The Conduit Preview

When commuter rage turns nasty...

The Conduit is one of those rare commodities that gets hardcore Wii-owners as excited as a puppy at the mention of "walkies": it's a serious third party game, a sci-fi FPS that's now riding a fairly sizeable wave of expectation, thanks in part to some rather spirited talking-up from High Voltage software. The developer clearly has big things in mind for this project, and chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger has expressed his hope that the game will set new standards for Wii gaming. Fighting words indeed!

Plot-wise, The Conduit seems to be taking its inspiration from The X-Files, Perfect Dark and other aliens-meets-government-conspiracy fare. That all sounds pretty good to me, but my first hands-on with the game last week was entirely focused around the game's multiplayer deathmatch modes. Not content with merely making a fairly hardcore single-player experience, High Voltage is also setting out to give the Wii a shot in the arm when it comes to online gaming. Could this be the console's answer to CoD 4? I was certainly keen to find out, so I headed over to Sega's UK base for a taste of the action.

The first thing to note about The Conduit, and arguably the most important element, is its control setup. As any shooter fan will attest, getting a decent control system is a vital step towards making a successful FPS. While the free ranging nature of the Wii remote may make it seem like the ideal controller for a game of this type, history (and Red Steel) has shown that there are plenty of mistakes to be made. In an effort to avoid the pitfalls of the past, High Voltage has placed a strong emphasis on user customisation. Any of the game's buttons can be re-mapped, while an array of sensitivity menus will allow the player to tweak the remote handling to meet their personal preference. With any luck, this should finally allow the Wii to fulfil its potential as a platform for first-person gaming.

In single-player, the All-Seeing Eye will reveal hidden messages.

I say “with any luck,” because during the heat of last week's test there really wasn't enough time for me to go fiddling with my axis. No sir, it was straight into the action for me – and to be blunt I had my derrière handed to me on a silver platter. It had been quite a while since I'd played an FPS with the remote, and at first I found it rather tricky to maintain the required lightness of touch. Aiming my weapons didn't seem like so much of a problem, but I found it tricky to manoeuvre myself at speed. On the default configuration you use the remote to look around and shoot while the Nunchuck thumbstick strafes and moves you back and forth. This seemed fine for linear movements, but things became stickier when I needed to turn around. Aiming for a headshot, for example, requires small and steady movements, but panning to the left and right requires a broader and more confident action. For some reason, I found it hard to get the balance. Still, I definitely got better (or rather, I lost less badly) as time progressed – and my fellow journalists seemed to take to it like ducks to the proverbial wet stuff.

In short, I believe that with practice and fiddling the controls should work fine. Outside of the bread-and-butter shooting, High Voltage has thrown in a couple of quirks on the normal way of doing things. Thrusting the remote forward will result in an obvious but useful melee attack, while all grenade controls are handled via the Nunchuck: just highlight where you want the explosive to go, then make a quick “forward arc” motion with your left hand. It takes a second to get used to this last feature, but it doesn't take long before you appreciate the beauty of being able to throw 'nades with great precision. They come in a variety of flavours too: frag, flash and radioactive - the last being a sticky bomb that deals out slow, continuous damage. Nice.