Gamereactor: The Conduit review

Gamereactor have published a review of High Voltage Software's The Conduit for the Nintendo Wii. These were the closing remarks:

"The Conduit is a game a lot of us have been waiting for, but perhaps for other reasons then other big titles. Nintendo Wii has really needed a nice-looking, action-packed FPS for a long time now, and even if there are some things to remark on, this alien butchering of a title is absolutely worth a closer look."

[ChickeyCantor]

" Yes, it's better-looking than most of the others (realistic) Wii games out there, and it's impressing what the developer has done with the quite sh/tty hardware "

LOL, if developers made use of the hardware from the beginning we would have seen such visuals from the start.
People think HVS is "pushing" the Wii. While in fact they stated The conduit is the "tip of the iceberg", How the hell is that pushing?

Bah few weeks left.

Edit:
Notice how they pretty much bash on particular points, yet recommend it or give a decent score? These Conduit reviews are weird.

[Syronicus]

Tip of the iceberg? What exactly does that mean? Do you feel that the Wii is capable of much more in terms of graphics or in terms of physics or both? What does it mean when they say stuff like that? That the Wii is capable of much more but only in terms of Wii graphics? It would seem to me that producing a game that stands out in terms of story and use of the waggle hardware would fit the Wii better than to think more along the lines of graphics. Let's be honest here, the Wii and amazing graphics are not synonymous with one another and more than likely won't ever be. Just stating my opinion.

[peeps]

well didn't they basically use the gamecube as a base for the wii?

anyway keeping an eye on reviews of this game and sales. why sales?? well if it sells well we may see more developers aim for a more 'hardcore' audience, in which case i may be tempted to get a wii.

[Anon1974]

Question is, is this review going to receive the same backlash?

[3sq]

Nope, only the first one gets it.

[Double Toasted]

You nor I are game devs, and I know this by the way you talk, concerning the Wii and what its capable of. The Wii is officially now going to be looked upon as being able to deliver a certain degree of graphical fidelity. I mean The Conduit looks 10x better than Haze to me and I don't really have to go any further than that, so I'll let everyone think about that for a second.

[Syronicus]

I wouldn't think for two seconds to deceive you into thinking I am a developer but I am a gamer and from what I have seen, the Wii is a touch better than the Game Cube. Now, from that I can say that in the specs of the machine we will see nice looking games but nothing, and I mean nothing in the leagues of Xbox 360 and PS3.

[N4g_null]

Syronicus please look at gladiator AD it has way more effects going on and the grinder will have way more stuff going on too.

darkride66 no one cares about the review I have the game now and it is pretty damn good!

[SpoonyRedMage]

Darkride the complaints ont he other review weren't about the score it was given. It was about the lack of effort and professionalism of the reviewer.

I'm starting to think that no hardware has ever truly been maxed out as if you take the example of the DS, which is comparable to the N64 and PS1 it's already surpassed them graphically and the games keep looking better and better.

[Syronicus]

Not bad but sorry, the pics at the moment of this post look more like God of War II and less like current gen games on the 360 and PS3.

http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii...

In the end, all I am saying is that those developing ont he Wii need to focus on art styles and stories. If they keep the stories great and use unusual art designs, graphics will not be a negative point in these reviews but rather an after thought. The Wii is not known for great graphics but it could be known for great stories and cool new art styles.

[ChickeyCantor]

BAckride,
No one gave a F about the rating.
Problem was how gamepro told his review. Don't tell me he was proffesional? Its one of the worst reviews this gen.

Syro,
What they mean is that the Wii can handle more, even if its just a tad more. Their other 2 games showed they do more than The conduit.
Thing is, why are people claiming its "pushing" the wii while in fact its perhaps meant to do stuff like this from the start?
I think the shovelware thats on the Wii screwed the image big time.

[N4g_null]

Syronicus sorry but I'm playing the game right now. Taking a break to see what is going on here and I have to say it's pretty intense in some parts. The reloading and every thing works great along with the grenades and the zooming. The turn speed is maybe even better than metroid but I have not even customized the controls yet. This is a pretty fun game generic designs... well you will not be worried about the design once you start shooting every one up, the humans even rush you some times and melee you and you get to trade blows really great fun!

Design wise the game actually does shine once you get into it. You can tell they have a few more things to implement but the game is very solid they differently got FPS right and I look forward to more from these guys and I'm sure red steel and any other unannounced FPS will be great impacted by this game.

