Pros & Cons:
Pertaining to My short list below.

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The graphics are comparable to the better looking games on Wii—Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3, for example—with noticeably bump-mapped, relatively detailed textures; bloom lighting fuels the Conduits', explosions' and energy weapons' vibrant glow; the weapon (like many of the Drudge's which organically bounce around as you move) and enemy character models are well-rendered; the particle effects are sharp and convincing, from sparks and smoke that fly from the area as you shoot, to dense steam coming from broken pipes, hundreds of tiny embers floating in later levels, or the energy beams' glow lingering before seeping into walls. Many of the environments are well-design, notably the dilapidated and ruined White House's interior, or the last level's stark, secret facility setting; there's a nice blur effect when weapons are being reloaded; the framerate stays solid throughout; and load-times are brief.

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It can be quite pretty—the particle effects and bloom lighting are its best aspects.

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On the negative side, the enemy death animations are surprisingly rough, and as they fall, what looks to be stiff, key-frame movements will often cause them to get caught in the floor and slide in an unintended jittery manner until settled; other than propane tanks and the odd crate, devoid smoke and sparks that kick up, objects don't react to gunfire, and that goes for the many electronic screens and—unless it is broken before you arrive—glass, which will sometimes lightly crack, but not shatter—the majority of the environment is completely static. The many moving ads in public places are lazily repeated right next to each other; small, secondary details like control panels, books, doors, piles of refuse and text signs are blurry and low-res, often with messy texture seaming; and worst of all, the city backdrops seen through windows or outdoors are unbelievably horrible, with no illusion of depth, and look as if they were bitmaps done in DOS—small details do suffer. But despite the above issues, it's still probably one of the better (if not best overall) looking third-party Wii game out yet.

The default controls are responsive, with accurate aim (point, click, shoot) and logical button placement; you can use up on the D-pad to do a 180; down to zoom in; left to change grenade type or right to switch between weapons; minus to reload; Z to keep enemies in sight and display their health; a flick of the Nunchuck to throw grenades; and a thrust of the Wiimote forward for a close-quarters melee attack—both of which work with perfect accuracy. And if the default doesn't cut it, because of the incredibly customizable controls, you can completely change the button layout; aim's dead zone; sensitivity on all directions including the Wii cursor, nunchuck/Wiimote motion control, and how far you can look up/down; axis inversion; the camera (make the view static for easier aiming and turn with the analog stick instead, etc.); and the running speed, along with interface options like the HUD placement and transparency—you can even calibrate aim for screen size. And as you adjust them, it stays in-game, meaning you can test any of your changes in real-time, and without leaving the options menu—the controls can be as good or bad as you make them.

The gameplay is very straightforward, with no real strategy involved, and other than using your ASE to solve rotation puzzles, destroy hidden nodes to open organic locked doors or disable Ghost mines from a distance, you'll run through entirely linear levels, clear a room of enemies, take out spawn points from a distance, move onto the next, repeat—it's nothing that hasn't been experienced in dozens of FPS games before, and if you don't expect an epic with big action sequences and vehicular portions, you're in luck. You will fight through a few cool places, like a ruined Library of Congress, White House and Pentagon, making it unique in this aspect, and although you'll have to rely on health packs for three levels, after this, it will slowly regenerate whenever you're not taking damage. The weapons are varied, responsive and fun to use, especially the energy-types, and a choice few have motion control to enhance the feel, like directing Shreiker missiles in mid-air with the Wiimote, etc. But while there is moderate fun to be had and the control customization gives it the feel of a great old-style PC shooter, the same can't be said for overall gameplay and its design...

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You'll find the controls to be the most customizable since old-style PC shooters.

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While the ASE may be relatively fun to find extras with, or useful for disabling mines, destroying organic locks and hacking panels—which is what it is for—it just comes off feeling too simplistic, with rotation puzzles that take the IQ of the game's AI to solve (they mise well be automatic) and you'll simply hold down a button to hack the many control panels—even at its best, the device comes off as contrived, worse, trivial; it's simply not rewarding with basic use. The enemy's spawn points are illogically placed, as they come from everywhere, endlessly, and you'll just have to get as close as you can and then try to destroy them in between the endless enemy waves that come out from them. Bad design choices don't end here, with frequently cramped corridors that make it near impossible to get enough distance before the annoying, rampant Therm- Mites explode point-blank, and you'll have to disarm Ghost Mines (which take upwards of ten seconds) blocking your cover while the mine-immune enemy attacks you at the same time. Meaning, ultimately, it relies too much on cheap enemy spawn points for its "challenge," which ends up making gameplay feel tedious, not fun.

