Like many other Wii owners that crave more than waggles and minigames from Nintendo’s incredibly successful console, I have been anticipating the release of High Voltage Software’s The Conduit since its announcement in April of last year. First person shooters are a staple of the North American game market and with the announcement of The Conduit, HVS promised to bring one of the most mature gaming experiences, both in terms of content and gameplay, to the Wii’s core gaming crowd that love the genre.

Despite the interesting sci-fi story, the solid voice acting and impressive graphics courtesy of HVS’s Quantum3 engine, my interest in the game lays primarily with multiplayer. As a competition junkie who has been repeatedly let down by the Wii’s multiplayer offerings, I was hoping that the FPS genre would finally come of age in The Conduit and that my disdain for Nintendo’s entire multiplayer system would be lessened by an incredible experience.

After I played the opening level of the campaign to familiarize myself with the controls, I logged onto WiFi and jumped right into some multiplayer matches to get a taste of what the action was like. Playing a few Team Reaper matches (Conduit’s version of Deathmatch), my first impression was that it felt like a true spiritual successor to Perfect Dark on the N64. While we can probably all agree that it would be a crime to compare The Conduit to the atrocious Perfect Dark Zero, the association with the original Perfect Dark is mostly positive.

I believe this nostalgic feeling originated from the default state of the controls, which include a very large “dead zone” that doesn’t allow the player to turn without pointing the wiimote at the outer half of the television. This made me slow to react to threats outside of my line-of-sight and reminded me of the days before dual analog controls for console shooting games. As more precise player, this annoyed me enough to immediately go look at the customizable controls. After tweaking my dead zone to a smaller size, my ability to look at and shoot my target increased significantly and gave me a fighting chance when I was flanked by an attacker.

The default controls also didn’t quite seem to give me everything I wanted at my fingertips, which is a problem that I feel unfortunately permeates every control scheme available to the player. Throwing grenades is tied to a nunchuk movement and attacking my opponent with a melee is activated by thrusting with the wiimote itself. While this seems to be like a natural way to use the Wii’s motion controls, swinging the wiimote can throw off your aim and flicking the nunchuk to toss the grenades isn’t as responsive or accurate as I’d like.

After playing with several different control settings, including mapping those actions to buttons, I ended up deciding that they really were in the best possible place. Moving either of them within easy reach will move crouch, scope, jump or lock-on into places that are not easily assessable and since all four of those are vitally important to success, it was necessary to keep grenades and melee as gestures.

Ultimately the controls are both functional and engaging, but fall shy of perfection if you are looking for complete and natural control of every option in the game. Each player is going to have to decide what tradeoffs he or she is willing to make to find a scheme that is comfortable. While I would prefer not to sacrifice any potentially valuable controls, I believe this is a limitation of the controller, not the game. The wiimote just doesn’t have enough easily accessible buttons to accommodate a shooter of this depth. I have to give props to HVS for giving the player almost complete customization of the controls to mitigate the problems presented by the hardware.

Another reason The Conduit evokes feelings of Perfect Dark are the visuals. Rare’s N64 offering pushed that console’s power to the limit and included lots of combat in dimly lit corridors, generic weapon facilities and office buildings. The Conduit is similar in approach. Of the seven maps available for multiplayer, only two include an outdoor setting. It would be unfair to say that these levels are “all corridors” as some reviewers have suggested, but there certainly are enough of those that it makes you wish for a little more variety. While HVS did not deliver on the promise of visuals that rival the Xbox 360, they certainly cannot be called “last-gen,” especially the brilliant particle effects.

The good news is that the multiplayer modes are definitely fun and I could tell after just a few rounds that The Conduit would provide a much superior multiplayer experience to just about anything the Wii has to offer. Like the minor issues with controls, I can’t fault HVS for friend codes or the lack of public voice chat during matches. Nintendo still seems to be allergic to anything that resembles the powerful online experiences offered by its competitors. There are even rumors circulating the web that a LAN mode was planned for the game, but that Nintendo put the kibosh on that for reasons unknown. Even if that is not true, it’s certainly believable considering their half-hearted approach to anything that involves communication with other human beings.

