I’ve had some interest in The Conduit for awhile now as I’m a giant first-person shooter junkie. I finally got a chance to play the game this past week at Sega’s offices in San Francisco, and left with mixed feelings.

We actually went to go play the multiplayer a few weeks ago, but due to networking issues, the plans fell through. But hey, Ben did get this interview with Eric Nofsinger on The Conduit.

Go check out that interview, and then hit the break for a look at The Conduit’s multiplayer.

The Conduit (Wii)
Developer: High Voltage
Publisher: Sega
To be released: June 23, 2009

Before jumping online, players can choose their character model and modify the characters colors. There are only four characters to choose from with no differences other than how they look. Players can also modify the look of their HUD, and everything can be rearranged to wherever the players desires. It’s a pretty neat feature, one I wish was available in more games.

Once ready, it’s time to jump online. One thing that really impressed me was what High Voltage has done with the online matchmaking. You have three choices when it comes to matchmaking: Friends, Regional, and Worldwide. Friends will obviously let you play with your friends, regional lets you play with people within your country, and worldwide lets you play with people in other countries. The whole process of getting online to play with others is smooth and simple, as it should be in this day and age.

When a room starts to get populated, the player’s names and ranks will appear in the lobby. All the players in the lobby (a max of 12) will either play whatever the host sets up, or everyone can vote on what weapon set, map, and what type of game they play. Once the timer has reached zero, the game will tally the votes and the winner of each category will be selected for the match.

The first match of the day was Team Objective. The mode was basically Capture the Flag but instead of a flag, it was a glowing orb that each team needed to steal from the enemy and plant back at their own base. I was more concerned with my controls rather than the objective, so I ignored the goal to get acquainted with the controller.

Players move with the analog stick on the nunchuk and aim with the Wii Remote. You’ll shoot with B, jump with A, crouch with C, and auto-lock on with Z. Up on the D-pad performs a quick turn, right cycles between your two weapons, left cycles between the three grenade types and down D zooms. Swinging the Wiimote performs a melee and swinging the Nunchuk throws a grenade.

The controls felt very natural and responsive ... when they would work that is. (There were 12 Wii stations all in the same room competing for Bluetooth supremacy, so a lot of times I lost control of my character for a few seconds.) It's also possible to remap the buttons however you like, so if you would rather have the melee attack associated with the down D-pad button, you can. It’s especially a good idea to remap the melee, as swinging with the Wiimote to melee isn’t such a great idea, since it's also used to look/aim.

There are seven maps total -- all on a small to medium scale -- with multiple levels for most of the maps. Each time I played a round, I had to question all the hype surrounding The Conduit in regards to the graphics. It looks great, but it’s not mind-blowingly awesome as people keep making it out to be. There was a lot of rough edges and some of the environments looked very flat. Compared to other Wii games, yeah, The Conduit is one of the best games I've seen in terms of graphics on the Wii. Its just that I was expecting something more because of all the hype. 

After Team Objective, we tried out Free For All and Bounty Hunter. Bounty Hunter is basically Halo 3’s VIP mode. Only the marked player can be killed to gain a point, and they’ll lose a point for killing the wrong guy. Players will have different marks and you won’t know if you can fight back against an attack until you start getting fired upon.

We saw a good mix of weapons in each match from alien to human weapons. There are fifteen weapons in all, some as simple as an automatic and some that allows you to charge up the gun for a stronger impact. You can also turn your Wiimote to the side and fire gangsta style. It was very fitting firing like a gangsta, as all of the players were named after Presidents of the United States; I was President Hoover.

I really liked the controls of the game. You’ll definitely need to remap some of the commands, but otherwise no major issue there. Visually, the game  (at least multiplayer-wise) wasn’t really impressive. A couple of other annoyances I came across while playing was re-spawning in rooms with enemies right next to the spawn point multiple times and the fact that players can walk through each other.

Overall, I'm really glad what the The Conduit is doing for third-party games on the Wii. Hopefully, we see more support like this on the Wii from other companies. God knows we don't need another casual baby game on the Wii.