Syronicus you obviously want an HD like game maybe, but you say they just need certain designs.... after looking thur their concept art I can see they are being conservative with this first game. Yet the air port section is pretty good. What is even better is the online play. Me and my brother have tried it out and it's pretty good.

Oh yeah this game has a great presentation that is not really been show cased either.

[SinnedNogara]

No, Gamereactor actually played the full game.

[Seferoth75]

You guys are wasting your time with Darktroll. It's obvious to any GAMER that the review was piss poor. It had nothing to do with the score. Guy barely played the game. He keeps brining up other games getting that score like it some how proves everyone else wrong. He just cant comprehend the issue. Now switch this review to one for PS3 and have the guy get so many things wrong and he would suddenly see the problem people are seeing now.

Simply because its on a console he hates any hate for the game is justified.

[Rute]

To Syronicus: It's clear that Wii can do better than The Conduit. I mean, look at RE4. It's way above the Conduit level. The graphically greatest FPS of the PS2/Xbox/GCN generation was probably Black and it looked a lot better than Conduit too.*

I don't want to appear as a HVS basher. They gave it their all and that's all I can ask for. However, there are a lot better studios out there when it comes to programming knowledge and artistic talent. The reason why very few of them make games for Wii is because their talent is not best shown when designing games on Wii. That's why they make games for PS3 and Xbox 360.

If some of the craftsmanship-wise superbly talented studios, let's say Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin's Creed) or Capcom (Resident Evil 5), were given a couple of billion dollars and 5 years of developing time for the Wii, they would come up with something that looks great. Now that's not sensible for a telented studio to do, because it would pale in comparison to the greatest looking PS3/X360 games of that time. But it would definitely compete graphically with some of the first games for Xbox 360 and PS3 like Perfect Dark or Resistance: Fall of Man.

*Youtube trailers:
The Conduit (Wii): http://www.youtube.com/watc...
Resident Evil 4 (GCN/Wii): http://www.youtube.com/watc...
Black (Xbox): http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[ChickeyCantor]

" I mean, look at RE4. It's way above the Conduit level."

Yeah sure RE4 looks good, all objects have pretty much the same color.

It doesnt have HDR lightning( and few different types of lightnings), vibrant colors, FULL normal mapping, bump mapping and the list goes on.

RE4 looks good but no its not doing the same amount of stuff on screen as the Conduit.

And looking at those trailers, The conduit handles colors much better and has a much cleaner look to it. So i dont think RE4 is doing it on a higher level.
Lots of games appear good if the color scale is just low.

"But it would definitely compete graphically with some of the first games for Xbox 360 and PS3 like Perfect Dark or Resistance: Fall of Man. "
Kinda contradicting towards your RE4 comment?

[MEsoJD]

you only have a wii right?

[ChickeyCantor]

LOL,
Ignorance.

[Rute]

To Sidar: You said that it's easy to make a game look good when it's almost grey. True, but that doesn't mean a game with irritatingly bright colours should be given compensation if a studio made it look intentionally bad. Nor does it mean that Resident Evil 4 would look bad when the colours are saturated. I've tried bumping up the saturation and it looks still great.

The reason why RE4 looks great is because the designers of the game actually understand how humans perceive colours. In dark, the human eye relies mostly on rod cells, which do not register colours. That's why the world seems to get less saturated when direct light source is shadowed, such as on a cloudy/misty day or at moonlight. The cone cells which work well in bright light pick up colours. That's why we perceive bright lights as saturated. In RE4, the bright lights are correctly saturated and the shades are desaturated. The palettes they use are highly controlled and realistic too.

The designers of The Conduit seem to be less educated about the subjectivity of color perception and the behavior of light in general. The colours of some indoor environments are totally whacky too. As a result the colorscape and the light effects of the game are at places quite unrealistic and unharmonic. When you throw in some generic environment design, you get quite mediocre looking game, which is a shame because the engine is pretty good.

As for The Conduit having more action on-screen than RE4, please try to give some evidence for your claim. I don't recall seeing a single image of The Conduit where the number of enemies on-screen is more than five.

[Grown Folks Talk]

is probably a touch above the original Xbox. It's a matter of what is put into it though. It could have the best gpu/cpu of the 3, but if the devs don't utilize it, it doesn't matter. I've said many times here, a movie doesn't suck because of the theatre (Wii), it sucks because the director (dev) made a crappy movie.

