I think it’s great that Sega is committed to putting out games for core gamers. With so many publishers pumping out tedious mini-game collections or bland casual games, it’s nice that someone is really taking the Wii seriously as a gaming platform, especially since even Nintendo often gives short shrift to core gaming.
Now that I’ve praised Sega, I’m going to go ahead and trash their new first person shooter, The Conduit.
The Story: Wake Me When It's Over
Conduit, developed by High Voltage Software, follows Secret Service agent Michael Ford after he is recruited to find someone who’s stolen something that turns out to be ........
Just describing the story is making me sleepy, so let’s just say the game has a story of no inherent interest, blandly told, that necessitates agent Ford running around shooting guards under mind control and aliens who are on earth for some reason or other. I would suggest skipping the game’s exposition if the game allowed players to skip exposition, which it does not.
Forgetting the story, an easy thing to do, the game is simply a matter of moving from room to room shooting stuff. Often you will walk through one room and down a hallway only to enter an almost identical room leading to an almost identical hallway. Some of these rooms have things to shoot at.
The Controls: Close but No Cigar
The control scheme works well for the most part. You use the Wii remote to look around, point and shoot. If you’re close to an enemy you can thrust the remote forward for a melee attack. The nunchuk is used for movement and you can throw grenades by flicking it.
Unfortunately a number of times in the game I lost the ability to look around. Suddenly moving the remote would not change my view, leaving me unable to turn or shoot, and I would run away from myriad enemies as I desperately pointed the remote this way and that trying to find a sweet spot that would force the game to recognize that I was pointing at the screen and should not be ignored. At times I would be doing this for over a minute, a very long time when you’re being chased and shot at. Other Wii shooters will stop responding if you point your remote too far away from the Wii sensor, but this is the first game that gave me this much difficulty.
Gameplay: Eh
While control problems are intermittent, the game’s bland level design is constant. There’s always a little fun to be had in running around shooting aliens, but the game makes this activity as dull as it can manage. Good level design keeps you on the edge of your seat, excited and apprehensive, but Conduit makes saving the free world from the forces of evil as mundane as shopping or riding a bicycle.
The game also has a multiplayer mode. This is pretty decent, and I seemed to have less trouble with the controls. Some reviewers have said that multiplayer makes up for the boring single player mode, but once again I was fairly underwhelmed. For me both modes are inferior to the Wii’s last major FPS, Call of Duty: World at War, even though Conduit does a much better job with grenades.
Conclusion: Forgetable, but If You Want a Wii FPS, You Have Little Choice
I wouldn’t say there is anything terrible in Conduit, although I found using an alien scanner to search for hidden “bio-locks” quite tedious and annoying. At the same time, there’s nothing especially exceptional in the game. Graphics, weapons, level design, alien design; they are all just okay, but none of them are more than that.
There are so few adult titles that it is tempting to give Conduit a pat on the back just for not being a mini-game collection, but a game is not good simply because it doesn’t have a lot of competition. I admire Sega’s determination to swim against the tide and make games for serious gamers, but I still have to ask for a little more; a commitment to make those games great.
