The Conduit Review (WII)

Will “The Conduit” appeal to the hardcore gamers?

I hear a lot of people say that the Nintendo Wii doesn’t really satisfy enough of the hardcore gamers in the gaming industry, I personally agree with this. With “The Conduit” hitting the Nintendo Wii will the console be more appealing to the hardcore gamers?

You play as Agent Ford, an agent that works with a secret organisation called The Trust who is currently battling against an alien invasion. Apparently Agent Ford is the guy for the job.

As soon as you load the game it drops you straight into the action, first a quick tutorial on the controls and then you’re free to destroy all that moves. I have to admit I had some difficulties with getting to grips with the control system. The aiming cursor is very sensitive and will move the entire screen from the slightest flick; I simply could not play the game with such high sensitivity default settings on, so I had to change them to a lower rate. Come to think of it, I spent about 15 minutes wrestling with the control settings till I was comfortable to play.

When playing the game you notice that “The Conduit” is indeed one of the best looking games on the Nintendo Wii, although everything looks nice I found that the environments still lacked detail and variety in some areas of the game. At certain points in the game you will see recycled environments and sometimes these are just plain boring and have no artistic eye to them especially in some of the battle sequences. You can end up blazing your gun in one gigantic empty room with only a few chairs or benches for cover, it just seems pointless and boring. Having said that some of the environments are rather bland you will find that the guns on your screen look brilliant, the lighting effects look really good on the guns that you have equipped, the foes that you will encounter also look fantastic, some of the highlighted enemies are definitely the aliens that you fight.

Whilst playing through the game you use a special device to solve puzzles and hack systems. This device is called the ASE which stands for the All-Seeing-Eye. This device will allow the player to find foreign devices that have been planted by the aliens; their devices have a cloaking system on then so there traps, door locks and clues become invisible. This is where you would equip the ASE to find them. I think this game play element definitely gives the game a boost in genre to a FPS/Puzzle game. Not only is the ASE a good idea but it seems to make the game a lot more fun, just shooting load of aliens from room to room would just bore the player entirely.

Throughout the game you will witness some first person cinematic events as the story of the game unfolds, some of these cinematic animations are actually really immersive but then again there is some ridiculously boring ones.

I feel that “The Conduit” will give the hardcore gamers a better reason to own a Nintendo Wii

I find that the Nintendo Wii lacks with its online gaming content, I myself have never really played many games online on the Wii but this game will add one up to the online gaming roster of the Nintendo Wii. “The Conduit” features an online multiplayer option with only 3 modes for players to battle against and with each other. There is Free-for-all mode, team reaper (team death match) and team objective which consists of variations of team play, all the modes can be tweaked to different weapon sets and rules. It’s definitely something to keep the game entertaining for players. When playing online you will get games where it there with no lag at all, which you can then play the game properly and have a blast. Other games you will get so much lag that you just simply can’t kill anyone or even die yourself for that matter. It’s hard to forgive but when you play a smooth running game you will definitely enjoy it.

The music that pumps through the game is actually really good, you will hear some upbeat punchy sounds in battle and softer more sinister music when you’re not in battle, this all adds to the fun experience.

“The Conduit” is in fact a great FPS shooter for the Nintendo Wii, the control scheme works perfectly with this game (after some adjustments). This game doesn’t really give anything new to offer to players but it was still a lot f fun to blast through. The game also looks very nice although I would have like to see more variety in the environments as you see too many recycled areas in the game. I would also have liked to see a bigger variety in characters you fight, a lot looked the same. The online content adds to make the game good and boosts the replay value up by a mile. I have tried not to reveal much of the story as the story is actually pretty good, it has a few twists that shock you.

I feel that “The Conduit” will give the hardcore gamers a better reason to own a Nintendo Wii as this game really is a challenge when its set on the higher difficulties, not only is it a challenge but its control scheme become insanely enjoyable once you have become accustomed to it.

I recommend “The Conduit” to any FPS shooter fans that own a Nintendo Wii.