The Conduit — Review

The Conduit (Wii)

What a fun ride The Conduit must have been for High Voltage Software. After being rejected time and time again for presumably being a “dark game” on Wii, the first person shooter managed to receive ridiculous amounts of attention after being the focus of a feature article over at IGN. In the time since that article, HVS not only snagged Sega as a publisher, but has since won the support of many Nintendo fans by showing a bold amount of dedication to the Wii not often seen by a third party developer.

But has support been thrown to High Voltage prematurely?  Aside from a couple of mediocre WiiWare titles and some license-based trash, the studio has little to show for. Nevertheless, on paper The Conduit seems to have it all. With customizable everything and online play to boot, Wii owners might finally have a shooter* worth getting jealous over.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case – not by a long shot.

Given that the list of pros is short, we might as well get this over with now. Unlike many critics, I actually really enjoy The Conduit’s controls and could very well see some people enjoying them more than a dual analog setup. Given the right adjustments – and The Conduit is all about customization – you can make the game control as tight or as loose as you’d like. I’d even argue that the motion-based thrust used to melee works efficiently so long as it’s done in conjunction with Z, which locks the screen in place. I also appreciate High Voltage’s willingness to let users adjust the HUD in any way they see fit.

Speaking solely on the infrastructure, online works quite well, too. Finding matches isn’t hard thanks to a well-implemented matchmaking system, so it never takes long to start tinkering around in the various online modes of The Conduit.

That’s where the kind words cease to exist, however. As a shooter, The Conduit is bad. Allow me to correct myself: as a game period, The Conduit is bad.

It all starts with a story that takes itself far too seriously for a game featuring a conspiracy in Washington D.C., perhaps one of the more cliché setups of this generation. As it plays out, you’re treated to a variety of silly and contrived plot twists with a sickening level of predictability and poor voice acting. One of the best moments is when Prometheus, one of Ford’s allies, shouts at Ford to calm down. The problem with that is Ford never freaked out, and in fact, he never does. Ford’s voice is set in a constant state of rugged indifference, delivering no emotion in any event.

Even still, I can forgive poor story; it’s a first person shooter we’re talking about. What I can’t forgive is four hours of poor gameplay. I stress four hours because realistically, that’s about what the average gamer will get out of the single player campaign. Far be it for me to judge anyone who wants to scan every wall to decode some hidden message that is more often than not completely stupid, but I imagine most will roast through the game in slightly more than four hours.

The Conduit is all about running through tightly enclosed arena-like rooms and shooting stuff that moves. The problem is the game feels like a shoddy rip-off of numerous games set in a dreadfully boring environment. Primarily, you should expect to run through no less than 7,000 drab rooms of open file cabinets and office desks. For all of HVS’ boasting, The Conduit is just not good looking at all — in fact, it’s pretty damn ugly. This isn’t a hit on the Wii’s graphical capabilities, this is a hit on The Conduit. You see, you can boast about all the fancy technology in the world powering your game, but with a poor art direction it amounts to dick. The Conduit has a poor art direction, and amounts to just that; dick.

I wouldn’t simply throw out that the game feeling like a shoddy rip-off of various titles without any form of a qualifier, so take out your pen and pencil so we can compare notes. First off, one of the “unique” features is the All-Seeing Eye, which Ford whips out and uses to scan different things in the environment, generally to solve trivial puzzles. Basically, it’s like a poorly implemented version of Metroid Prime’s scan visor – it even gives off a hum that is oddly reminiscent of a Phazon-filled Prime environment. The Conduit also features wimpy aliens squealing like cartoon idiots, not unlike Halo’s Grunts. That coupled with the deep belches of tougher aliens, and if you had your eyes closed, you’d think someone was playing Halo. Oh, and those human enemies? Totally from GRAW .

It’s not entirely impossible to draw up Perfect Dark comparisons either, and that’s not solely because off the N64 quality environments of some rooms (badum tish!).

It’s hard to hand out anything but criticism to a game that is so derivative and borrows so heftily from other games. And, here’s the thing, it’s not fun. Enemies are completely idiotic and the only deaths that fall upon you are likely the result of High Voltage tossing a few surprise enemies in an elevator as if to say “gotcha!”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I like dumb-fun shooters, but The Conduit lacks the fun part. There’s something to be said for a visceral FPS that sees a protagonist laying out hundreds of baddies wave after wave, but that’s not what goes on in The Conduit. It’s mostly a room-to-room affair that sees about five or six enemies head your way, each being replaced by another as you kill one. The end result is you closing off an alien conduit, where they then cease to spawn.

Poor story, poor gameplay, and poor execution; that about sums up the solo campaign.

There is a second part to all of this, and that’s the multiplayer mode. To say it fares better than the singleplayer mode is sort of a backhanded compliment, but it is better than going it solo. I mean, it’s functional, which says something. The problem is it looks even nastier, the framerate gets ridiculously choppy, and maps are flat out yawn-inducing. And, what’s up with the cheapo text above a player’s head? It’s only an aesthetic, sure, but it’s an ugly distraction. The novelty of playing an online Wii shooter runs its course quickly upon remembering that the game is designed so poorly.

The naysayers of The Conduit are being met with “but if it was on this console or that, you guys would accept it is a competent shooter.” I can only speak for myself when I say this, but no, I would not. There are loads of piss-poor shooters on the 360 and PS3, none of which have landed on my shelf for more than a rental, and the same goes for The Conduit. The problem is that it seems that because it’s a Wii title, some form of special credit should be given to The Conduit, but that ain’t happenin’.

If you’re just dying to own an online shooter for Wii, I honestly don’t know what to tell you aside from holding out hope that something new is in the works. In the mean time, there are plenty of quality titles heading to Nintendo’s little white console that aren’t shooters and aren’t the Conduit – taking the general consensus into consideration, Boom Blox Bash Party hasn’t sold nearly enough given how good it is, so why not spring for it?

You can take my words, throw them out the window and cry foul, or can accept that maybe, just maybe The Conduit is shit.

Rating:

*Metroid Prime 3: Corruption isn’t a shooter, thus the exception. For what it’s worth, I think Corruption is great. If you haven’t bought it yet, go out and do so. Or, you know, buy a second company rather than spending $50 on The Conduit.