July 17, 2008 - IGN Wii readers are no strangers to The Conduit, a Wii-exclusive first-person shooter developed by High Voltage Software. We unveiled the ambitious project many months ago and we've been posting regular (and usually exclusive) updates on it ever since. But at E3 2008 this week, we finally had the chance to go hands-on with the shooter to find out if it's really all that High Voltage has been promising. And now that we've gripped the Wii remote in our hands, run through a world drown in uncommon (for Wii) graphical effects and gunned down alien vermin with customized precision, we can state without any hesitation that it most certainly is the real deal. Put it on your radar right now because it is exactly the caliber of Wii effort you've been waiting for.
High Voltage is not "officially" showing The Conduit at E3, but it has set up the first-person shooter on a small flat-screen television in a darkened hotel room in downtown Los Angeles. Creative directors Eric Nofsinger and Matt Corso seem excited to finally show us the title in motion, but also a little nervous. And we can understand why. This is do or die time. No more controlled videos or screenshots. Now the game really has to speak for itself. And we've been in exactly this situation before -- where a title has been made to be the next big thing, but when we finally sit down to play it, we're underwhelmed.
After explaining that all the voice work in the 15-minute E3 2008 demo of The Conduit is placeholder, the action begins and any remaining fears we have are washed away. We can tell right from the get-go that High Voltage has nailed it, just as we could tell from the start that Ubisoft's over-hyped first-person shooter Red Steel totally missed the mark. You can see it in the way the reticule moves smoothly around the screen and you can see it when Corso makes a sharp turn and the screen flows quickly and fluidly to the right. The clunky, mechanical control that you endure in so many console-based first-person shooters is absent from The Conduit. Rather, it simulates the spectacular responsiveness found in Medal of Honor Heroes 2, a game that we celebrated almost entirely for its definable control setup.
And really, The Conduit takes customized controls to the next level for a number of important reasons. Yes, it does feature the ability to fully adjust your turn speeds and dead zones (the invisible bounding box that separates aiming from turning). It also features customizable cursor sensitivity, camera look angles, auto centering, and turning while the cursor is offscreen. You can even adjust your character's run speed (For the record, we felt that the present maximum run speed should be the new starting point and High Voltage agreed, so expect that change to be introduced in future builds). The game already boasts a number of extra control options over Heroes 2, but what really makes The Conduit's approach extra special is that you can make all of these adjustments in real-time. As you're moving through an atmospheric Washington D.C. that has been invaded by alien forces, you can bring up a graphic overlay that let's you customize all of the aforementioned attributes, and if you make changes, they will be reflected on-the-fly.
The Conduit additionally features a fully customizable control scheme so that you create your layout as you see fit. Don't like the fact that scope zoom is mapped to the bottom D-Pad? Change it. Prefer that the A button be used for crouching? No problem. And High Voltage promises that in the final version, you will even be able to map certain moves to Wii remote gestures if you'd prefer. On top of everything else, you can also completely edit the game's heads-up display, moving around information such as character health and ammo to your preferred positioning. Supposing you're the type who hates their screen clogged with any items, you can altogether remove it. The developer has really provided all of the options that hardcore gamers will want.
We had absolutely no trouble blasting our way through a portion of the opening stage, effortlessly targeting enemies and taking them down with different weapons, from a powerful handgun to a sniper rifle and even some alien tools of destruction inspired by the Half Life series. For example, there's an extraterrestrial weapon which shoots missile-like projectiles that will follow your on-screen reticule around. There is another alien gun in which you must twist the Wii remote to set the angle of the shots it fires. Aiming is incredibly tight and fast. Shooting enemies is very satisfying. It works as well as any Wii fans might hope.
The Conduit looks better than the majority of Wii games on the market thanks to High Voltage's dedication to taking advantage of the hardware -- a novelty, unfortunately, since few other third-parties bother. The game sports a very crisp, clean look complemented by a host of graphical effects, from dramatic real-time lighting and particles to bump- and normal-mapped objects. Characters animate fluidly. Transparent water shimmers realistically. Aliens sparkle with reflective armor. Later, when High Voltage brought The Conduit to our E3 war room, the polished visuals encapsulating the title tricked a few passersby into believing that The Conduit was an Xbox 360 game. All of the extra graphical bells and whistles have come at the price of the occasional framerate hiccup. The Conduit usually runs at 30 frames, but skips a beat during high-action sequences. The developer promises that the final version will run smoothly all the time and we definitely believe it.
The E3 demo of The Conduit is entirely single-player focused, so we didn't get the chance to test the game online. However, High Voltage is purportedly aiming for a robust online experience complete with WiiSpeak support for voice-over support -- another first-person shooter first on Wii.
We're going to have more coverage on The Conduit in the coming weeks and months. For now, rest assured that the FPS is exactly what the doctor ordered. High Voltage was busy at E3 2008 meeting with a number of major third-party publishers about the project and we don't think the developer will have any trouble whatsoever securing a significant backer when it finally decides to select one.
I was gonna say that. lol
