The Conduit Comments by Oli Welsh

Finally a review that dears to tell the truth. Good job Oli!

Sooooo....a real treat for those expectant core gamers?

Yeah but really, who didnt see this coming?

Not as good as Halo then.

Put my Wii up for sale yesterday. This further proves it was the right thing to do. I'll be sad to miss out on MP Trilogy and... oh wait that's it.

"And yes, pad control on other consoles, no matter how well calibrated, does seem a little clumsy after The Conduit.

The problem lies in what High Voltage asks you to do with these magnificent controls: shoot the same handful of clichéd enemies over and over again with poorly differentiated, unrewarding weapons"

Sounds like already time for hope for a sequel.

Didn't GamesTM give it the same score?

Looks like a stinker and one to avoid :(

I think GamesTM gave Conduit 4/10.

Not much of a surprise there really

Shame, although not surprising. I'll wait for Red Steel 2 instead.

I get the feeling that the only reason the press is being so hard on The Conduit is that it was so well publicised. Having played it I'd have to say it's nothing new, but it is an enjoyable romp and the multiplayer is the best thing on the Wii. 5 out of 10 is well off, some of the crappy party games (which are god awful messes) are only coming in one point worse some places. Saying that I'd only rate it at a 7, but that, at least, seems fair.

"To be fair, I reckon there isn't a writer at EG that wouldn't have given this a 5. It was always going to get a 5. It'd have read pretty much the same if anyone had written it. I'm still having it though, it looks good."

Clearly it's the EG reviewers who'd already decided their opinion about the game before playing it then, rather than yourself.

Dammit..... I really wanted HVS to do well with this game, seeing how much commitment they put towards the wii.

Bit of a shame that.

Sounds like they nailed the controls, but missed everything else. Like lord said, what is needed now is a sequel that fixes all the bad stuff and then drops the tight controls into the middle.

Or... another dev to analyse and pinch the controls for an FPS of their own.

This sort of reminds me of Halo, in that once it showed twin stick FPS controls could be done well, no other dev really had an excuse left for not getting it right (its never stopped them mind).

Any future FPS on the Wii that botches the controls (as so many have done before, CoD I'm looking at you... or was it MoH... who can tell) should be viewed with amplified scorn from now on.

Roll on the sequel

unfortunately it was clear from the moment they revealed that cover art that the art direction was gonna be really, really bad

No surprises here then! If it wasn't for the promise of a new Zelda and SMG2, my Wii would have been sold ages ago

For now it can stay in the attic.

Sorry, when I said it was clear EG would give it a 5, I didn't mean they'd decided in advance. What I meant was EG don't make concessions for system - they review the game itself, and not it's place on Wii. Even the positive reviews all mention it'd have been less a big deal on, say, PS2. I respect EG for that, as someone who owns multiple consoles it's the best way to review games.

I do hope something positive comes out of this, such as High Voltage allowing other devs to use the engine.

This game feels good but plays really badly.

It's poor graphics are uninspired, the controls are good but its so boring they cant save this. I played it & returned it immediately.

The Wii dissapoints me yet again.

Great, another game that makes me wonder why the fuck i spent €280 on my Wii.

i was looking forward to this. i might just wait for red steel 2 now, but it does look alright. i still think the visuals of metroid prime 3 are better though.

@andywilkie35: You don't have an attic.

No, I don't think anyone was expecting Halo 3 / Killzone 2.

However the opportunity presented by better controls is to create faster gameplay that sets it apart from the usual console joypad stuff.

You can then build on this uniqueness to create something original. Which doesn't sound like it happened.

Oh Dear. That's not so good then.

Weirdly though, this review is considerably lower than the selection of reviews at gamerankings.com it's average there is about 75%.Most reviews sitting around 7 or 8 out of 10. Hopefully there isn't some kind of "reviewed on a debug Wii" debacle like the EA Tennis review :P

An average of 75% isn't exactly great but it's certianly within the bounds of making it worth a try if you only have a Wii :D

I can understand the complaints about the story mode, bad AI, repetitive levels, etc
But the review just gives one paragraph about the online multiplayer. Possibly the best thing about the game! Im buying it for the online and I would of liked a bit more information on that.
Anyway, the score is a disappointment but I'm still getting it.

Ouch, poor sods at High Voltage. I hope they can at least license the engine to other studios with better art direction...

Of course we know from Peter Moore that review scores are a bad way of judging Wii games.

@Plewt: This proves that you're wrong to sell your Wii since it's possible to execute this type of game well on the console but more imagination is needed in the design.

@kremus: As far as I understand it you don't need Friend Codes to play online games on the Wii unless you want to play particular people regularly; this is certainly the case with Mario Kart DS.

