The Conduit by High Voltage Software is one of the most anticipated Wii titles to date. Sparking oodles of attention across the internet since its announcement last year, it has been every hardcore Wii owner's wet-dream. Since its official release in Australia on Thursday, there is only one question left to ask: does it live up to the hype?
Yes and no. High Voltage Software boasted incredible achievement in regards to its Quantum 3 Engine - the engine that runs The Conduit and HVS's own code that renders almost next-gen quality graphics, lighting and physics on Nintendo's little white box. In this, it is very hard to disagree that they succeeded. The Conduit features top-notch particle effects, clear textures and incredibly detailed character models and environments. For the most part the game runs smoothly, only taking a slight hit in frame rate during battles when things get hectic.
My small problem with the development team putting such a huge emphasis on graphical detail is that it seems as if it limited their environmental design to mostly corridor-based quarrels. Of course, this doesn't necessarily make the battles any less engaging - quite the opposite really, as there is less room for mobility and forces you to think strategically and take cover. However, even by last generation's standards, most popular First-Person Shooter titles feature more open environments for the more intense fights. Hopefully HVS will look into that in a possible sequel, or their next FPS title The Grinder.
The second most talked-about feature of this game is controls - more notably, the customisation. IR control in The Conduit feels great and being able to have complete control over its sensitivity makes it even better. The customisation options include IR/motion sensitivity, bounding box (area on-screen that once pointed at will turn the player's view to that direction) and button mapping. The amount of freedom you're given to alter the controls to your preference make it the second-best control method for FPS titles, next to a keyboard and mouse. However, with the controls as good as they are, I still had a few issues.
The first is aiming high/low. Oftentimes you will come across enemies that are above you, or find an ammo crate at your feet that you are not able to see properly. For some reason the player is restricted from looking directly above or directly below, which for some may not be a big problem, but it made relatively simple situations a hassle. It was quite often that in the heat of battle I'd run out of bullets, find an ammo crate, and would end up jumping over rather opening it because I would aim too low forgetting about the restrictions. Just something to bear in mind.
The second issue is melee attacking. In theory it might sound cool to thrust forward with the Wiimote to bust the chops of some chump with the butt of your gun. However I found it really awkward since my IR sensitivity was fairly high, when gesturing a melee attack my character's view will accidentally shift due to movement of the pointer. It is possible to re-map this gesture to a button press, however I didn't find a comfortable combination. It could just be my bad coordination, but it is still something to keep in mind.
Voice acting in the game is very well done. Apart from Mr Ford's - the main character's - voice (who sounds just a little too cliché action hero-y for my taste), the characters sound quite believable. The soundtrack could do with a little more variety, as it is mostly used to depict intense action rather than intrigue or atmosphere. As for sound effects, they're great as far as sci-fi go. Think of the sounds of some of the weapons from the Star Wars movies.
As for story - not bad. Not Emmy Award-winning material, but pretty good compared to a lot of other action games out there. Something that people might dig at about the story is that it's not very deep and pretty straight-forward. Which to me works, since the game only lasts about six to eight hours. With the amount of story that the player is given, if the game was fleshed out just to add content to appease gamers who judge games by gameplay length, then it would make some moments feel like a chore, which I did not find at all throughout the campaign.
And finally there's online multiplayer... Yeah... Perhaps the game's network settings doesn't like my internet set up (though Xbox Live and PSN work just fine), but whichever the case, I did not have one enjoyable experience. Sometimes just searching for a match would take over seven minutes, and even when one was found, it was very laggy. Which is a shame because given the amount of precise control that one attains, it would make for some very good times. And something I should mention was that I was only searching for games within my region (Australia) - I don't want to know what things would have been like had I tried international. Hopefully it's just my connection and that at least a large percentage of people are not experiencing these problems.
Overall I really enjoyed High Voltage's efforts on The Conduit, apart from the online portion. The Conduit strongly reaffirms what the Wii is capable of in terms of detailed graphics and fluid FPS controls, something that Nintendo fans have been asking for since before the console's release. I highly recommend this to any Wii gamer looking for a more mature, action-oriented experience. I'm sure that at least some people will agree that this is the game Perfect Dark Zero should have been.
Score: 8/10
