Warning: The Following Review Contains Serious Business.
Reader Discretion is Advised.
The Conduit is a first person shooter from High Voltage Software, known for their acclaimed Hunter: The Reckoning series and Go Diego Go!: Safari Rescue. I'm not even joking, you can look at the Metacritic average yourself. Luckily for us, The Conduit is a game High Voltage actually put effort into and that effort really shows.
In The Conduit you play as Agent Michael Ford, shown in a totally badass 80s/90s-esque box art. Aliens have started taking over Washington, D.C. and it's up to you to stop the aliens and protect the President. I won't spoil anything here, but there are a couple of twists and turns in the story and you will actually be a bit surprised. You start each mission with a quick briefing which is an obvious cover for loading time, but it works nonetheless. They also had this Braid-like methodology of not forcing you to care two shits about story as you can skip briefs as soon as loading is done and lets you go straight into the actual game, you know, like back in the fucking day. If you care so much about story, they've hidden the backstory in various messages sprawled throughout the Single-Player Campaign and give you insight into the world. Even though the ending was a bit sudden, at least we have a guarantee of a sequel.
Voice acting is pretty top-notch. It features Mark Sheppard of Battlestar Galactica fame as Michael Ford, his
father W. Morgan Sheppard who has been in a couple of Trek episodes here and there and the latest Trek movie as John Adams, and Hercules himself Kevin Sorbo as the dude with fire for a logo.In terms of graphics, The Conduit is the one of the best looking games on the Wii, which is saying a lot and not much at the same time. Hopefully this time it'll give 3rd party devs a good kick in the ass but as we all know, it won't. Eric, why not just straight up tell these devs how to make a good looking game on the Wii? Ah yes, that's it. You put a little effort into it. Groundbreaking.
The controls are great. They're very responsive and so extremely customizable that I was generally impressed that now I want to try out Wiisys. EVERYTHI
NG is customizable. Everything. So much that if you wanted to you could waggle the Wii remote to reload and waggle the nunchuk to pause, and it boggles my mind that SEGA couldn't give some of these reviewers copies that actually had an Options menu. That boggles my mind as these fucking fanboys bash the controls. WHAT? WHAT? Just because you got used to dual-analog doesn't mean it's better. Just because you get used to eating shit doesn't make a difference, you're still eating shit. God, they give you the options to change everything, you can even use the control stick to turn and have no Dead Zone if you so wanted to for any reason that is beyond me.The ASE is probably one of the greatest game mechanics ever created. It can hack computers, translate hidden messages into English, find and activate lock switches, reveal and detonate Ghost Mines, and disrupt the shielding of invisible Storm Scarabs. It also does simple Puzzles that many call slapped together, but one bit of info everyone needs to know is that the game won't stop for you to solve a puzzle, plus the prototype weapons hidden with the puzzles are some of the greatest. The best being the HVS45 which will bring back memories of Halo: Combat Evolved if anyone knows what I'm talking about.
Online Multiplayer is a blast and overshadows everything already done on the system and blows others out of the water. You of course still have friend codes, but you can now add Wii Friends by sending them an invite and you can add friends of your friends by sending THEM an invite. It's almost like Myspace or XBOX LIVE in a way. And for those who say friend codes are childish, well fuck you. Nintendo is a games company. They don't have time to babysit people so they put in Friend Codes to prevent lawsuits up the ass whenever some perv talks to little Jimmy funny. Plus, the fact that I can't hear screaming prepubescent boys like in OTHER online games makes it all that much better. There is the occasional glitch and
slight lag, but now you're being picky and every game has that.I'm not going to give this game a score, simply because scores need to die the fuck off as they only cause comparisons between completely different games with different purposes, so I devised this scale:
Fun
Semi-Fun
Meh
Niche
Bad &
Horrible.
This way it can better represent the overall review, a lot better than an arbitrary score. The Conduit is of course Fun. It's filled with plenty of it, and I'm sure the devs also had some fun making it. They worked hard and it shows. However, it's nothing groundbreaking as 99% of FPSes aren't either.
And now, review fail brought to you by Keyboard Cat. Because so many reviews on The Conduit fail in ways unimaginable, I'm going to go through some of them. Keyboard Cat, play them off.
