Despite having a solid interface for first person shooters, few Wii developers have managed to employ it well in high quality releases. Veteran independent developer High Voltage Studios hopes to change that with their latest title The Conduit, which promises quality first person shooter action, including a fully fledged multiplayer experience and high fidelity visuals thought to be impossible on the Wii. However, the problem is that the difference between what The Conduit promises to be and what it actually delivers is like night and day.

The Conduit puts players in the role of Michael Ford, an agent of the Secret Service. Ford is contacted by John Adams, the leader of a group called The Trust, one of those fairly typical secret societies highly wrapped up in the running of the United States from behind the scenes. The Trust is chasing an artefact called the All Seeing Eye, stolen by a mysterious character named Prometheus (played by Hercules himself, Kevin Sorbo), and Ford is charged with getting it back. Of course, you quickly discover that the Trust is using you to overthrow the US Government and facilitate the invasion of an alien force called the Drudge. Ford joins forces with Prometheus to subvert the Trust’s plans and save the day. The game’s method of storytelling is an orthodox mix of pre-mission briefings and radio chatter. One would think that with the big conspiracy backdrop of the game that the developer would have provided more opportunities for players to discover more about The Conduit’s back-story – the game would have been better for it, and the story wouldn’t have seemed so lightweight in comparison to its theme. Perhaps they might have even delivered a better endgame payoff, too.

By drawing inspiration from other first person shooters on the Wii, High Voltage Software has developed a pretty good control system for The Conduit. Movement is handled by the Nunchuck and the Wii Remote moves the aiming reticule. Sharp forward movements of the Nunchuck and Wii Remote deliver grenade and melee attacks respectively. The beauty of The Conduit’s control system is in its customisability; players can set the character’s run speed, button configurations and the size of the game’s bounding box, which helps if your aiming reticule is getting stuck on the side of the screen. You can even fully customise the HUD if you feel inclined. Some of the default button configurations are questionable, and giving the player full control over altering the control system is a welcome addition.

High Voltage Software set out to make The Conduit one of the most technically impressive games on the Wii. They have managed to get the system to squeeze out a few visual techniques that many thought impossible; bump mapping, motion blur, high quality reflections and many more, all while keeping the frame rate locked at 30 frames per second. From an artistic standpoint, though, The Conduit is pretty disappointing, so many of those nice visual techniques and special effects go to waste. The alien enemies are heavily inspired by the insects of Starship Troopers and Xenomorphs from Aliens, which can’t help but make you groan. Human models and level architecture are quite simple, and the game’s textures just are not up to scratch. Character animation also falls largely short of expectations.

If you are coming into The Conduit expecting any sort of evolution in the first person shooter genre, you are going to be sorely disappointed. The Conduit is first person shooter design by numbers, featuring a fairly stereotypical selection of weapons and enemies, and the two gun/recharging life structure made standard in recent years. It is not such a bad thing in of itself, but perpetuates the feeling that High Voltage Software was more concerned with the technical side of The Conduit than designing something new and fascinating. Some of the weapons are pretty cool, particularly the alien technology you gain in the later stages, but the enemy selection is highly limited. High Voltage Software got the basics right, but you can never shake that feeling that the game could have been better if it tried to be a little more daring in its design. The only really unique part of The Conduit comes in the form of the All Seeing Eye, a small handheld device that can detect traps, certain types of enemies and hidden messages and passageways.

The Conduit’s level design does not help in displacing the feeling that High Voltage Software focused more on fancy tech than game design. The game’s nine levels mainly consist of series of interconnected rooms and passageways with relatively random enemy placement. In several instances, level layouts seem far too repetitive, as though sections have been cut and pasted. There is a distinct lack of intensity in the level design; there are no defining moments in the game’s levels, nothing that’s really exciting or that compels you to go back and replay a particular part of the game. Linearity is inescapable, as there are few opportunities to go off the beaten path, and most secrets are discovered with little effort. A few big set pieces would have gone a long way toward making the game a lot more exciting.

With just nine short levels, the single player portion of The Conduit is over quite quickly. The game is not too challenging on the default difficulty; there are one or two sticking points towards the end of the game where players will be rushed by enemies, but the campaign should be over in around four hours. The game has a self contained achievement system for rewarding players for completing the game on various difficulty levels or reaching some pre-defined kill counts, but the rewards on offer are not exactly inspiring.

The single player side of The Conduit may be a big disappointment, but the multiplayer aspect of the game largely fulfils its promises. Up to 12 players are supported across a variety of modes, from the standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and objective-based modes, to more creative modes where players need to hold the All Seeing Eye the longest or kill a specific target. There are only seven maps, which is a little disappointing, but they are actually well constructed. Players can compete against random opponents or with friends via the friend code system. The online code is actually surprisingly stable given the large reliance on overseas opponents. You can even use the Wii Speak peripheral to communicate with other players, though it’s limited to the six players closest to you.

With The Conduit, High Voltage Software set out to create a technically impressive first person shooter on the Wii that could compete with the big boys on the HD systems. Unfortunately, the final product just does not match up to the dream. Although the game pulls out some cool visual effects thought impossible on the Wii and a great control system, the underlying game is a mix of missed opportunities, derivative designs and unspectacular gameplay. The multiplayer side of the game is surprisingly good, but a small selection of maps is likely to compromise its long term play potential. Had there been more focus on the gameplay design and core concept than the technical side of the game, The Conduit could have been one of the Wii’s better games.