21 Jun, 2011
Developer: High Voltage
Producer: SEGA
Platforms: Wii
Release Date: April 2011
In Ten Words or Less: If Metal Gear, Metroid and Halo had a non-HD baby..
Family Friendly?: Nope.
It’s clear from the outset that High Voltage have tried to create the most complete, engaging First Person Shooter Experience possible on Wii. They have tried to make a game the ‘core’ have been waiting for and pushed the machine to the max. With SEGA backing them, have they finally achieved what Wii owners have long sought after?
Back in the saddle
Following on from the events of The Conduit, Michael Ford (voiced by Mr Duke ‘Shake it Baby’ Nukem himself, Jon St.John) has followed his nemesis, John Adams, through a conduit and finds himself on an off-shore oil rig, stuck somewhere in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. Fighting his instincts to get an anchor shaped tattoo on his arm, and to steer to and weigh anchor (he doesn’t really want to do that), Michael chases down John in a last ditch effort to stop him once and for all. Unfortunately, a rather large sea serpent crashes the party and makes things a little more difficult than Michael initially expected.
But Sea Snakes are just the beginning of his perils and pitfalls. Michael Ford is going all over the world and he’ll face all manner of the vile and wicked from one corner to the next.
Free-Roam in FPS
The first thing you will notice when playing Conduit 2 is the controls, undoubtedly. Metroid Prime is the best example of an FPS game that has worked successfully on Wii and therefore takes the mantle of ‘standard bearer’. However, Metroid Prime and Conduit 2 are almost leagues apart in terms of freedom and movement. While Retro Studios configured the controls and camera to be restrictive for the Metroid Prime World so you only needed to move wherever necessary, Conduit 2 is totally free roam. The Wii Remote may as well be a gun in your hand in Conduit 2 and is one of the first games to truly showcase just how effective motion control can be when used on an FPS game.
Does it work? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, the freedom is utterly exhilarating. With Motion Plus activated, you can see the benefits of this type of control engineering an FPS experience and it adds a level of accuracy that has never been possible before, not even with a mouse. There’s no delay in responsiveness – the game synchronises excellently with your arm movements. On that merit, Conduit feels different from any FPS game I’ve played before and no matter how poor the sound and graphics are, you cannot fail but to be immersed in Conduit 2 in ways that were impossible before Wii.
Graphically, it tries...
On the other hand, the movement is frighteningly fast and can be quite strenuous to keep a consistently good aim. Sure, there is the auto-lock on system which helps direct your bullets but that still requires a level of precision to maintain. However, I can’t stress enough how long it will actually take you to adjust from not using analogs to actually using the Wii Remote to guide your guns movements on screen. It’s fascinating and utterly compelling!
Unfortunately, the mapped button controls do not compliment the experience. Pressing and holding down on the D-Pad in order to zoom with your scope and still aim with your hand is just awkward. Selecting your weapon in the heat of battle can be a pain, as can a reload. Some of the key buttons for a FPS game are defaulted to the wrong buttons in my eyes.
And don’t even get me started on melee. Waggling the Wii Remote to fend off critters with a melee attack manages to turn a simple arm swipe on screen into a whirlwind ninja ritual that suddenly metamorphoses your character into an extra from House of the Flying Daggers! You’ll find the screen just going into total spasms, as you’re apparently doing some move straight out of the movies which is deflecting back these otherwordly entities. A move, that frankly, could be anything from a flying kick to a spinning back fist. Or both. It’s actually a sort of surprise when you settle down for a moment to see if anything survived, and after your head has recovered from twenty spins. It’s also strangely intriguing, as it will make you wonder what it is you actually did to bring down these wretched foes. I envisaged myself doing a spiral-ninja kick, complete with seventeen back flips, a carousel arm-swing attack and then finishing it off with a flying dragon punch. I could even hear the KO whirring around inside my head.
Whether this was High Voltage’s intention or not, my imagination made a ridiculously stupid gaming error, something pretty darn cool!
