Video Game Review: ‘The Conduit’ Blasts Open Door For More Wii Shooters

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CHICAGO – “The Conduit” is something old and something new. It is a very old-fashioned shooter that will remind an entire generation of college years spent wasted on titles like “Doom 2” and “Wolfenstein,” but it is a unique title for the typically family-driven Nintendo Wii. For the sake of diversity in the platform alone, players should support “The Conduit”. It’s far from a perfect title and could even be called a let-down after all the hype, but it does enough right to make it clear that the FPS should not be ignored in the world of Nintendo.

The Nintendo Wii and DS have been wildly successful by largely appealing to untapped demographics in the world of video games including families, pre-teens, and female players. Something interesting has happened in 2009 - both platforms have presented excellent titles that prove they can still compete in the traditional forms of the medium with the ultra-violent “MadWorld” for the Wii and the great “Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars” for the DS.

The Conduit
Photo credit: Sega

Reports are that neither of those acclaimed titles have sold well and that’s a shame. I’m not suggesting that every fan of “Nintendogs” needs to be playing “GTA,” but I know there are shooter and adult games players out there who aren’t giving more mature titles a chance on the DS and Wii. Do we really need to categorize our systems and have one for the family and one for hardcore gamers? It seems silly.

The Conduit Photo credit: Sega

The fact is that one of the most entertaining games in the history of the Wii is the import of “Resident Evil 4,” a great, dark, adult shooter. And a lot of gamers, myself included, have been waiting for more games like it to hit the market. Outside of the “House of the Dead” games and a few other imports, there’s not a lot to talk about in the world of shooting on the Wii. Until the highly-buzzed “The Conduit” came along.

Winner of IGN’s E3 Award in 2008, “The Conduit” finally hit store shelves last month and we’ve been busy shooting well-dressed men, soldiers, and a slew of alien baddies. “The Conduit” is a very simple, borderline-nostalgic shooter where the player uses a series of weapons to destroy a series of enemies. It gives shooter fans the basics, something that will aggravate and anger modern shooter players but is fresh enough to the Wii to offer hope.

The game takes place in a devastated Washington DC after an alien attack. After a tutorial first level involving alien combat, the game flashes back to detail how we got to this post-apocalyptic place. After a wave of agents and soldiers try to take you down, the real inter-stellar madness begins and you’ll be fighting for your life for hours.

If you tell a lot of players raised in the era of “Modern Warfare” and “Metal Gear Solid 4” that a game is more reminiscent of “Doom 2” than modern games, they’ll probably roll their eyes and move along, but “The Conduit” constantly reminded me of gaming experiences from at least a decade ago in both good and bad ways. It’s almost refreshingly simple at times to pick your weapon and take out the hostile enemies. But with some weak graphics, awful voice work, and nonsensical storyline, “The Conduit” simply can’t compare to the cinematic experiences that modern gamers have become accustomed to in the late ’00s.

The Conduit Photo credit: Sega

But it shouldn’t be judged on that scale. “The Conduit” is a step in the right direction and provides enough simple boom for its buck. The weapon selection is interesting and inventive. The control scheme is intuitive and easy to use. Quite bluntly, it’s easy to aim, shoot, and take out the enemy in both single player and multi-player. Yes, the enemy AI is shockingly bad - also reminiscent of mid-’90s PC shooters - but let’s take things one step at a time.

There is also an incredible amount of control and weapon customization. With multiple sensitivity and difficulty adjustments, “The Conduit” is easily playable for either casual gamers or hardcore ones.

“The Conduit” also opens the door for something even less common than shooters on the Wii - an enjoyable multiplayer experience. There are deathmatch and capture the flag modes available through a surprisingly competent multiplayer portion of the game.

How do you judge a shooter on a console not known for them? Fans out there looking for the same experience they get on their PS3 but with a Wii-mote are going to be shockingly angry. The Wii simply can’t do that. But what it can do is provide it’s own unique shooter experience and I’d like to see it happen more often. “The Conduit” is a step in the right direction.

Before you go, check out the launch trailer, courtesy of Sega:

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com