I didn't want to believe the reviews. (Gameplay and Multiplayer)
I think I've tracked every review this game has had and watched every video of Conduit 2's gameplay, and I had my doubts about the accuracy of the reviews. It seemed to me that all who had reviewed the game were disappointed in the storyline and the intelligence level of the AI, as well as some minor glitches here and there. Upon reading these I payed no attention to their critiques of these factors since I was interested mostly in the gameplay and multiplayer. Some of these reviews hardly touched on gameplay elements other than the fact that the controls were "very customizable" or that the multiplayer offered, "several modes". The reviews that did critique the gameplay and multiplayer seemed to be underwhelmed and reflected disappointment. I hate to say it, but these reviews are accurate.
The controls of the game certainly are customizable, but only to a certain extent. For example, a lot of the button configurations can be reassigned, except if you want something like "reload" to be a wii waggle, it won't allow this swap. The customization of turn speed and the dead zones seem to have little effect simply because the camera style of the game overwhelms these two factors. Which therein lies a huge gameplay flaw. The character's camera style attempts to reflect human like movement by making movements more "bumpy" and less robotically smooth. This is something that certainly adds a great deal of believability to the Wii FPS as we've all seen in games like Call of Duty Black Ops, but Conduit 2's camera style over does it. Instead of making the camera movement "bumpy" to coincide with your character's in game movement, it makes the camera movement "bumpy" for the sake of being bumpy. Looking left to right becomes an annoyance because your character's aim constantly shifts up and down as if your character is panting out of breath, even when you're standing completely still. This aspect of the camera style isn't completely obtrusive but only compounds to the many other control woes that plague this game. Such of these include the fact that once you zoom with your gun, you have to press the zoom button again to zoom out, instead of the CoD style of simply holding and releasing a button to zoom in and out. Also, the crouch and sprint are coupled together into one button as well as the reload and the pick up item action. It all makes for a frustrating experience when the dead zones and turn speeds seem to be impossible to correctly calibrate in light of the difficult camera style.
Taken online and this game can make you lose it. The organization of matches seems to follow a system that attempts to copy CoD's with none of its regulation and the gameplay and modes certainly shoot for a Halo gameplay with none of its balance. The maps don't always yield themselves to open battle and often times the vast difference in upgrades will create unbalance between varying skill levels making multiplayer unplayable for newcomers.
Conduit 2 certainly has its upsides and is still worth checking out if your a fan of FPS on the Wii, but to summarize the experience of the game, Conduit 2 feels "unfinished". If this game was given 6 more months of production and a stronger direction it could have been the premiere FPS for the Wii that we were all waiting for.