Inyshina’s Reviews: The Conduit.

Author: Inyshina

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A gameplay loop of The Conduit.

Hello nHotspot. I’ve recently gotten The Conduit. I’ve enjoyed it so much, I really wanted to make a review. Now it’s not going to be biased, undetailed and poorly written, I am going to take my time and put effort into it.

Okay let’s get started!

The Conduit – Review

Now of course most of the people here at nHotspot know the generic 3rd party games that are on the Wii. However, High Voltage Software took the initiative, and tried their darnedest to make a hardcore FPS for the Wii. In this review, I will review all the bits and pieces of The Conduit, ranging from the storyline to unlockables. I hope you enjoy.

Story

What? The Flying Spaghetti Monster has taken over the White House?!

The Conduit takes place in near-future Washington D.C. The story, even though sorta generic as it deals with a reused idea of aliens taking over the world, still has a few twists, which I will leave for you people who are drooling and waiting for it to find out. I will however say that most of the game relies on following the orders of the big P., who is plotting to destroy the Drudge and show everyone the conspiracy that is behind it. You play as Secret Agent Ford, a member of the Secret Service. Now, he’s there as a everyman, sort of like Link from Legend of Zelda, and lacks most of the defining traits of a personality. However, he is resourceful and doesn’t like being pushed around, especially when not knowing what’s going on around him.

The whole gave had splendid voice acting, and especially the opening of the game looked like a really good Sci-Fi movie. You will also hear the voices give you hints in the gameplay for what to do next when things are getting tough.

There is one thing I did not like about the story mode in The Conduit, it only had nine missions. Now, while these missions lasted a pretty good while, they were also pretty linear and the All Seeing Eye, which could of had a lot of potential as a puzzle item, was only used to find locks that were in easy to find places. However, if you are looking for the secrets in The Conduit, the ASE gets way more use, with over 40 secrets found in the game.

Story gets an 7.5 for a refreshing way to look at the “Aliens taking over the world” story, however loses points for not being entirely original.

Graphics

What are you looking at, ugly?

As you can see from the above picture, The Conduit has exceptional graphics for a next-gen system, and marvelous graphics for the Wii. The Conduit features bump mapping, dynamic lighting details, transparent and reflecting water, and more. I really could not say how good it was when I played it on the Wii. In my opinion, I thought it look as good as something the Xbox 360 could pull off.

Graphics get a 9 for being extremely good, and for creating a new graphic engine that really takes advantage of the Wii’s assets. However, they could have done a wee bit better. There was a few times where if you zoom into a certain texture with a scope or binoculars, there is an obvious Gamecube-like blur, with no bump mapping at all, but remember only if you look for it will you find it. 

Controls

The control scheme of The Conduit receives a 10. The original controls are very fun to play with, but you can also completely map EVERYTHING, including run speed, size of the deadzone and other things, to what you prefer. That means no one, especially this person who reviewed The Conduit on Gamepro, could give this game the excuse “The controls sucked, I couldn’t enjoy playing the game because my meaty hands didn’t press the right button at the time”.

Multiplayer

It has pretty good choices, doesn’t it?

The Conduit’s online multiplayer mode is very nice. Not only are there original stages, but there are different types of online multiplayer. There’s a take on “Capture the Flag” called ASE Football, along with there being quick matches and other nice things. WiiSpeak’s in there too.

I also never experienced lag on the multiplayer, however there are a few bugs that made you have a blank gameplay screen except the sky, and you can’t exit out. That’ puts a damper on online multi if you ask me.

However, there was no local multiplayer, which is a huge letdown.

Due to no local multiplayer, and a bad bug, Multiplayer get’s a 6.5.

Secrets and Achievements

Yay! Now I can fly!

I have no interest in the Achivements, but finding all the secrets and all the Achievements add to the games play time a bit.

I’ll give it a 7 because you can unlock most the achievements by beating the missions. Also it kinda seems like they just tacked it on to add a little more play time.

Final Tally

Story: 7.5
Graphics: 9
Controls: 10
Multiplayer: 6.5
Secrets + Achievements: 7

Final score: 8.0 exactly.

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