[peeps]

yeh but you could also look at it as... a film director wants to create a masterpiece but is limited by the resources available. instead he creates a pretty good b movie but it's nowhere near what it could have been...

i dont even know if that analogy makes sense :p

[Grown Folks Talk]

I also understand that there are limits on all 3 platforms, but I feel that devs don't really scratch the surface of what could be done. I don't know if they will in the development environment of today. They're rushed too much to meet deadlines instead of being given the time to put forth their best effort.

[sorceror171]

Yeah, a terrible director can make a terrible movie, and a great director can make a great movie... but the budget controls what *kind* of movie you can make.

You can make a good science fiction movie on a budget (e.g. Primer), but you are limited in the kinds of stories you can tell. You can't have major visual effects, you can't have location shots, etc. etc. There are good summer blockbusters and bad summer blockbusters, but there are no *cheap* summer blockbusters.

In this analogy, the Wii's an art-house theater showing art-house movies. Some of them can be very good, and creative, and enjoyable... but nobody's going to mistake them for an 'event' movie. That's only a bad thing if you like blockbusters, though. Not everyone cares about that; look at how well the Wii's sold for proof.

[Grown Folks Talk]

of top end PS3 or 360 games, but it can do a lot better than it has been doing if pushed properly.

[N4g_null]

In the case of HVS they made their own HD camera then made a great input system and then got a solid FPS out the door. It may not be all crazy looking but it is mostly a mix of CS and metroid really. There are so really good designs mixed in there also.

They have the HD shiny down but don't over use it which is good. Really fun game they got here they will make some fans with this game. Every thing feels really good. I just got finish playing a quake 3 all nighter and now I'm playing this and I have to say they even have a 180 turn in this game with is sweet.

Level design is set up for realism but the engine can handle more, no frame drops any where either. This engine along could change the game for the Wii.

[mastiffchild]

Taking the movie metaphor and scissors comments I'd say that most reviewers have fastened on to the wrong thins when thinking aboput The Conduit full stop.

It's like asking Uwe Bolle to remake The Godfather Part Two for a major release then giving him a tenner and five days to make it cos you think he's a crap director-in those parameters it's never going to work, is it? Thing is a few people saw The Conduit at HVS booth at last years E3 in passing and mistook it, from a distance I add, for a 360 game-the press got told that but somehow heard "The Conduit will be a Wii game as good looking as Gears!"-hence the problems with expectation killing reviews.

HVS have said all along that they AIM for gfx like we see on the HD consoles but realise what they're doing as well-and the Wii's limitations. Within this they, rughtly , feel people haven't got anything like what they could out of Wii so far-yet they're expected to be KZ2 looks wise in their very first undependent, non licensed game? In a genre they're also fresh to?

So, compared to a Resistance or Halo3 the game isn't anything amazing to look at-at least the gaps closed a little, no? Plus, the most important thing was to give Wii owners a real FPS experience like we get all the time for PS360-on and offline, and they seem to have done that.

The online works and people play it = A big win for HVS and means the follow up will have more individuality and features. The game couldn't be too odd and original when they want to hook a big market. Most sgooters are generic anyway and for good reason-shooter fans are pretty conservative. Has Halo changed that much over three games? No.

So, like seeing an indie flick by a promising director who doesn't have the financial clout to put every idea into his film we have to look at what was prctical here and how that was executed-plus we mustn't forget just how staid most shooter fans are either.

More than most games the Conduit doesn't live or die by reviews. This one really needs to sell and Wii games(not Nintendo made ones anyway)often sell slower and by word of mouth. If this WORKS it'll do well-if it works and then some it's a bonus and we get to see what they can really do next time out. I really think that expectations within the press(who, remember find fault with EVERY FPS for being "generic" cos shooters just are!)are gonna hurt the reviews-they expect it to look like KZ2, have the story of Half-Life and the fanbase of Halo when no single PS360 game can do those together.

EDIT-@eviltwin below(3)-sorry, you beat me to it but I didn't see your post first fella.

[EvilTwin]

Re: "Question is, is this review going to receive the same backlash?"

No. And not because Gamepro's was first, either. Gamepro is getting crapped on because they deserve it for a stupid review that made stupid claims.

The main docking of points here seems to be for a single-player mode that isn't horribly complex (mostly run and gun with some recycled locales). That seems like a fair complaint.

However, reviewers picking on the length of the single player and the overall storyline IS getting ridiculous.

COD4 had a short single-player mode, but that was apparently OK...'cause it was COD.

