The guys at High Voltage didn’t just stop at pushing the graphics either. One of the things the Wii has always claimed to be is a bastion of innovative control, and yet most of the FPSs don’t seem to utilize the controller in any new way other than aiming (or letting you turn your hand sideways for no reason like in Red Steel). The guys at High Voltage though have done some thinking and introduced a gun that could only work well on the Wii. The Deatomizer is a Trust energy based gun which shoots out two blasts simultaneously. When one of the blasts hits an object, the other becomes attracted to the object and flies towards it, circling it and hitting anything in its way until it too hits the object. The key here is how it fires. As you charge, the guns reticule splits in two and the points move apart from each other, you can rotate these points around the center of the gun by twisting your wrist. This means you can aim with one point at any angle and hit with both balls making playing around corners and over ledges an entirely different experience. I’m not sure how useful it will be throughout the game but it was hella cool to play around with.

Sadly, not everything lived up to our expectations. The All Seeing Eye (ASE) which sounded like an interesting game mechanic, came off a bit gimmicky in the level we played. After knocking down a secret wall, we were able to shine it on a symbol, triggering a simple turning puzzle that utilized the Wii remote and unlocked a door which led to the Deatomizer. At another point, invisible enemy landmine-like creatures needed to have the eye’s light shined on them to reveal their location. It felt pretty standard as far as special items go. It does sound like the ASE will become a bit more than a fancy flashlight as the game progresses though. