The Conduit is far from perfect, but it is a huge step in the right direction for Wii shooters.
You play as Michael Ford, an agent for the secret service. John Adams, the head figure of a shadowy government organization, known as the Trust, calls upon Ford to go after a terrorist, named Prometheus. Agent Ford is to retrieve a stolen piece of technology, known as the All Seeing Eye, or ASE.
Since it was revealed, one of the aspects that set The Conduit apart was its visual presentation. High Voltage developed the Quantum 3 engine to get the most out of the Wii hardware. As a result, The Conduit has some of the sharpest texture work of any third party game on the platform. To top it off, you have various effects, such as interactive water, bump mapping, high dynamic range and bloom lighting, depth of field, and blur.
However, the amount of detail in each area can be inconsistent and drag down how visually impressive the game can be. The frame rate can become a bit unstable if you have a lot happening on screen, as well. Two more downsides to the presentation are that there is little to no destructibility in the environments, and death animations repeat often. This tends to make the game feel dated.
For those of you who became frustrated with the clunky and unresponsive control schemes from Far Cry Vengeance and Red Steel will be pleased to see that The Conduit boasts a fully customizable control setup. Dead zones, horizontal and vertical look sensitivity, run speed, cursor sensitivity, and button mapping are available options for you to work with. All of these features can be adjusted in game, on the fly.
When it comes down to actual gameplay, The Conduit is both a hit and miss. You tend to fight the same enemies throughout the game without there being much of a difference between any of them, aside from appearance. The enemies are smart enough to impress, but not enough to amaze anyone. Sure, they can take cover, advance, retreat, and flank you reasonably well, but they have a lot of dumb moments where they take cover on something that leaves them open to fire, stand there in the open, and occasionally, run into walls.
Despite the shortcomings, your enemies will put up a fight, and may prove tough to defeat in many areas. Thankfully, the environments are well designed for firefights, so you're never begging for cover, nor have too much in the way. There is also a decent assortment of guns, each one with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Once you finish campaign mode, there is still plenty of enjoyment to be had in the multiplayer. Multiplayer modes include capture the ASE, bounty hunter, free for all, and team battle. Your connection will vary from match to match, but it is usually solid. Every once in a while, I would experience lag, or see someone else jumping from one side of the room to the next.
The Wii Speak peripheral can be used to communicate with other players - but only those on your friends list. However, the fact that you can only communicate with people on your friends list defeats some of the novelty and the peripheral itself tends to pick up a lot of noise from the game. To lessen the friend code dilemma, High Voltage has created a system in which you can add the friends of your friends, without having to enter their code. You can also import codes from your Wii address book.
In terms of sound design, gunfire could be more clear. When you fire most of the guns available to you, they don't sound very powerful. Voice acting is excellent with the exception of a few cheesy one-liners. The aliens themselves sound similar to those found in Halo and Area 51, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The sounds from human enemies aren't too original either, but they aren't by any means annoying. What really stands out in The Conduit's sound department is its soundtrack. While there are not very many tracks, the music starts exactly when it should and provides a nice blend of techno and orchestral sound to match the futuristic setting.
So what does The Conduit do differently? Aside from fully customizable controls, not a lot. The story and gameplay probably won't amaze you with originality, but that doesn't keep the game from being fun and worthwhile. If you have been looking for a reason to dust off Nintendo's little white box and get some use out of it, then The Conduit is exactly what you have been waiting for.