I do not own a Wii, as it seems neither does most of our staff.  If they do, not many of them feel like posting a review of the usual assortment of kiddie crap that Nintendo shoves down the “casual gaming” pike.  So it was nice to see Diortem’s  blog post about Nintendo’s most recent foray into appeasing the hardcore gamer group with his review of The Conduit.

I could not wait to play this one. Simply because I loved Metroid Prime 3 and had yet to see another FPS on the Wii that wasn’t WWII, I could not wait to get my hands on and play The Conduit. As soon as I finished my review of Final Fantasy VII, I plugged this puppy in.  Yesterday around 2, I finished the game.
You play Agent Ford, a man who just woke up in a corridor having dropped an orb device and wearing weird-as-hell armor… and apparently needing a couple minutes to get his wits about him. You spend most of the game remembering how the last week went, playing out the week before in FPS mayhem.

Now let’s see how it did. Keep in mind, I haven’t played online yet, so I will likely revisit this with a final detail later.

The BAD:

Aim-Lock: Just like Metroid 3, there is an Aim lock and just like Metroid Prime 3. It basically behaves as a strafe-lock, letting you fire wherever you like while strafing around your target.  However, Metroid Prime 3 basically perfected this, and The Conduit tried to improve on perfection. What they did instead was degrade it. This peticular version of the feature has a few odd quirks that while not showing up often, were obnoxious when they did.  Sometimes the system had a hard time picking who you meant to lock in on, meaning the guy almost in the center of your screen would sometimes be completely abandoned for the guy way over to the right of your view.  You could switch way too easily messing up the strafe and aim you were working on.

Almost Useless Super Weapons: When you find a door with a lock and unlock it to find a literal shrine for a weapon, you EXPECT the weapon to be amazing. It is, but due to being limited to carrying exactly two guns and NOT being able to get more ammo for it, these weapons become little more then a tease until you unlock a very specific “cheat” late in the game.  Well, it calls it a cheat, but when the game offers it to you for playing the game like you would any other and without codes, I find myself hard pressed to agree.

Layout graphics: Simply put, the maps do not look impressive. Generally, this is forgivable, but it takes away from the whole “pull you in” experience.

The GOOD:

Controls: Aside from the aim-lock issues, this game has NOTHING but good controls.
PERFECTED what Metroid Prime 3 started: now the controls also feature a melee attack, weapons switching, grenade switching/use, AND reloading on command! The standard button setup for FPS on the Wii is now complete.  Customizable: Be ready to spend about 20 minutes to an hour in the first level before you really even face off with an enemy. You will want that time to customize EVERYTHING, from tweaking the button layout (in my case, I reversed shooting and jumping), to customizing sensitivity and the window that doesn’t make you turn while the cursor is in it.  Once you are done, however, this game will feel natural as hell.

Performance: The game is smooth… like maybe in three rooms TOTAL were there even slightly noticeable frame-rate issues (the frame-rate Nazi in me is the only reason I saw it). When you are trying to impress, you want smooth, and smooth it does.

Creature and effect Graphics: Simply put the effects looked amazing, and even paralleled what you get on a 360 if you want my honest opinion. The characters were also amazingly crafted… perhaps that’s why some of the more lackluster areas stood out so badly.

OVERALL: I can only describe this game one way… Halo on Wii.  Seriously, the game has very similar twists (and just as much not so interesting rest of the plot) as the original Halo… as well as does for the Wii what Halo did for controller FPS: Finalizes just how good, fast, and full-featured it can be. I would say for that reason alone, pick this game up. If you plan to play online, pick it up now.  If not, then you can Gamefly it or wait for it to drop in price first.

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