The Conduit review

Amazon.com. The Conduit box art featuring Michael Ford.

Alien invasions always seem to be used as a great plot idea for a first-person shooter. And its either aliens attacking, the half-dead yearning for brains, or storming Normandy on D-Day that developers write about for their storyline. Much like its FPS counterparts, it’s no surprise that the recently released Wii game, The Conduit is about aliens.

Here’s a bit of the story just to wet your whistle and tell you just what you’re dealing with as a former Secret Service agent. Sometime in the near future, Washington D.C. has several strange events occurring, which causes the local and national tension to rise. John is an enigmatic leader to a secret organization called Trust, realizes that the capital of the US has come under attack by an alien race called the Drudge. Michael Ford—the former SS agent—is recruited to learn of the attack’s origins.

It’s a simple plot that gives gamers a world to play in. Or rather, you’re running around the D.C. landscape as “Mr. Ford” in order to defeat the aliens, and rogue agents that shoot at you no matter what.

One of the first of its kind for the Wii, developers High Voltage Software created a game that will now probably define first-person shooters for the Nintendo console. The Conduit has probably some of the best graphics for the system ever made by a developer that isn’t Nintendo. They truly went all out to use all of the capabilities of the console. Some of the rooms are reused a bit, and

The controls are pretty intuitive, although in some ways they could have been a bit more expanded. Gamers shoot with B, jump with A, switch guns, zoom in the scope and various other tasks with the d-pad. Moving “Mr. Ford” is with the nunchuck and locking onto your target is with Z. Flicking the nunchuck forwards throws a grenade—and let me tell you it works flawlessly every time. Thrusting forwards with the Wiimote performs a melee attack perfect for sneaking up on someone; this is another part that works every time it’s used. Aiming your crosshairs on a target is controlled through the Wiimote itself. The point and shoot is quite intuitive and flows rather nicely.

Although you have all these buttons to use there are still some things that could be worked out. One of them is that the capability to sprint or run should be in there. Whether it would be tilting the c-stick forwards just slightly for walking or sneaking, and then moving it full forwards to run, it would have been nice to be able to sprint under cover during a firefight to let “Mr. Ford” heal.

Even though everyone is so used to the “Halo” scheme of regenerative health, it doesn’t completely matter here. Some of your health bar will return after you take cover for a few moments. But otherwise you gather health packs. To many this would seem like an inane step backwards in developing new ways to heal in a FPS, it doesn’t matter to have Master Chief’s ability. Every time an enemy is killed, his slowly disappearing remains leave behind a health pack and possibly some ammo. So in the end, it’s almost as if you regenerate health with the large amounts of baddies you encounter.

With each game, there are strengths and weaknesses, which always gives room for plenty of improvement. There were a lot of things High Voltage Software did right:

• “Mr. Ford” is able to carry two weapons.
• if you get stuck, pull out your ASE—alien technology—and follow the blue trail to help you.
• when you’re close to death you’ll only hear “Mr. Ford’s” breathing until you are able to heal.
• Stats on everything you’ve done in the game are kept accurately and easy to read.
• A Cortana like character helps guide you through the game.

But with all things a company does right, there are a lot of things that they could have done better with. An example being when you go to throw a grenade, it’s hard to tell exactly how far it will go. Some of them explode on contact and others just explode in mid-air. It’d be nice if that was more exact and you’d know if the grenade was going to blow up in front of you, or some distance ahead at the enemy you were aiming at. The plot could be more developed, making the twists in the storyline less obvious. Aiming could have been more precise as sometimes it’s hard to aim with the crosshairs when you’re moving through the game. All of the voice acting could have sounded more realistic. Prometheus is the only one that sounds like he’s actually acting. Zooming your scope could have been more detailed. Gamers can only zoom in with one click and then you are out of the scope. The death scenes are over dramatized and could be shortened to time. Also, in reloading your gun, that could have gone a bit faster as sometimes you’re reloading as you run away or hide.

Either way, this game did provide me with a lot of challenges. There’s online play, which can have up to 12 people playing locally or across the world. I jumped on for a round or two, and found that it actually worked really well. Sometimes there was lag, but otherwise it worked rather smoothly for me. Players get to vote on the map, types of guns in the game, and match types—whether it’s team, free-for-all or a quick match.

Over all, I’d say that many developers learned a lot from this game. And so did gamers. You can still have a great game, even if the plot isn’t all that great. I’d recommend this game to those that want to try out a new first-person shooter for the Wii that is actually amazingly well done for the console. I think it’s a bit overpriced and definitely shouldn’t be $50, but more like $30-35. Pick up The Conduit to try it out from your local retailer, video game rental, or video game store as a used copy.