you only own the Wii and looking for a First Person Shooter that ticks all the boxes then maybe The Conduit will suit you, although I would highly recommend picking up Call of Duty : World At War for the Wii which certainly carries higher production values than The Conduit, has a much better campaign and a more immersive multiplayer.