The Conduit

I was just about to post about this. The tech-demo video is pretty god-damned amazing. Hopefully the gameplay footage will hold up as well.

It's good to see them trying to appeal to a different crowd, even if the tech demo sent me to sleep.

I'm sure it's all very impressive, but i'm not really one for tech demos and game design geek speak.

Bumping this back up because I got my hands on it today. It's incredible how easy the controls work. I've played FPSes on the Wii before and enjoyed the control the remote affords you but they've never felt as smooth as this one.

And while the graphics are nothing compared to 360/PS3 level, no matter how much they're trying for it (and especially since they can only do 480p), it's easily the best thing you've seen on the Wii.

Impressions- http://chud.com/articles/articles/18...ONS/Page1.html

Me want. Finally, a shooter worth a damn on the Wii.

Thanks for the write up, Alex. Cannot effin wait. 2009 looks like it's going to be a good year for the Wii and it might attract a more...dedicated following than it has been. I'm curious to see how the multiplayer plays out. Nintendo still afraid of randomly putting you in games with people who may possibly swear or call you a 'fag'?

First official trailer- http://chud.com/articles/articles/18...LER/Page1.html

Lots of new footage, lot of different stuff from the announcement trailer.

It supports Wii Speak, so you can definitely hurl obscenities at your leisure... if you have that peripheral, that is.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, aliens, White House, conspiracy? Did I see some Men in Black in there?

I think I just came.

I'm pretty sure Wii Speak will only let you talk to people that you've exchanged Friend Codes with. There's no way Nintendo's going to relax that requirement.

New(ish) trailer, this time detailing a little bit of the story, which sounds like fodder for a Dan Brown novel, but with aliens and awesomeness instead of crazy Tom Hanks hair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlyZd_EW2t4

I am so effin jazzed for this. Is the Wii finding its step in 09? Mayhaps!

Out tomorrow in the US. IGN gave it a 8.6.
Who's getting this? I might wait for a few more reviews first, but it's most-likely a buy.

I feel the need to buy this, solely because good sales would lead to better FPSs in the future on the Wii. If I get before you do, Nexus, I'll report.

I'll be picking it up today or tomorrow, god willing. I suppose I should put my god damn Wii number up here. Very excited for this one!

EDIT: Oh god, Kevin Sorbo is doing some voice acting in this. Now I absolutely have to get this.

Bold Prediction: this game will crash, and crash hard. Its demise will kill the third party FPS/TPS market on the Wii forever.

It will also be considered a cult classic with great controls, and fans will be very upset it didn't sell better.

Astute.

I think you're probably right Overlord. Hell, I'm perplexed on whether it's worth breaking out the Wii solely for this game. It's dusty as hell right now and I don't feel like dealing with that.

It's hard to say, I've actually seen ads on TV for this, unlike pretty much any other third party game on Wii. Maybe that just means it'll crash harder, who knows.

I drove a long-ass way to get this yesterday only to find out there was some shipping problem and none of the stores in the area got it. Horseshit.

I remembered the piss poor treatment Madworld got (fuck, that wasn't even in the god damn Nintendo store on opening day), so I'll wait...a few days. It helps that I'm stuck at work 24/7 and wouldn't have time to play it, too.

For the 3 of you that give a shit, I ended up picking it up at Gamestop and the cover art isn't the "horrid late-80's Capcom dude with gun". Other stores I saw the game at had the gun dude. No idea if it's an isolated incident or what, but this art is much better. Classy, even. *edit- I got the "special edition" somehow. Not sure if they should have charged me more or something, but oh well!

I'll pop back once I've had some time with it.

I bought it last night, too. I pulled off the highway at TRU to kill some time, since traffic was going nowhere (thanks, Braves + Mexican soccer fans).

Turned out, they had the game in stock, and I had a $40 GC in my pocket, so I figured it was fated to be (though I did hesitate and consider ExciteBots, which I want very much).

I got the Capcom dude art, which is pretty terrible. I haven't fired the game up yet, though, because I chose to spend my time hooking up a Saturn that I bought for $15, and playing Virtua Fighter 2. Priorities? I have them straight.

On the bubble about buying this. Its just that I want Ghostbusters and Wii Sports Resort also, and a limited amount of time and money to spend on gaming. I'm curious to hear your impressions....

Alex! We need your guidance!

My poor ass is waiting on a review copy, which apparently is going out either tomorrow or early next week because they got so many requests. Which is a good sign. But I'll let you guys know.

