If you’ve been prowling video game message boards as of late, then you may have noticed that Wii owners have been hyped for a game called “the Conduit.” Built from the ground up on Wii, the game was to showcase that the platform is capable of playing host to great FPS games just like the Xbox 360 and PS3 have. Did it succeed? Yes and no. The Conduit plays like your basic late 90’s FPS. It is more GoldenEye/Perfect Dark than Call of Duty/Halo. You enter a room, shoot some dudes, enter a hallway and shoot more dudes, then repeat over and over until the level ends. On paper there’s little wrong with this type of gameplay but if differs greatly from the Conduit’s aforementioned contemporaries which it is already being compared to. Couple this with the fact that the Conduit has a cheesy generic story that is presented to you in horrible still frames and the game ends up falling well short of the hype.
There is, however, a silver lining. Despite its many flaws I still managed to have fun with the Conduit. It’s graphically impressive at times and the controls utilize the Wii Remote and nunchuk very well. You can even fully customize the controls if something is not to your liking. After a bit of practice the remote-nunchuk combo begins to feel more natural than the dual-analog stick configuration we’ve used on consoles for ten years now. The multiplayer however is what makes the Conduit a good game rather than an average game with great controls. While local multi-player is missing, the Conduit features the deepest online experience I’ve had on Wii. Online death-matches and capture the flag feel as tight and as fun as they did in Microsoft’s flagship Xbox FPS, Halo 2. The limitations of Nintendo’s platform keep it back, though. Online matches are only 12 people max rather than the expected 16 and Friend Codes are back even though you can now add friends of friends without them. The Conduit is a great first effort on Wii by a studio known for crap like White Men Can’t Jump (Atari Jaguar) and 50 Cent Bulletproof: G Unit Edition (PSP), but High Voltage Software has much more to learn to be a great in an industry full of them. In the end, for those who wanted the best FPS out there, the Conduit will disappoint. For those who want a good Wii FPS, then the Conduit is it.
Publisher: SEGA
Developer: High Voltage Software
7.2/10
Review by Paul Sahbaz
If you’ve been prowling video game message boards as of late, then you may have noticed that Wii owners have been hyped for a game called “the Conduit.” Built from the ground up on Wii, the game was to showcase that the platform is capable of playing host to great FPS games just like the Xbox 360 and PS3 have. Did it succeed? Yes and no. The Conduit plays like your basic late 90’s FPS. It is more GoldenEye/Perfect Dark than Call of Duty/Halo. You enter a room, shoot some dudes, enter a hallway and shoot more dudes, then repeat over and over until the level ends. On paper there’s little wrong with this type of gameplay but if differs greatly from the Conduit’s aforementioned contemporaries which it is already being compared to. Couple this with the fact that the Conduit has a cheesy generic story that is presented to you in horrible still frames and the game ends up falling well short of the hype.
There is, however, a silver lining. Despite its many flaws I still managed to have fun with the Conduit. It’s graphically impressive at times and the controls utilize the Wii Remote and nunchuk very well. You can even fully customize the controls if something is not to your liking. After a bit of practice the remote-nunchuk combo begins to feel more natural than the dual-analog stick configuration we’ve used on consoles for ten years now. The multiplayer however is what makes the Conduit a good game rather than an average game with great controls. While local multi-player is missing, the Conduit features the deepest online experience I’ve had on Wii. Online death-matches and capture the flag feel as tight and as fun as they did in Microsoft’s flagship Xbox FPS, Halo 2. The limitations of Nintendo’s platform keep it back, though. Online matches are only 12 people max rather than the expected 16 and Friend Codes are back even though you can now add friends of friends without them. The Conduit is a great first effort on Wii by a studio known for crap like White Men Can’t Jump (Atari Jaguar) and 50 Cent Bulletproof: G Unit Edition (PSP), but High Voltage Software has much more to learn to be a great in an industry full of them. In the end, for those who wanted the best FPS out there, the Conduit will disappoint. For those who want a good Wii FPS, then the Conduit is it.
