Sega had a really nice setup. Make your way through their booth, play three of their demos (MadWorld, House of the Dead Overkill and The Conduit) and you get a T-shirt. Well… acquired.

The Conduit was the second game I played at the show, considering the possibilities for an obnoxious line. You remember the footage of a giant bug monster, alien thing smashing down on a bridge and you fighting it? That's the demo. It's pretty much find the hive and kill some alien jerks.

Graphically, this thing definitely pushes the Wii. Conduit, from the interface down to the game design, looks a lot like Halo. I'm not trying to use that as a negative or a positive, but the menus are blue, and the environments have the same toning; I mean, this thing feels a lot like Halo. Special attention is paid to the gun you're carrying. It looks nice, feels alright and all of the reloading animations are pretty cool.

The environments look solid as well. Buildings have relative detail, rubble looks good enough to be rubble, and it's a pretty game. It looks better than most other items claiming to push the hardware on the Wii, that's for sure. But it certainly won't blow any minds.

Enemies look fairly rough and jagged. I wasn't able to make out any of the finer details of their faces, arms, or tentacles (see, I don't even know if they had tentacles). They just sort of run and shoot at you as these weird, jagged blobs of enemy. Graphically, they are the big sour point in the demo. But other than that, the game is a hardware and software wonder.

Level design? Yeeeeesh. I walked around not knowing where the hell to go in almost every area I encountered. The graphics are just blurry enough to not be able to make distinctions in shadow and doorways. I cleared areas and just tried to move on. Well, even the guy next to me that rep'd Sega didn't know where to go. It got to the point that I just put my character up against the level's invisible wall and ran while pushing into it… eventually, I found the right doorway. The designers just didn't make the next area obvious enough. It's sort of frustrating. No map with a nice GPS type cursor, no area map at all; it's just objectives and tiny corridors.



The shooting mechanics are, well, all right. They certainly don't feel as good as Prime 3. They don't feel as early as Red Steel either. They sort of sit in the middle. If I had ever played Call of Duty for the Wii, maybe I could give you a better point of reference here. I'll try to explain. Aiming feels fine. Point and shoot. The IR is reactive enough that you won't be cursing or screaming at the screen as you zero in on opponents. It's turning that's weak. You can set up the "Dead Zone" during the game, which basically narrows standing still to a smaller box in the center of the screen. Then you leave that box with your cursor and start to turn. The problem I had was that I couldn't turn fast enough. I'd have the Wii Remote pointing practically off-screen, but no turning.

This is an early build, so maybe they'll have the slop tightened up to make this the game us Wii owners have been dying for. The controls just aren't there yet, in my opinion. Maybe with a bit more time I wouldn't have felt as awkward, but with how long a played and the stage of the build that was available, it just wasn't all that epic. I'm not giving up hope. High Voltage has done amazing things so far. Tighten up the controls and the design and we've got a huge winner on our hands. Let's hope this baby streamlines before coming out. The Conduit could very well be amazing.