Halo's plot wasn't the freakin' Godfather (it doesn't even hold a candle to Bioshock, for Christ's sake), but that was OK because people now see it through rose-tinted glasses -- mainly because they remember playing online more.

[And most FPS that have been released this gen -- and last gen, too -- have had pretty damn generic stories, for that matter.]

I'm surprised more reviewers aren't giving more points to the controls. If 360/PS3 games live or die by great graphics, Wii games live or die by great controls. And this game has 'em. The level of customization puts it on par with a mouse/keyboard setup. It's the best-controlling console FPS currently available. If Tiger Woods for Wii is getting props for controlling so great (while having dated graphics), why doesn't the same hold true for the Conduit? It's a strange double standard.

[Gr81]

Wonderful post. And hits the nail on the head. Have a bubble.

[N4g_null]

I'm playing this game right now and I have to say it is the standard for console FPS controls even beating out metroid. The motion controls are even way better. Seriously a surprising game from what I played of an early build. I would have to give this game a 8.9

The controls are what are the most addictive.
The graphics have that extra polish we all wanted.
The concept art shows how far they wanted to go but it's obvious they have to decide on conservative designs but are truly capable of making a halo or better game.
You will be tested a few times in this game and really online is where this game shines.

As for the nay sayers well maybe this isn't a game for you. I mean real FPS fans are excited for this game and we are loving it. It's almost like playing after burner or a really tight controlling arcade game yet in 3d. Part of me believe they went conservative because of all the COD owners, that did not buy resistance and other sci fi games.

Who knows? We have a solid game right here right now though. The game will give you plenty of time to get use to every thing before they through you under the bus. online is quite deadly.... gernades are a flick away too!

[Gr81]

Better Controls that Metroid, and customizable to a T. Can't beat that. I'm buying the game on my way home from work. 8.9 seems like a hell of a score, Can't wait to dig in. I'll send you my FC when I can, look forward to tearing it up online!

[N4g_null]

You will beat tweaking for at least an hour depending on how good you are and how you like to play. Hell you can even use the analog to turn with now! Seriously I can see the skill level going up up up right now.

At first I wanted it to move faster till I realize oh hell the melee attack would plow through every one. The weapon selection is great also. I finally started getting killing sprees a few hours ago with the sniper rifle!

You get to make up your name also... so there really is no need for friend codes at all. You get online ranking also based on the conduit symbol. Man I'm stuck on team death matches and ASE captures right now very addictive if you are competitive.

I don't think I'll be playing my other FPS for a week or two. This game is going to take more practice to get as good as I am at other FPS. It's pretty precise and you have to pay attention also. Yet a few weeks from now I'm expecting people to be quake good because they are already showing signs of it.

Yeah 8.9 would be my score I play a lot of true hardcore FPS and the set up is made for me so just understand you will need to set the game up to your play style.

I had a little lag but the game avgs movement in if that happens so it worked out good. I'm currently playing on wifi with two wii running off of it and we are having a blast. I only had one connection problem but that was from my wifi. The game is good at kicking laggers also. I guess I'm going to have to buy Wii speak now.

The online level are actually pretty fun screen shots do not do this game justice though. HVS has carved their own little part out of FPS with this game.

Are you going to use arius as your user name? The game uses the name you make when you start a new file... Most of the games I've played have not had any open slots either. Which is really cool!

[Gr81]

Yeah, I'll probably use Arius Dion..or "TheGreatOne" depending on how many chumps I send to meet their maker ;). I was really wanting a game to test my Prime 3 skills against.

I'm interested in "bounty hunter" mode online. I'll PM you once I've got the game and played thru a few levels.

[MetalGearBear]

PS3/XBOX360>WII

[Perjoss]

you forgot to add PC there at the beginning, and ps2 before wii.

[ico92]

"Yes, it's better-looking than most of the others (realistic) Wii games out there, and it's impressing what the developer has done with the quite sh/tty hardware "

wow that was highly un professional what an insult

[FinalomegaS]

Eb called me yesterday to pick up my copy, unfortunately my phone battery was dead and didn't hear the voice mail until after 10PM, and today is a holiday here so their closed... Jeez

Looking forward to getting this,

[ambientFLIER]

Wasn't there an article before that explained the Wii's specs and said that it was something like 4 times more powerful than the original xbox? Well, this game certainly looks like it could be on the first xbox. It looks good, but not as good as it was hyped to be.