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The Conduit

The Conduit

The Wii has been craving a great first person shooter with stunning graphics... Is The Conduit the game to answer our action prayers? Mr. Elfving has the review

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I wish I could give a meaty presentation of Michael Ford, the protagonist of The Conduit, but unfortunately he is a pretty anonymous character. We never get to see anything of the guy except for his fists, clutching the game's various weapons, and his voice is a peculiar mix between Mr. Burns' and Solid Snakes. Also, I'm sure I've read children books with a better plot and more interesting characters than in Sega's latest game. No, The Conduit isn't a new Halo or Half-Life.But it doesn't have to be.

Washington D.C. has some alien problems and Mr. Ford is guided by a mysterious man who tells him how "The Grudge" are supposed to be tackled. In his back pocket Mr. Ford carries his A.S.E. - a spherical and mystical artefact that helps him see things his eye can't. Some locked doors will only open if you scan the surroundings with this cyber-Pokéball and "fire" the gadget for a few seconds of electronic/spiritual communication.

When the story starts I get to run around in a fair amount of varied locales, like an airport, a library, the White House and some secret laboratories. It's all fairly linear and not always entertaining. At one instance I find myself fighting aliens in a subway train and it's more of a bore then a nice change of scenery. One train wagon, four enemies. The next one, five of them. And so on, and so on. Subway trains aren't the best action setting for a video game perhaps, so I'm glad that soon some more exciting, open levels appear, where I get to fight hordes of Grudge and try to shut down their Conduits with a well thrown grenade.

I really like the arsenal. It takes about an hour or so to get hold of the cool, slimy Grudge-guns, and that's where it starts to get interesting. Strike Rifle is a favourite - this baby can be fired in bursts or be charged up for an enormously powerful blast that will turn the most beefy alien to some chocolate powder mix. The way it's recharged - with a huge orange orb - is cool by the way. Even better is the powerful Hive Cannon that I pick up after fraging one of the alien guys bigger brother.

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We get to fight a decent amount of different enemies in human- and alien form and High Voltage has really nailed the Gears of War- and Lost Planet:ish feeling of really having to exterminate pesky pests. There are egg sacks you have to blow up and the orange conduit gates feel like hornets nests, that have to be closed. There are both bipeds and four-legged aliens and the latter ones are really fast sons of bitches that blow them selves up when they get closed - much like the Tickers in Gears of War 2. Regrettably, there are almost no boss fights, which make the experience much less epic.

The Wiimote is used for aiming and turning around and the adaptable controller setup is one of The Conduits best features. Metroid Prime: Corruption may be a tad better but here is a pleasant, exact cursor movement and lobbing grenades with a nunchuk thrust is very satisfying. I don't like the melee attack, though, which on the otherwise optimal controller setup is activated by shaking the Wiimote, which makes the screen jump up and down. It makes me car sick, for crying out medium-loud!

The hyped-up graphics of The Conduit is hard to evaluate. Yes, it's better-looking than most of the others (realistic) Wii games out there, and it's impressing what the developer has done with the quite shitty hardware. But after several FPS:s for the other consoles, the overall effect isn't earth-shattering. "Good-looking for a Wii game" isn't a feature that knocks me over, but for those who only own a Wii it's good news graphically, of course.

We also get some cool moments like a battle with a huge spider boss, nicely designed alien guns and animations of enemies getting hit by bullets are quite nice. Less impressive however is the constant recycling of level design. In the library level for instance I came across the exact same room and book shelves over and over and apparently there's only one kind of broom cupboard in the whole of D.C. Not so nice.

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Online fighting is really nice, though. 12 people can battle it out in classic modes like capture the flag (or capture the A.S.E. in this case) or death matches, which in its simplicity is great fun. Bounty Hunter is also an interesting mode; here the object is to find and kill one specific enemy, and you get penalised if you shoot the wrong one. At the same time, someone (you don't know who) is chasing you...

Using Friend Codes is the usual hassle and in matches with many players I experienced some annoying lag, men overall the online mode of The Conduit is varied, fun and something the Wii has been craving. After you invested 7-9 hours in single player you're going to appreciate the fact that online mode is there and you'd better prepare for some intense battles.

The Conduit is a game a lot of us have been waiting for, but perhaps for other reasons then other big titles. Nintendo Wii has really needed a nice-looking, action-packed FPS for a long time now, and even if there are some things to remark on, this alien-butchering title is absolutely worth a closer look.

The ConduitThe ConduitThe ConduitThe Conduit
07 Gamereactor UK
7 / 10
+
Great controls, fun and varied weapons, intense online mode
-
Boring, linear singleplayer mode, almost no bosses, pointless story
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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