When Halo came out on PC, it had already been out for the XBox for like six months or something. This was the game that brought Microsoft into the console game market--that made the XBox a must-have system of the last generation of consoles (a generation thoroughly dominated by the PlayStation 2). When the PC version came out, someone held a contest pitting PC gamers versus console gamers. Even though the console gamers had a six-month head start on the game, the PC gamers kicked their asses. This is because a hand-held controller will never, never match the control you get from a keyboard and mouse for first-person shooters.
Apropos of nothing, right? We'll get to that in a second.
I've been playing The Conduit lately, the much-anticipated game that was supposed to introduce hardcore gaming to the Wii. Thoughts?
First, let's take a step back and consider the sheer magnitude of the hype around this game. It was announced in, when, 2007? Finally, an exclusive title that was designed for serious gamers--a hardcore first-person-shooter with blood, cursing, the whole 9 yards. It won awards half a year before it was even released. There are hundreds of stills and dozens of videos from it on IGN, all leading up to what was being heralded as a--ahem--game-changer. It finally arrived, on my birthday, no less. And after all this anticipation, what could stand up to expectations?
Let's get a few things out of the way--it's a perfectly good game. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just not revolutionary. It's one of your standard FPS stories, you're a human and you're facing off against aliens--which I prefer, frankly, to the other stock FPS story: the WWII. You're a grizzled secret-service agent (as opposed to a grizzle space marine) trying to save the planet, or country, or president, at any given moment. The Conduit takes the Halo approach to weapon-management and damage control--two weapons, primary and backup, limited but replenishable ammunition, a limited damage bar that recharges if you can get out of trouble quickly, and grenades. The control scheme is based on the Metroid Prime 3 configuration, using the Wiimote as a gun and the Nunchuck for movement.
The controls are fully customizable, which is an awesome, awesome feature that I will never, ever use. Thankfully the defaults are pretty usable, and the addition of a button that makes you do a quick 180-degree turn was much appreciated.
The big new idea for this game is the ASE (short for All-Seeing-Eye). It's the story-driving McGuffin that you obtain early on, and it allows you to hack computers and find invisible doorways and enemies. Its use never exactly feels shoe-horned in, although it doesn't always feel completely organic. Since you can't, for some reason, carry both it and a gun at the same time, trying to kill off regenerating enemies while blowing up invisible mines and not running out of ammo makes for some tense moments.
The story and story-telling are quite good, but not great. Ditto the voice-acting. The game looks good without being so über-realistic that it isn't fun (note to game designers, reality isn't fun, that's why we play games). Power-ups glow so they can be spotted at a distance, and the game is bright and colorful enough that it's easy to spot enemies. The map more or less directs you where to go, and if you get truly lost, the ASE can direct you towards your objectives. There have been a few moments where I was in the room I needed to be in so the ASE was no use as a guide, and it took me a while to sort out what I needed to do before I could advance. Annoying, but hardly crippling.
All in all, it's a perfectly good FPS, which is a little disappointing given expectations--but that's not my complaint about it. Here's where I tie-in to the Halo discussion above: as much as I've said in the past that the Wii is built for FPS's, as much as I still believe that a Wiimote gives you better control than you get from an XBox or PS3 controller for this genre, it still doesn't quite match up to a PC. Maybe it's all the Left 4 Dead I've been playing lately, but once you get immersed in the world of FPS's on PC, it's tough to go back to consoles, no matter how customizable the control scheme.
In fact, I can think of only one reason to put an FPS on a console rather than a PC: local multi-player. This is what made games like Goldeneye on the N64 take off, or even games like the aforementioned Halo. Halo may play better on a PC, but you can't have three buddies over to sit around and duke it out on PC's. So I suppose I would feel better about The Conduit if it had local multi-player support.
But it doesn't. Online only. Lots of online, but online only. And it's fun, but it's online, so you have the occasional lag, plus insurmountable load times. And if you want to play against your friends, they all have to have their own systems, their own games, and you miss out on the cat-calling and face-to-face antics of playing together in the same room. We've sort of gotten away from that, which is too bad.
Mostly because the people that play online are dicks.
]{p