The Conduit was an ambitious attempt at a motion-controlled FPS when it came out in 2009. However, it was considered more of a proof-of-concept than a finished product. Two years later, High Voltage is trying again with Conduit 2, but can it stand up to the advances in Wii shooters since the first Conduit was released? Unfortunately not.
The story in Conduit 2 picks up immediately after the first one left off, with Michael Ford chasing John Adams through a conduit in order to stop him from gaining alien power to twist to his own ends. The story is more reminiscent of a bad B-movie than a Wii game, but that doesn’t stop High Voltage from alternately taking the story way too seriously and being campy with it. It never really develops very much beyond the whole “chase down John Adams” premise, though you’ll get to do so in much prettier and diverse environs than in the first game.
The saving grace for the single-player portion of Conduit 2 is the accuracy of control options available to the player. You can play with the classic controller or with the remote and nunchuk. When using the remote and nunchuk, you can also play with the MotionPlus if you’d like. No matter which control scheme you choose, you’ll find it fairly easy to shoot the various aliens and Trust members. If you’re a better shot than me, at least.
The multiplayer in Conduit 2 is a mixed bag. It might have the most diverse array of multiplayer options available on the Wii. It has a maximum of 12 players, and seems to take the most popular modes from the most successful games and throws them all together here. All the standard modes are here: deathmatch, capture the flag and team deathmatch. Added though, are VIP, where one person on each team is designated the VIP and only his death nets your team points; ASE Ball, which is similar to Oddball in Halo, where you gets points the longer you hold the ASE; Bounty Hunter, which takes Assassin Creed: Brotherhood’s multiplayer mode(every player has a target and you only get points for killing that person); and Annexation, where teams try to take and hold a series of control points. Even a nod to Mario Kart is thrown in with Balloon Battle, a mode where each player has three ‘balloons’ and you lose one every time you die. Successfully melee-attacking an opponent steals one of their ‘balloons,’ and the last one with spare balloons is the winner. The one problem with the multiplayer is the people, or lack thereof. It’s sometimes hard to find a match already, and I fear it will only get worse as time goes on.
Graphically, Conduit 2 looks marginally better than The Conduit did, though not good enough to stand out at all amongst the recent releases on the Wii. The sound design isn’t that great either, with bad one-liners, cheesy dialogue and the Duke’s voice actor voicing the main character.
The good news is that Conduit 2 is a better game than the original was. The bad news is that the last two Call of Duty ports and GoldenEye are much better games with much more replay value.
Pros: Fairly accurate controls; plethora of multiplayer options
Cons: Bad graphics; bad sound design; uneven story direction