Digging a little deeper into The Conduit’s multiplayer menus, I found a fairly robust set of options. There are 13 different modes of play, including variations on capture-the-flag and keep-away (like Halo’s Oddball) centered on the campaign’s All-Seeing-Eye or ASE. Players can connect to random matches, create private games, vote on match options and even join friends currently involved in a battle. Character customization is a nice additional feature, but only includes a handful of models to choose from. The two most wanted features that are sorely lacking is the ability to turn off radar and creating parties that can play ranked games together.

Playing in custom games with friends reveals an even better experience than the random matches. You gain more control over the settings and the option for voice chat with Wii Speak, both of which make the game much more enjoyable. Friends are more likely to agree on settings, allowing you to avoid playing on Streets with Explosives over and over again, which has been a common occurrence during my nightly public matches. Even if not all of your friends have Wii Speak, you are always able to communicate using a free service like Skype, bringing trash talk and teamwork to your matches.

The Conduit includes a nice selection of weapons that layer the combat with interesting options and open up a variety of tactics for dominating an opponent. These weapons will also feel very familiar if you have ever played Halo or a similar sci-fi shooting game. There are standard human weapons like a rifle, shotgun, and rocket launcher, as well as a collection of high-tech and alien weaponry to choose from. My personal favorites are the Strike Rifle (similar to Halo’s carbine), the TPC Launcher (think Unreal Tournament’s Flak Cannon with sparkles!) and the trusty human rifle called the SCAR. The most popular weapon sets online seem to be Near/Far, which gives you a rifle and shotgun on spawn, Human, which completely excludes the alien weaponry, and Explosives. While there are clearly some “overpowered” weapons out there that can throw off the results of Free For All matches, nearly every weapon set feels well-balanced for team play.

Altogether the competitive experience with The Conduit is rewarding. It takes dexterity and skill to outshoot your opponents and there is a clear distinction between players that are good and those that are not. Considering Nintendo’s more casual approach to gaming, they may not look too favorably on this. There are no Blue Shells in the game to punish you for being talented. For the core gaming audience however, this is a very positive feature. There is also an apparent learning curve to utilizing the controls well (don’t forget to lock on!), learning the levels and mastering how to best attack with the weapons at hand. Players have even uncovered a few weapon tricks that are reminiscent of those found in Halo.

That is not to say that the experience is perfect for competitive gamers looking for a challenge. The level design includes lots of small doorways and windows, cluttered geometry like boxes or doors that serve no purpose other than to get in your way and yes, narrow corridors. Combined with the inability to turn off radar, the pace of the game often gets choked or becomes completely blistering and haphazard. This results in an uneven experience, depending greatly on the talent of the players involved. I cannot say how the competitive aspects of the game will develop as players continue to learn and improve, but at least for now I can overlook these problems for the sake of having a good time playing online.

Now that I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the game, my initial Perfect Dark impression has faded and been replaced with another one. The Conduit feels not like the spiritual successor to another game, but an apology to core gamers that own a Wii. I mean “apology” in two senses of the word. It is a plea for forgiveness for the lackluster multiplayer experience Nintendo has offered up thus far (even if it is Sega, not Nintendo that is sending the “I’m sorry.”) and a justification of the system as something that core gamers can enjoy. The Wii does not just have to be about gimmicks and playing games with your mom. It is a gaming platform that can deliver a deep and compelling experience if a talented development team is willing to put in the effort.

I haven’t found myself recommending many Wii games recently, but I have to recommend it to fans of the FPS genre. Not only are you likely to enjoy it, but you will also be supporting a studio that is giving core gamers something to be excited about on the Wii. The only truly unforgivable sin High Voltage Software committed in the multiplayer modes was to exclude the ability to turn off radar, but virtually every other part of the title is well polished and engaging. If you are looking for an enjoyable multiplayer experience and want to see more publishers putting this kind of content on the Wii, then consider The Conduit a $50 investment worth making.

Review written by 4cr reader Jason Rice. Whatever you do, don’t challenge Jason to a game of Smash Bros. He got his start in the industry as a writer and broadcaster covering the world of professional gaming. As a result of long hours training with pro players, he has tempered his left brain into a powerful gaming weapon. His right brain remains possessed by his inner 8-year-old Nintendo fanboy. Jason is now a video game producer living in North Carolina, but still loves to write about games during his free time. To argue with him, send an email to jasonthinks [at] gmail [dot] com. He also accepts paypal. You know, for science.