The Conduit

The Conduit

This visceral sci-fi action spree should appease Wii gamers growing weary of too much light-hearted fun and games.

Thank you SEGA for answering our prayers with The Conduit! After completing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption yet again recently, we even considered dusting off Red Steel to remind ourselves of the Wii’s early promise as a vehicle for first-person shooting scenarios. The latter is still a great concept, but the restrictions made us paranoid that we’d reached the limit of the genre on the little white console.

Not so. The Conduit proves how Wii can get our pulses racing and our minds buzzing with intense, fast-moving gameplay. Admittedly the control set-up feels on the loose side which takes a while getting used to. However this must be attributed to standard Wii remote inherent spooks, not carelessness from the development team. When the going is good, which is at least 80 percent of the time, it feels just great.

It’s only fair to point out that The Conduit borrows heavily from the likes of Half Life, Halo, Resistance and Gears of War, but leans toward the basic side of all of these. Graphically it can be no match for the latest sci-fi shooters on Xbox 360, PS3 or PC. Ironically it feels trapped in time somewhere around the turn of this century. You may not get the sense of scale or detail that we’re growing used to on more powerful machines, however The Conduit is a visual showcase for Wii.

During fire-fights, which are plentiful and become increasingly more varied and difficult, the enemies – whether humanoid or bug-like extra terrestrial – animate superbly, lending them personality. Soldiers stumble and fall if killed while running, or bend back and crumple to the floor if standing their ground. As with Gears of War each situation is choreographed rather predictably in terms of where and when enemies will appear. This doesn’t make it any easier to defeat them however!

The wide range of weapons and tools is very entertaining, human and alien firearms are all lavishly animated too. We found ourselves really paying attention to the pros and cons of each gun or grenade, pleased at the added depth to the gameplay. And continuing along that same line, the All Seeing Eye (ASE) device adds a fun sense of sci-fi mysticism to remind you that this game sets out to be far from run-of-the-mill.

Throw in a solid online multiplayer mode, hitherto unheard of on Wii, and you’ve got yourself a long-overdue treat worthy of the console. Surely The Conduit would not fare so well alongside the big guns on more powerful consoles, and in gameplay terms, as we’ve said, games as far back as Prey (2006) moved things on significantly. However The Conduit is the real-deal FPS experience on Wii and delivers unique fun.

4 out of 5