Also worth pointing out is, since the majority of environments you fight through are of the industrial variety, there's not much variety to appearance, and you will often find yourself backtracking only to realize that the area is different, it just looks exactly the same. And the Drudge bear an almost embarrassing resemblance to Halo's Covenant, with Drones that act and sound like Elites; Med-Mites that cower, babbling in squeaky voices exactly like Grunts; and Storm Scarabs that behave just like Hunters, complete with hulking size and invisibility cloaks—in other words, enemy design is unoriginal to say the least, and dare I say, a direct rip off. As for the AI, Mites mindlessly charge in groups; Puppet Humans are armed, but don't act it, and rush to embrace your bullets; and the anti-climactic Invader bosses basically wait to be killed. However, the Drones will take adequate cover, pop out and fire well, and the Trust agents are the smartest by far; along with the above behavior, they will accurately fire on and toss grenades your way while they flank you and strafe from your fire.

The story is adequate enough to move things along, but is also somewhat uninvolving and incredibly scant; most is told through load screens at the beginning of each level with a transcripted mission briefing, while the voice actors perform their dialog in a staccato, wooden tone solely with audio (granted, they don't have much to work with; the script is contrived)—there are no cutscenes. There's two twists; the first is pretty obvious from the very first level, and the second nearer the end is a nice effort, but since there's so little character development, you don't have enough of an investment in said characters—including the dull, generic protagonist—for it to make any impact. The rest consists of the cliched try-to-take-over-the-world-with-a-superiority-complex villian doing just that through his equally cliche, conspiracy wrapped organization... blah, blah, blah. And then it's over as quickly as it began, ending as you step through a Conduit. That's it, no dead bad guy, and devoid an MGS-style audio conversation at the end credits, no resolve—for a game that mimics Halo in more ways than one, it's too bad it didn't mimic one of its most successful aspects: story.

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One of the forty-two Drudge messages hidden on the walls throughout levels.

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The difficulty on the default "Guarded" (out of five total, which can be changed at any time during gameplay) is moderately challenging, and even with your later ability to regenerate your health, because of the enemies' agressive nature and overwhelming number, endless respawning and scant checkpoints, you can die very quickly if you're not careful. And it only steps up further in, with greater enemy and Conduit numbers, while the distance from you and these spawn points become much further, and you'll often find yourself fighting the slashing Tear-Mites, exploding Therm-Mites, Trust and long-range Drones at the same time, all the while having to disarm Ghost Mines and destroy Egg Sacks blocking your way. The stronger Scarab enemies will become more frequent, along with their vicious, close-quarter counterparts, Storm Scarabs—at one point, you will have to fight up to four of each simultainiously—and the last two levels are filled with resilient Trust agents equipped with powerful energy weapons, as they come at you non-stop and in incredible number—one minute it is dead easy, the next you're simply dead; difficulty can be unpredictable.

After completing the somewhat brief 5-7 hour single-player campaign (it took me five and a half hours), there is some great replay value, with 60 data discs and 42 hidden messages throughout levels to collect and uncover with the ASE, ultimately unlocking concept art, achievements (that work just like those on 360 games), and cheats (one hit kills, unlimited ammo, etc.) in "Extras," along with extensive stats covering overall accuracy, enemies defeat, unlockables, etc. The online multi-player is the most fully functional for this system, and instead of having to use the tedious Wii Friends codes (which are still an option, along with the ability to use Wii Speak to chat with friends), you can jump directly into a match with players in your region, or around the world. You'll then pick a character, customize its colors, pick from a team/single deathmatch or capture the flag (in this case, ASE) mode and wait to get matched up with a group of random players. As for performance, it can take a few minutes to get into a match, and in the couple of games I played, there was moderate lag—both of which seem to simply depend on you and the other players' connections.

Closing comment:
So overall, is this Wii owners answers to Halo? Well, honestly no. But it's hands down the best third-party action shooter on the system, especially with the responsive and entirely customizable controls, along with the above average graphics. And while the endless enemy spawn points, linear gameplay and cliche story make the single-player campaign less than stellar, some fun can be had by going through levels and trying to get everything, along with better stats. But most importantly, The Conduit fills a niche that was missing in the Wii's library; its extensive online multi-player. In this aspect, if you are into this, and solely own a Wii, this is your answer—and if anything, it's the best game to be distributed by Sega in a while, that's for sure.

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Pros & Cons review posted: 07/21/09

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