The Conduit: Lame Storyline, but Great Graphics for Wii

My opinion of The Conduit has undergone numerous changes since its announcement during the summer of 2008. Still high off developer High Voltage Software’s new and strong commitment to bringing quality third-party original and hardcore games to Wii, to me the slightly futuristic first person shooter resembled a Wii-version of Half-Life 2. With mine and I’m sure many others’ expectations set so unreasonably high due to our desperation, the only thing that my opinion could do was drop as more video and information came out. However, the only real way to judge a game is to play it and at the New York Comic-Con earlier this year I played some of the Conduit. The demo was fun, although not as much fun as some of its fellow Sega competitors like Madworld of even House of the Dead: Overkill, and despite its problems I still wanted to play it. After buying and completing the game shortly after its release this last June, I realized that my opinion of the Conduit hasn’t changed much since playing that demo.

By far the biggest flaw of the Conduit is the utterly generic feel of the game and that come out the most in the story. Aliens are attacking Washington and you’re a special agent that has to fight and shoot your way to the truth while dealing with mysterious double-crossing characters voiced by E-list celebrities. Remember Kevin Sorbo from “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” you know, the show that “Xena: Warrior Princess” spun-off from? Defenders of the story point out the embedded narrative found in the hidden text scrawled into the walls and while some of them are clever, like the one hinting about the cliff-hanger, sequel-baiting twist ending, they don’t make up for the fact that the Conduit does not have a very interesting or engrossing plot. Neither does something like Killzone 2 but it almost makes up for it through its phenomenal (though grey) graphics and cinematic cutscenes.

Cutscenes in the Conduit are usually just extended Metal Gear codec calls. Perhaps the story could have been better if it took a “Men in Black” style comedic approach to its government conspiracy and alien invasion storyline. Timesplitters has shown that quality shooters can also be funny, and not in the ironic, unintentional “oh my god this is so bad its actually great” kind of comedy that permeates the Conduit’s otherwise dull and overly self-serious “storyline”.

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But if its sounds like I’m being harsh let me say that no matter what Metal Gear might suggest, plot in games is secondary to gameplay. High Voltage Software set out to make the ultimate first person shooter for Wii and they didn’t succeed, the first person shooter adventure Metroid Prime Trilogy says hello, but they did come admirably close. While it’s true that many early, rushed, or just lazily developed, shooters on the Wii have botched controls, the Conduit has precision creeping towards the level of a PC. Add in the slightly intimidating but robust control customization that allow you to tweak literally every aspect of the controls from the button layout to the bounding box and I honestly can’t see why someone would ever choose dual-analog over these pointer controls. Unfortunately the excellent controls are wasted in somewhat stock gameplay.

The sub-10 hour campaign has you fighting your way through various locales in America’s capital. Occasionally you’ll fight one boss type but usually levels culminate in battles against one final horde of the “drudge” invaders. One annoyance are the actual Conduits themselves. They are glowing portals that endlessly respawn enemies until destroyed and have a habit of appearing in bunches. Another gameplay twist is the mystical All-Seeing Eye. The glorified alien flashlight is fun to look but is only really used for the most basic of puzzles like hidden switches or invisible beeping mines. The idea of setting a game in Washington D.C. is a promising one and it’s nice to see some lesser-known but still important landmarks. Having a sister who lives in D.C., I know the importance of the Metro Subway system. One of the first things I did when starting the game was remove all onscreen HUD so the view of a ruined D.C. would look that much more real without any obstructions. However, although the environments do look pretty good, I got the feeling that in order to make those environments work as levels, the developers basically created standard corridor-filled shooter levels and put the D.C. aesthetics on top. The campaign is linear but without the flair of something like Call of Duty and its scripted events, the linearity becomes more and more noticeable. At least the give you the option to literally see the line in case you get stuck.

While their style of game design may be somewhat conventional, High Voltage Software has succeeded in enhancing it with their presentation. Interface, music and creepy alien sound effects and gun noises get the job done but the real stars are the graphics. The game has been built to be a showpiece for High Voltage Software’s new Wii engine, the Quantum 3 engine. I’m not a programmer so go find a developer diary if you want to here someone rattle off specs and numbers, but I can tell you that the graphics in the Conduit, while not an artistic achievement, are at least a technical one nearing the Nintendo titles as the best on Wii. The gun models are diverse, detailed and well-animated. Different grenades produce unique explosions in the well-lit environments. Enemies become slightly repetitive but burning them to death with a charged shot from their own gun is satisfying to look at especially after replaying levels with the one-shot fiery kill cheat code.

After teases like Gyrostarr for WiiWare, through the Conduit the Quantum 3 engine has proven itself as a premier 3rd party engine for the Wii, until they get that port of Unreal 3 working. Now we just need some more artistic developers to start licensing it. At first I though the game had a balance of sci-fi real-world “grit” to it that was missing from the space of Metroid and although Medal of Honor isn’t sci-fi is was isn’t so much gritty as it was just brown. However, the Conduit is also pretty brown, grey and sometimes silver just with some colorful explosions and alien technology thrown in. It’s similar to the unique D.C. setting thrown onto the standard level design. I do have one more issue that is really more of a pet peeve but all first person shooters in this post-Halo world should have regenerating health. Although only the first two Conduit levels use health packs, dying and respawning so frequently made me instantly turn down the difficulty level and almost soured me on the whole game. Luckily check points are frequent.

If the Conduit were only a single player game it would tough to recommend it as anything more than a rental, especially with games like Metroid Prime Trilogy on the market that just absolutely destroy it in almost every conceivable way. However, surprisingly enough, the thing that saves this game and that has kept me playing it for far longer than what I anticipated was the online multiplayer. At times I encountered some game-breaking issues, but for the most part connecting is quick easy and virtually lag-free. It uses friend codes but with its achievement system and Wii-speak powered voice chat, it is the closet thing to Xbox Live on the system. Now we just need to foster an online community to keep it alive. The game types are the usual death matches and team capture the flags along with some fresh spins on old ideas like “ASE Football” but the matches are still a lot of fun, especially with the intuitive controls which almost make the old match types feel like new experiences.

Some of the best parts of the single-player game stand out in multiplayer. Levels that seemed mundane when playing alone make great maps of various sizes and their generic themes like “chrome lab” and “warehouse” are easier to forgive. Using human and alien guns each with their own special abilities is fun in the campaign but take a satisfyingly strategic turn when using them against thinking human players. Most importantly, the story is completely non-existent. It’s kind of sad but the best thing about the Conduit besides its controls and graphics is that the online multiplayer is fun because it is competent and actually functions, except when people start cheating. There’s no reason to buy the special limited edition version of this game, especially when its includes an art book even though it doesn’t have good art, but if you do make sure to get your special online skin because you should be sinking some time into Conduit online.

The Conduit is a first person shooter with online multiplayer for the Wii that is good but ultimately soulless. But by putting so much effort into things like the controls, options graphics and online, High Voltage Software has nearly made up for the lack of artistic merit and an uninspiring campaign. It doesn’t look as good as a 4 out of 5 Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 game but it controls so much better. Everything else is pretty much the same so I guess it balances out.

Rating: 4 out of 5

- Jordan Minor