Pixelnauts.net

You are Michael Ford. Shooting your way through wave after wave of alien invaders you'll eventually uncover one of the most confusing and underdeveloped conspiracy stories ever written. Honestly, by the end of the game I still had no idea what exactly the villain, John Adams (twist!), was after -- or for that matter, why Mr. Ford is in any position to stop him. Nothing is said about him or his motivations. Is he a spy? A super soldier? A cop? Who knows. Frankly, when compared to the characters of The Conduit, Master Chief is a bona fide Hamlet.

The game's setting isn't much better. If we weren't explicitly told that the game takes place in Washington D.C., I'm not sure that anyone would notice. The player is constantly traveling through interchangeable corridors and office buildings that bear no real distinct markings by which to differentiate them. Even the White House, a locale that should at least be obvious let alone interesting, is only recognizable as a government building due to the bizarre amounts of Lincoln and Washington portraits that hang from the walls.

The same mundanity is applied to your arsenal. Most of the weapons you pick up along the way are standard FPS fare: shotgun, pistol, etc. and they of course, have their alien counterparts to accompany them. The problem is, with the exception of the weapons discovered in hidden caches, which are super powered versions of weapons you've already seen, there is no real sense of individuality among them; each one is as good as the next. In fact, the only novel addition that The Conduit has to offer (other than the aforementioned controls) is the addition of the 'All Seeing Eye,' or the ASE. The purpose of this item, a spherical, floating orb that must be equipped in lieu of a weapon, is to scan cryptic messages, unlock hidden weapon caches, and hack computer terminals. After playing around with it for a few minutes however, a question popped into my head that I couldn't sufficiently answer: why on earth does this item exist? From a gameplay perspective, there is frankly no reason why you should need a specific, separately equipped item to do any of these tasks. Not only does equipping it leave you vulnerable to enemy fire, searching around for these secrets is just...boring. At no point during the game did I ever use the ASE when I didn't have to.

If the previous rant has shown you anything its probably that the you know the answer to the question I asked immediately preceding it. That is, this list of grievances (taken from a much longer one) is clearly what my experience with The Conduit has left me with. The Conduit suffers so severely from a complete lack of personality that makes it pretty hard to recommend. If you're a fan of the genre and own multiple systems, I wouldn't bother; If however, you only own a Wii, give it a rent, you may have fun with the online mode, but when you're done you'll find yourself still clamoring for that epic, must have shooter that you've been waiting for.