Also, anyone who has it- we should start sharing friend codes (sigh) and maybe get a few matches going.

If I don't go see GHOSTBUSTERS on the big screen in the park tonight, I'll fire it up and see what I think. Currently internetless at home, but hopefully that'll be fixed in a few days, and the DEATHMATCHENING can commence.

I'm not very far in, but seems pretty mediocre so far, the shooting and AI remind me of Escape From Butcher Bay, which isn't a good thing(it was the weakest element of the Riddick games). AI thus far reminds me of Riddick because they usually just run right at you, and you almost always take a hit in order to get a clear shot. The Quantum of Solace Wii game was an awful piece of shit, but it had a nice cover mechanic they should have ripped off.

The Conduit does wonders with the controls and customization, I'll give it that(still no crouch toggle though. grrr). If you have more than one current gen system I'd say pass(or rent), but I have yet to try the online and I'm not too far into the single player game. It's frustrating for me to say that, because I DO want more games like this on the system. Things could change, who knows. If not, Red Steel 2 shows potential.

Sites mentioning it's one of the prettier games on the console are full of shit. It's not straight-up ugly, but awfully generic. Also, the lack of destructible environments is painful. I'm not looking for Red Faction: Guerrilla here, but I can't even shoot out a window* or computer monitor? Weak.

*edit- just found a window I could break. Joy of joys!

Multiplayer is surprisingly good.
Not Call of Duty or Halo good of course, but easily the best on Wii for a shooter(it's not saying much, I know). Far better than stuff like Timesplitters 3 or Project Snowblind from last gen, for instance. People will probably be playing this for a long time to come. Very little lag, and it didn't take long at all to get into a game.

Multiplayer might be the game's saving grace. No split screen though, which is a bummer. I seem to remember hearing it would have it, but oh well. 2-4 players with some bot options would be pretty fun. I guess I'll make a list of people's codes if/when people get this.

The Quick Look over at Giant Bomb really turned me off of this game. Looks like trash.

What the hell is Giant Bomb?

Video game information site with the most personality on the internet, and because of that it's my go to place.

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-the-conduit/17-929/

They're not excited about the controls, or the AI.

Thanks. The AI blows, I'll have no argument about that, but the controls are fantastic. If they can't find a setting they like, something is seriously wrong.

More thoughts: They have a something to work with, but they seem to have a lack of creativity. Playing though the game around a third I saw a ton of missed opportunities. This is a mediocre company(with a decent in-house engine) trying to lead the pack of "hardcore" games on the Wii. Nintendo should have purchased Free Radical, frankly(and Factor 5, for that matter).

I should be playing this a lot next week. (and possibly tonight).
5070-1720-5991

I played maybe an hour last night before bed. It's pretty fun, but yeah, the enemies don't show much initiative in dodging/attacking. I have to agree with the disgraceful lack of destructability. I mean, monitors, at least? COME ON.

I finished the first two missions on the 2nd-easiest difficulty level (there are 5 difficulty levels, I believe), and it told me I was 22% through. That surprised me. Almost a quarter of the way through? Really? Hopefully it takes more than five hours to beat, overall.

Love the scoping mechanism-- just tap down on the d-pad, and zoom in. The grenade throwing seems to work well, too, and the "jab to melee attack" move works well for me (I am the world's worst at pulling off rifle butt attacks with a regular controller).

Hopefully I'll be online with this soon, too. I'd like to get my money's worth.

Okay, Friend Code: 1161-7554-2412

About to try to get my first game with randoms. Will report back!

So how was it? Or have you tired of the game already?

I finished the single player, although I admit to wussing out and lowering the difficulty for one section(you can change it on the fly). On the default difficulty, the super fucking annoying "ghost mines" are a one-hit kill, and it's a pain in the ass to switch to the ASE to disarm them while you're soaking up enemy fire. These mines are everywhere, and disarming them all probably adds another half hour to the total length. It's like the programmers saw an empty area, and were just like, "I know! MORE MINES!". Another one hit kill situation is when enemies hit you with a charge shot from one of the guns(I can't remember the name of the gun), and it's totally random, and annoying when the last checkpoint is a good ways back.

I trudged through it, and overall it's still mediocre(some of the later stages are better). All the time they had, and I was still thinking up cooler shit they could have done with the ASE than the programmers did. I'd probably give it a 6.5/10 based of single-player alone, a 7.5-8 with multiplayer considered. That's a Wii-specific score as far as the competition on the system, mind you. You just can't compare this to the great stuff on the PS3/360. Other than the controls, which blow them away.

