The Conduit
Rating: T
Score: 5.5/10
The game designers (High Voltage Software) of The Conduit guaranteed the greatest looking Wii game ever. It would look like an early Xbox 360 game, as well as be a blast to play. Well, that’s quite the statement, since the Wii isn’t powerful enough to complete with Xbox 360 graphics. Did High Voltage Software deliver a miracle, or is it all hype? This game is, of course, a Nintendo Wii exclusive.
Well, since the graphics were most hyped, I’ll address graphics first. To put it bluntly, it looks like a mediocre Playstation 2 game, from the last generation of video gaming. There were Gamecube (Nintendo’s last system, with very dated hardware) titles that looked more impressive than this game. I don’t know what kind of godly engine High Voltage Software think they’ve made, but I don’t see it. Maybe I wasn’t looking in the right place; but if it was a proper engine, I wouldn’t need to “search” for the good graphics-they should just naturally be there!
Enough about the graphics though-how about the core gameplay, the most important part? It’s adequate. The shooting works well, there is a cool variety of guns, and the “All-Seeing Eye” is a cool gameplay feature. What the eye does is let you see invisible writing/bombs/keys/enemies. This adds more to the repetitive and over-abused “run, stop, shoot bad guy, repeat” gameplay we’ve seen in thousands of games, but not a lot more.
The story is the obvious “you’re some kind of special mercenary that can stop aliens from killing everyone”. That concept has been overused. Also, why are you the only one who can stop these aliens? Some games have reasons, like you have special powers others don’t, but not this game. You’re just a mercenary sent to kill the aliens and you come across the “All-Seeing Eye” that helps you along the way. Gunfire from any gun seems to be effective enough against the aliens, so why can’t the FBI help you? Maybe you were the cheapest mercenary they could find to save the world.
These story elements are told through phone messages before you arrive at whatever destination you’re headed to next. It’s about as entertaining and impressive as it sounds, just two people talking. It’s about as intriguing as placing two pictures of heads at the top and bottom of a page of text and reading it aloud.
For a game that was hyped to look amazing, it’s very underwhelming. It looks mediocre, it plays decently, and the story is as generic as it gets. High Voltage Software plans on a sequel; let’s hope that gets cancelled or the “series” gets a drastic change.