Publisher: SEGA
Developer: High Voltage Software
7.2/10
Review by Paul Sahbaz
If you’ve been prowling video game message boards as of late, then you may have noticed that Wii owners have been hyped for a game called “the Conduit.” Built from the ground up on Wii, the game was to showcase that the platform is capable of playing host to great FPS games just like the Xbox 360 and PS3 have. Did it succeed? Yes and no. The Conduit plays like your basic late 90’s FPS. It is more GoldenEye/Perfect Dark than Call of Duty/Halo. You enter a room, shoot some dudes, enter a hallway and shoot more dudes, then repeat over and over until the level ends. On paper there’s little wrong with this type of gameplay but if differs greatly from the Conduit’s aforementioned contemporaries which it is already being compared to. Couple this with the fact that the Conduit has a cheesy generic story that is presented to you in horrible still frames and the game ends up falling well short of the hype.
There is, however, a silver lining. Despite its many flaws I still managed to have fun with the Conduit. It’s graphically impressive at times and the controls utilize the Wii Remote and nunchuk very well. You can even fully customize the controls if something is not to your liking. After a bit of practice the remote-nunchuk combo begins to feel more natural than the dual-analog stick configuration we’ve used on consoles for ten years now. The multiplayer however is what makes the Conduit a good game rather than an average game with great controls. While local multi-player is missing, the Conduit features the deepest online experience I’ve had on Wii. Online death-matches and capture the flag feel as tight and as fun as they did in Microsoft’s flagship Xbox FPS, Halo 2. The limitations of Nintendo’s platform keep it back, though. Online matches are only 12 people max rather than the expected 16 and Friend Codes are back even though you can now add friends of friends without them. The Conduit is a great first effort on Wii by a studio known for crap like White Men Can’t Jump (Atari Jaguar) and 50 Cent Bulletproof: G Unit Edition (PSP), but High Voltage Software has much more to learn to be a great in an industry full of them. In the end, for those who wanted the best FPS out there, the Conduit will disappoint. For those who want a good Wii FPS, then the Conduit is it.
Publisher: SEGA
Developer: High Voltage Software
7.2/10
Review by Paul Sahbaz
If you’ve been prowling video game message boards as of late, then you may have noticed that Wii owners have been hyped for a game called “the Conduit.” Built from the ground up on Wii, the game was to showcase that the platform is capable of playing host to great FPS games just like the Xbox 360 and PS3 have. Did it succeed? Yes and no. The Conduit plays like your basic late 90’s FPS. It is more GoldenEye/Perfect Dark than Call of Duty/Halo. You enter a room, shoot some dudes, enter a hallway and shoot more dudes, then repeat over and over until the level ends. On paper there’s little wrong with this type of gameplay but if differs greatly from the Conduit’s aforementioned contemporaries which it is already being compared to. Couple this with the fact that the Conduit has a cheesy generic story that is presented to you in horrible still frames and the game ends up falling well short of the hype.
There is, however, a silver lining. Despite its many flaws I still managed to have fun with the Conduit. It’s graphically impressive at times and the controls utilize the Wii Remote and nunchuk very well. You can even fully customize the controls if something is not to your liking. After a bit of practice the remote-nunchuk combo begins to feel more natural than the dual-analog stick configuration we’ve used on consoles for ten years now. The multiplayer however is what makes the Conduit a good game rather than an average game with great controls. While local multi-player is missing, the Conduit features the deepest online experience I’ve had on Wii. Online death-matches and capture the flag feel as tight and as fun as they did in Microsoft’s flagship Xbox FPS, Halo 2. The limitations of Nintendo’s platform keep it back, though. Online matches are only 12 people max rather than the expected 16 and Friend Codes are back even though you can now add friends of friends without them. The Conduit is a great first effort on Wii by a studio known for crap like White Men Can’t Jump (Atari Jaguar) and 50 Cent Bulletproof: G Unit Edition (PSP), but High Voltage Software has much more to learn to be a great in an industry full of them. In the end, for those who wanted the best FPS out there, the Conduit will disappoint. For those who want a good Wii FPS, then the Conduit is it.