Oh and the Sprint? The sprint is just pathetic. You will seriously be deliberating if Ford is running or taking a brisk walk. Seriously, I could run faster than this guy after eating two full Sunday dinners with my legs tied together…
Ka-BOOM!
Crysis, I am not
Oh, it gets better. The graphics are lame. They’re just grainy and completely unflattering. Despite the fact this is a new engine developed for Wii and this game, it’s just a laughing stock when placed against its HD competition. Had it not been for the revolutionary controls, you’d be convinced you were having a retro evening in, experiencing games from last gen.
And unflattering still are some of the effects that are used to try and highlight the actions on the screen. Whenever you reload, the screen blurs. No really, they blur the screen out. In marriage with the controls, half the time you play Conduit 2 will make you think you’re drunk. Between the incredibly responsive controls and the trippy blurred screen, I was seriously convinced I’d drunken two bottles of whiskey during my playtime. I may as well have been drunk as I had all the effects of it while playing, without having touched a drop!
You think that’s bad? Well, you’d be shocked to learn that the game even has to load when you pick up a gun! Yes! The game has to LOAD, actually pausing the action on screen, while you pick up a gun and equip it. I can’t even remember games doing that on the Playstation 1, let alone the Wii!
The dated concepts and technology powering this game just sadden me when you can see how desperately it is straining to keep itself current and fresh.
Hear me crackle
The sound is equally diabolical. The voice effects are scratchy and the gun fire sounds like something off a (original) Goldeneye era game. Despite the fact they say the game pushes the Wii, I really challenged myself over this point, as I know I’ve seen and heard games a lot better than this on Wii. Not forgetting half the Nintendo line-up is a far cry from this, I’ve even seen ports of games not originally designed for Wii look better. I think someone was trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
The soundtrack isn’t much to write home about either. It’s been designed well enough to fit the environments you find yourself in, but like the rest of the sound, it’s grainy and of a poor quality. It’s certainly not the Wii’s finest musical hour…
Me and Friends
The online portion of the game, however, is really quite solid. Granted, there are other FPS games to consider on Wii such as Goldeneye, Red Steel 2 and the ports of the Call of Duty series. But Conduit 2 does offer some compelling replayability. You can unlock achievements as you play, both online and off, and there is a credit system which enables you to purchase upgrades to use in battle. Credits are earned by scanning conspiracy items in the campaign. You can also customise your loadouts and the guns you bring into battle. Naturally, playing online with other people, using the Wii remote to go to battle is definitely a challenge and adds a new spin to online multi-player. But once you get the hang of it, it can actually be quite addictive and enticing to play. There’s also the much talked about local co-op, which enables you to play competitively or co-operatively with your friends via splitscreen. Also worth a mention is the Invasion mode, a Horde style game type that sees you and a friend fight waves and waves of enemies together. Although, if you don’t have a friend, you can just play this solo. Multi-player is where you’ll get bang for your buck and there’s definitely enough to keep you interested here.
Lastly
Conduit 2 did make me nauseous after my first playthrough and that is something to be mindful of. It does really play with your head and bring with this revolutionary design, a dizzy, unsettling feeling.
Conduit 2 doesn’t look great, it doesn’t sound great and the story isn’t even that great. But when experienced on Single Player, played locally in a co-op or competitive environment, or even online, the game does come into its own. If you can get past these horrendous pitfalls, Conduit 2 is actually a good game. Seriously, I enjoyed it. Metroid Prime 3 is still the best place to experience First Person Shooter action on Wii, but Conduit 2 is a great effort and really goes to show you how far development has come from Red Steel 1 to now. Conduit 2 has proved that Motion Control can work with an FPS game and actually produce something pretty damn good!
Who knew?
The Good
Proof motion control works in an FPS Game. Online is extensive and works quite well. Diversity in terrain stops this being stagnant.
The Bad
Appalling graphics. Appalling sound. Half-assed plot.
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