@varsas

Problem is no such games are actually being developed, just take a look at the release schedule. Except for Metroid Prime Trilogy there is no reason for me to own a Wii for at least another year. I rather wait another year or so then and get WiiHD or whatever they'll call it.

Hahahahahahaaaa.... surprise.

Doesn't look good for the future either. I love Yahtzee's take on the E3 Wii showings, sums it up really. Selling mine during the drought was the best thing I ever did. If I hadn't made a profit on it the whole debacle would have been extremely disappointing.

i honestly dont mean this in an inflammatrory way or anything

but is the wii honestly even as powerful as a gamecube? have you honestly ever actually seen a game that looks better than last generation?

If anyone cares, there's a pair of cheap FPSes on WiiWare that control nicely, Onslaught for singleplayer, Water Warfare for multiplayer, both allowing online play for their modes (coop and competitive, respectively).

I'm a bit undecided on picking up The Conduit, I do find dual analog controls unworkable for most games and clunky for the rest (best use of them was EDF IMO, the large enemies nicely compensated for the controls) and I have a strange reaction towards FPSes in general, getting bored by Half-Life and Bioshock but playing Quake 4 to the end...

People sure seem to love the multiplayer.

I don't understand why Wii needs FPS's PS3/360 style... As I fail to understand why there aren't other stylized games, mainly RPG's or even platformers, like we can see on the DS. Heck, DS even got its own charismatic, tailored just for it, GTA. Wii is a weird system, it could be much more, it does not need to be a PS3/360, it needs to have its own life, and not a "but mini-games" one.

Completely unsurprising, it didn't even look that good in the previews. The hype for this one completely got away from the reality.

This ended up exactly as I thought it would. Sadly.

I'm also pretty sure the other extremely cliche-ridden game they announced will fare exactly the same. These are probably some IT guys who think they can do everything themselves. I'm all for indie devs taking a shot, but you really need people who focus on what kind of (distinct!) experiences you want the game to convey, before actually making it.

Playing and loving Metroid Prime 3 and Madworld at the moment, but what will I play after these games?

Er, I've been seeing a lot of decent reviews on EG for Wii games recently.

But when a 5/10 comes along, some of you just go batshit insane, babbling about how you see this review as way to reinstate the fact that you're so proud of selling your Wii.

Let's say a 7/10 is a good game. If I count the number of Wii games that EG has reviewed THIS YEAR that are 7 or above, there are... [counts]... about 25, including a 10, a 9, and shitloads of 8's and 7's.

While I'm a bit disappointed that the Conduit didn't turn out to be the great game I had hoped, it's still no reason to go around parading about how there are no games on the console. To be frank, the Wii isn't the problem, but you are (and you know who you are), because you're too busy wanking over how presumably 'shit' the console is to buy any of its games.

edit: and for the sake of idiots like Plewt, those 25 games I mentioned don't consist of any VC or round-up reviews.

@DFawkes
Sorry, when I said it was clear EG would give it a 5, I didn't mean they'd decided in advance. What I meant was EG don't make concessions for system - they review the game itself, and not it's place on Wii. Even the positive reviews all mention it'd have been less a big deal on, say, PS2. I respect EG for that, as someone who owns multiple consoles it's the best way to review games.

Indeed, I was going to just about to jump all over you for mentioning that they don't make concessions for the system and how they couldn't do that because games needed to be reviewed against the current crop of titles regardless of platform. If this was given a 9 because it's an excellent Wii shooter and a PC owner bought it based on that score then they'd be right to be a little miffed with EG.

Then I saw that you basically said what I was about to in your follow on sentences. So, you win this time, DFawkes! But I'll be back! ;)

I do hope something positive comes out of this, such as High Voltage allowing other devs to use the engine.

I hope that's the case too, they started out by showing a very impressive demo of their engine and unfortunately their own game sort of lets that down, it all seems terribly generic and shooters on other platforms have moved on.

As for Helbine or Comghast, I like them both but Comghast sounds better to me, Helbine sounds a bit like a cigar for some reason. And I always thought the aliens (humanoid ones) were more like Space Pirates than elites.

@Toonster

Because counting Virtual Console games sure is fair? Please.

@ Plewt

Why isn't it? Please explain.

I'll bet PS3 and 360 owners would point to Battlefield 1943 as an example of why you should the system.

@ Toonster

I agree, basically. particularly as I like my sports games. The Wii arguably has the best football, tennis and golf game of any system, and all 3 have been released in the past few months.

These are, however, largely overlooked by the vast majority on here, I guess they can't say too much when Wii games do get 8s or 9s, but a less than subtle dig at the graphics usually keeps them happy for a while.

@JayScott

I think you're confusing Virtual Console with Wii-Ware.