I'll add you tonight El Gray.

Their podcast, while popular, could use massive editing and is too "inside" for its own good (their E3 podcasts were a six-hour inside joke) .

As for The Conduit, while I admire Sega trying to appeal to more "hardcore" gamers, I was massively unimpressed when I tried it out at NYCC.

Sorry, I forgot to come back! Online is fun. Almost no technical issues. One round, the match loaded up and I appeared to be stuck in the middle of a wall or something with no way to get out. I eventually hit reset on the machine, as no buttons on the controller were working. Otherwise, though, it's been smooth. No lag issues for me. I have the controls ironed out (though I might need to refine turn speed a bit), and I'm getting better with the rocket launcher (it's pretty unforgiving of self-death by proximity blast). The Pentagon and Streets levels are my favs so far.

Just added Nexus. Gonna go see if I can get a match now.

That's happened to me twice. You would think testing would find stuff like that. It's only happened when I first signed in and found a match. Still, it's a really odd bug.

The rocket matches are really fun. It's the only time I can consistently get kill streaks going.
I'm still not sure if the "bounty hunter" mode works the way it's supposed to or not. The two matches I played of that were just a mess. It's too bad, because the idea is neat and I was really looking forward to it. Maybe I just need to play it on a less open stage.
The friend codes are bullshit. I was playing off and on all night and the codes never "hooked up", or whatever you want to call it. Similarly, I'm still waiting for my friend's Animal Crossing code to go through, which we exchanged months ago.
I wish everyone was taking EA's lead on this, and just bypassing them.

The stuck bug happened to me again last night. Everything was black this time.

I haven't gotten into a round of Bounty Hunter yet-- just Deathmatch stuff. I did get in one game of the football game last weekend, but I didn't like that at all.

It would help if you could manually change teams, or if the computer did some sort of team balancing. It attempts to before the round starts, but if someone drops out, you're SOL for the entire 12-20 minute long match. ALTHOUGH, another guy and I did a damn fine job of holding our own against 4 guys on the Red team last night. They eventually overtook us, but it was cool for a while.

All that said, I was having great fun playing team deathmatch (aka Team Reaper) last night. Still need to learn a few of the weapons better, and pay attention to what kind of grenades I have on hand. You can throw grenades pretty damn FAR, by the way.

I just finished The Conduit's campaign last week, and I was very underwhelmed by it. The later levels were a bit better than the first couple, but overall the single-player game is pretty lackluster.

I have had some fun with the multiplayer though. My favorite match so far was a CTF game using the Explosives weapon set on the Streets map. The map is so small that it kept the action fast and furious the whole time.

Overall, The conduit certainly isn't the "savior" some people hoped it would be, but I have certainly played games that are much worse. I'd say it is an average shooter with average art design dressed in the body of a game with good controls and some fairly impressive tech under the hood. Unfortunately, I think all those fancy shaders and such that they tried to put in were kind of wasted on the bland level design.

So ... how'd this sell? I am not aware of any "boxofficemojo" type site for video games.

NPD will release its monthly sales numbers on Thursday. (Kind of embarrassed that I know that.) If The Conduit made the top ten in software for the month we'll know how many copies it sold in June. There's no other way of knowing sales unless the companies themselves release information, although I think Sega made some positive comments about its reception recently.

Working on my review yet, but yeah, disappointed. The level they showed off to the press was one of the last ones, and not surprisingly, one of the best in the game. The first four or five are pretty mediocre.

Still, multiplayer works great.

The more I think about it, the more it seems like High Voltage made this game in a linear fashion. The final levels are so much better than the first ones. It's almost like they kept learning things along the way, but didn't go back to incorporate them into early levels, choosing to plow forward instead.

Personally, I think the game would have benefitted by skipping every level set in Washington, starting the plot at the last couple levels, and going on from there. The first few levels are really, really bland and all but useless.

Didn't make the top ten in software sales for the month, so it sold less than 192K in June. (Which is actually a pretty high number for #10.)

I'd say the jury's still out, there's room for both "solid" and "bomb" numbers underneath that. But it's not a runaway hit or anything.

Hurm. So it could have sold 191K, or 10K.

I have a crazy feeling it outsold MadWorld.

Have any third party Wii games that weren't party or fit clones even made the top ten?

Tiger Woods sold great last month, 270K.

72,000 copies for Conduit in June, according to Joystiq. Le bombe.

Wii third party FPS/TPS market=has a fork stuck in it