“...but damn, the N64 was two generations ago -- what does it say about the Wii that The Conduit doesn't blow Goldeneye's graphics out of the water the way Halo 3 outshines the original Halo or Killzone 2 completely destroys the original Killzone?” -GamePro Are you serious? Have you even seen Goldeneye? That doesn't even make sense, The Conduit isn't even a Goldeneye sequel to begin with.
“...the Wii's lack of power doesn't explain the boring story that had me tapping the A button as fast as I could during cutscenes. There's some mumbo jumbo about some shadow organization that's plotting to take over the world using aliens or something; I don't know, it didn't make a lot of sense.” -GamePro You can never understand something you skip. >.>
“What I couldn't stand, however, was the use of motion controls; for whatever reason, High Voltage mapped two critical functions -- grenade throwing and melee-to motion controls...” -GamePro Wh...what? If it bothers you so much change the controls! Oh yeah that's right, you're just a fanboy pig who doesn't care to actually tweak controls to your liking. Just fucking wow.
You know what, I quit. I give up on the human race. You can keep fighting about which console is better, I'll be over here playing fucking games and having a life. At least I'll feel good about myself that I didn't waste my time arguing over this. No one cares who wins the Console War, either way IBM, ATI and nVidia are getting paid. No wonder no one takes the Games industry seriously.
9 comments:
Note: This review was intended to be a video review but after countless delays I decided to rework it into a Written Review.
i'm surprised you didn't pull some quotes from giant bomb
but they do get props for recognizing the greatness of punch-out and wii sports resort and for just being generally hilarious
I am surprised you didn't pull quotes from every video game website in existance. However I do disagree about the voice acting. Kevin Sorbo you must show emotion.
I haven't read the entire review, but i just read that the ASE is the greatest game mechanic ever?
I have a question: What games from the fucking stone age have you been playing prior to The Conduit?
I stopped reading proper at "The ASE is probably one of the greatest game mechanics ever created." I think idofriar put it best in his comment. it does absolutely nothing new.
and these comparisons you make to Braid have got to stop. while Braid tied in the story perfectly with the gameplay, The Conduit does not, and as such, calling it "Braid-like" is not fair.
this review is filled with unnecessary swear words that make it look like it's written by a parrot with tourettes, by the way.
Here we go again. Please people, read the ENTIRE review before saying anything. That's like me saying the story is Braid is stupid because I've only read 2 of the first pedastals and skipped the rest. Which is something similar to what you can do in The Conduit. You can skip the chats as soon as loading is done and ALL backstory must be found.
This is a review. Reviews are extended opinions. Please carefully listen/read to my opinions before making false conclusions about them. Also, reviews must judge a game on its own merits. The ASE is a great mechanic and a vital aspect of the game and plot.
I have NO COMMENT to make. The fighting has to constantly stop, if you are guys even want to get noticed. It seems that is what this blogsite is all about now, constant fighting. This is the last thing I would like to see when I got to this blogsite. If this continues, then I see no reason to come to Hear Mii anymore. So please, just get along, and play nice.
I agree with Marley, just get stop the fighting and get a long.
Anyway, I have read the entire review and I must say that you said it better than any other reviewer I know, The Conduit isn't a revolution to the FPS genre, but what game is?
And that you said the game is fun, really got me hooked, because that's all I care about in a game, really. If the game is fun and has no big problems like bad control (which this game can't have since you're able to change them)or any other thing that takes away the enjoyment of the game, I could care less if the graphics are like looking out the window or if the game's story was written by the best writer in the world.
And you're right about the console war, who's going to care when the next generation of consoles comes out?
Yeah, I see some good points here. So go ahead and review the review, but I feel the point of the review is being missed.
Open a thread for the Hear Mii Staff to proof read each other's work. If a point does not make sense then be sure to clean it up. Make sure that all points of the review are backed up some how.
When Assie made the point about the story being like Braid, he meant you can skip it if you don't care, or you can find out more. Assie is not comparing the actual story of the two games.
My say on this game: The Conduit has a gun that screams when you switch to it.
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