Hi, yes, it’s me again. No, I’m not done writing. Shut up, you know you like it. One of the things I was hoping to get from E3 was a game I didn’t come in expecting to care about, which would steal my heart through a concerted blend of rep friendliness and addictive gameplay. My wish came true right as I was heading for the door with “Conduit 2.” I’ve gone from dismissive and apathetic about this game to a full-on advocate, and it only took them twenty minutes of floor time. Now the original “Conduit” was successful enough, I guess, but for the most part it felt to me like it was written off as the Wii’s paltry answer to the bevy of FPSes available on the competing systems. Not entirely untrue. The excitement leading up to its release was significant, but once it actually got out into the world, I felt a sort of sagging sensation from many. I heard something about “friend codes” and decided that the Nintendo didn’t take online gaming seriously enough for me to invest in the thing. So, quite naturally, I paid very little mind when I heard “Conduit 2” was coming out, and passed by their booth several times without comment.
Soon, however, it was the last day of E3, and in my sentimental state, I was desperate to hang onto anything to prolong the experience. I wandered over to High Voltage’s display and picked up a controller. My first pleasant surprise was that the actual development team was on site, playing the game and glad-handing potential customers. After a sea of hired guns and PR reps, it was really nice to talk to real designers about their work. Oscar Bustamante, an environmental artist, got me started in a multiplayer match. He had me up and running on the controls in a matter of moments, and things were looking up, but he lamented my fate when the first gun I deployed with was the Widowmaker Turret. “Oh no, that’s not a good demo gun,” he sighed. I don’t know if this got to my pride or what, but I became convinced I would make this thing work. I ran up to a nearby enemy, deployed it, and started pressing buttons. Oscar helpfully explained that all I needed to do was keep my sights on a target, and the turret would handle the rest. He wasn’t kidding; I bobbed and weaved like an idiot in front of my aggressor, never so much as touching the trigger of my gun. The other player was understandably confused, especially since he was taking massive waves of damage (from the turret gun, which was positioned behind him) from a guy who wasn’t opening fire. He dropped like a pile of bricks and I scored my first kill. “All right, there you go!” Oscar cheered. He then instructed me to take manual control of the turret, and I used this functionality to snipe a few more bogies while hiding in the bushes a few feet away. This may be my favorite turret gun in a videogame yet. What a ride.
Oscar then gave me the run-down on “Conduit 2’s” intricate load-out system. As you progress through single or multiplayer, you earn cash which can be spent on unlocking new weapons, gear, and special abilities, all of which can be swapped out in seemingly infinite combinations before each respawn. “We used to set what guns were in each level,” Oscar explained, “But we’ve done away with that. Now, you pretty much load out with whatever you want.” He wasn’t kidding, the possibilities are literally overwhelming: there’s a primary and secondary weapon slot, three or four bonus abilities, grenades, armor, etc. The game is also open-ended, it doesn’t try to force you down into “medic” or “stealth” or whatever else. If you want to play it quiet, you can go through and tailor your own ninja class to your liking.
The aiming is really handled masterfully. A lock-on system gets you facing in the right area, but the final killshot is yours to line up and take. The guns feel good, and their design is positively delightful. I was really reminded of “Timesplitters 2” and “Perfect Dark” here, in that the weapon design was more high-concept, high style. It took me back to when each new weapon was more outlandish and incredible than the last, and that’s a welcome change in a sea of shotguns and automatic rifles. These things have personality, and wielding them is crazy fun. My personal favorite was the Eclipse (I’m pretty sure it was the Eclipse…it was definitely an “E” word): squeeze off a single round and it’s just like any gun, but hold the trigger down…and you cloak, a la “Predator.” This simple design mechanic translates to incredibly fun firefights, especially when two Eclipse-wielding soldiers face off against one another. I’ve seen two other games use cloaking at E3, but this was the only one that got me really excited about it. I can’t believe I never thought of slaving a cloak mechanic to a gun before, but when implemented, it’s just a tremendous success. Love it.
At this point, I was handed off to Bill Sullivan, a lead designer if I remember correctly. With Oscar having covered the basics, Bill fine tuned my skills, and we talked more in depth about where the game was going. He told me that they were including a Firefight-style mode where up to four players could defend themselves against unrelenting waves of monsters. He also said a lot of effort was being poured into the campaign, trying to address concerns from the original. “The design is much more open-ended, there will be multiple paths in some of the levels,” he explained, “It’s also a globe-trotting experience, we go all over the world. We still return to D.C, but we definitely wanted to open up the scope a lot, and we have.” He also introduced me to a beast of a gun whose name I cannot recall. What I do recall was its special function: stick your target with a little grenade-type thing, and every subsequent bullet fired in roughly the same area homes in on the target. I’ve seen this implemented in other games, but again, here it just really clicked right away. Between that, the Widowmaker Turret, and the Eclipse, some of the best-designed weapons I’ve seen in years are available in “Conduit 2.”
I think “Conduit 2” is going to be a gem, and easily the Wii’s best FPS. High Voltage are to be commended for managing to implement so many cutting-edge shooter mechanics onto Nintendo’s significantly less powerful machine. It may be true that you’re never going to make “Modern Warfare 2” run on the Wii, but there is still a unique breed of shooter that is best suited to this platform, and “Conduit 2” nails the mark. High Voltage has taken a lot of great ideas from the most recent shooters, and blended them with the tight, high-speed action of an arcade deathmatch. “Halo” was a success because it realized that a console shooter shouldn’t try to be a PC shooter, and “Conduit 2” is going to succeed for a similar reason. This is a Wii FPS, through and through, and I think it’s going to be a glorious one.
Also, I won every match I played. I freaking killed in that game. Don’t mess with me, I will Eclipse you faster than you can say, “One ugly motherf***er.”
