The Conduit: The Review

Posted by: TacoCat on: 08/26/2009 04:21 PM [ Print | 0 comment(s) ]

The Conduit

High Voltage has been in the news a lot lately, with announcements of two new Wii games for the core Wii audience, which it desperately needs nowadays. Before those two intriguing games release though, I’d like to take a moment and review their first Wii game, The Conduit. This is one case of the gaming press giving the developers a helping hand in finding a publisher, but do we really want a game like The Conduit?

Story Mode

You star as Mr. Ford, a secret service agent in The Trust, who is sent out to stop an alien force called The Drudge, who their reasons for coming here are unbeknownst to you. You then figure out that all is not what it seems, and someone has just been using you for something. The beginning half of the game is fairly simple to follow along, but then it just seems to get too convoluted in the story-telling that I really did not know why the Drudge were there, or what they were exactly trying to do. In all seriousness though, who buys a Wii FPS for the story, or the single-player game? Well, if you do, you’ll be very disappointed by it, because it runs only a measly six hours, although you kleptomaniacs out there could manage to play a few more hours by picking up all the collectible discs (10 in each level), and unlocking things like concept art in the extras menu. The levels are pretty standard, and it seems like you pass through the same rooms two or more times each level.

Graphics

I went into The Conduit with no expectations, but was pretty impressed with how much High Voltage could get out of the Wii hardware. Though it isn’t very artistically vibrant, it stills shows promise for what Wii games could look like in the future. The environments are kind of bland, but the weapon designs are original and eye-catching. Though the enemies look decent, you’ll get tired of them quickly, as you only fight about five or six different types during the whole game.

The one thing I noticed, was that when you are using the scoped gun, it actually shows a reflection of what’s behind you. I found small details like that pretty awesome. During gameplay, the frame rate seemed to dip a lot, and I found it very troublesome during the later single-player missions.
Sound

The terrible voice acting for the main character (Think Batman) and antagonists (Kevin Sorbo) really made me hate whenever either of them opened their mouths to utter a sentence. It seems they were just thrown into a recording booth with a sheet of lines, and told to act dark and brooding. The musical score (by Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielson) is decent enough, and helps accentuate the high points of the action. The weapons sound a little weak, whereas other game’s guns sound dangerous and explosive, like they could actually do some damage.
Gameplay

Here is the single reason why this game exists: its controls. You can tweak anything from the bounding box, to how fast your character runs. The controller layout is also versatile, and you can switch actions around however you wish. The ultra-customizable interface is perfect for everyone, and features so many options to tweak and adjust, that you can find your perfect scheme. If it wasn’t for the great controls, Nintendo fans would’ve never taken a second look at this pretty generic game. The atmosphere and story do nothing to add to the game, and if this game was on the PS3 or 360, no one would even take a second look at it. It controls great, and the lock-on system is pretty useful when you’re trying to shoot down a flying alien.

The enemy AI is either very aggressive, or very dumb during the game, but if you switch the difficulty up a level, it seems the AI will act accordingly to your actions. In some levels, on Normal difficulty, they would just stand still, and wait for me to walk up to them and punch them dead, and other times, they were overly aggressive and just flanked me all at once.

Multiplayer

This game is perhaps the Wii’s biggest online game yet. It’s got a fully featured multiplayer side with many different modes, with up to twelve people in each match. It uses Wii Friend Codes, but if you already have friends in the Wii’s Address Book, you can import them into the game.

When I first booted up a match, it lagged like crazy, but somehow, after a few more games, it seemed to start running at normal speed. If you enjoy Quake style multiplayer shooters, but with admittedly lamer weapons, this game is for you. The weapons feel really weak, and it takes a while to take down an online foe. Be warned before playing though, I had to restart quite a few online matches, because I spawned in complete darkness, and couldn’t move or shoot.

I tried out all the modes, and the bounty hunter style game was my favorite. In it, you have to kill a certain player, and get points taken off for killing others. But while you are hunting this guy down, someone else has a bounty on you, and is trying to hunt you down. Recently though, it seems someone has released a code to become invincible in the online game, so hopefully High Voltage can somehow get a patch out. It’s a great way to waste a few hours, but if you have other games like Halo or Call of Duty, then this game simply can’t compare to those.

I’ll end this by saying that if you’re a Wii-only gamer, then this is a good online multiplayer game to pick up, but if you own any of the other next-gen systems, you can find much better online games than this. The single-player is underwhelming, and even Wii owners can find better single-player FPSs than this one. It’s just an alright game with great controls.

Pros: Great, fluid controls, Multiplayer is fun, but not the best

Cons: The Single-player’s lousy six hours, the story (what the heck was I trying to do?)