We’ve played The Conduit multiplayer

OTHER NOTES
Levels we played on (like “City Streets”) were not only wide-open, but had a vertical element to them as well. There were enough places to snipe with rockets, as well as get up close with shotguns. Action was fierce and stealing another player’s kill felt wonderful.

Besides your standard capture the flag (called Team Objective here), deathmatches (Free For All) and team deathmatch (Team Reaper), the Bounty Hunter mode was the most fun we had. Each player is assigned a target and must assassinate him/her to get points. Meanwhile, someone is targeting you. Most of the time, multiple people are jockeying for the same kill so there was always this frantic desperation to eliminate someone as quickly as possible.

But how does it look? Weren’t we promised a game that’s as visually impressive as the HD titans on other consoles? Yes we were and no it doesn’t look as good as HD. Don’t get us wrong, The Conduit’s campaign looks great, but the MP has been “optimized” (which is fancy for saying the graphics have been downgraded to make sure the Wii can handle the gameplay). The graphics aren’t anything special, but to be fair, Halo 3 was downgraded for MP action.

And yeah we get it, it’s unfair to compare a 360 game to a Wii game, but how long are we going to operate in a mindset where we have to qualify a statement as “Well, this looks good for a Wii game”? The reality is that we played Crysis on a super computer in 2007, Killzone 2 on the PS3 a few months ago, and in between that time, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament III, Portal, Fallout 3 and more. We can’t erase the visuals we’ve already seen and are accustomed to. However, compared to other Wii games, The Conduit is one of the better looking games. A few GR editors even mentioned that it looked and played like a cleaned-up version of GoldenEye. And considering how fun that game’s MP was, we shouldn’t have to tell you why that’s a favorable comparison.

The Conduit plays to its strengths, of which there are many. We have high hopes for the final version and can’t wait to Super Review the game in June.

May 11, 2009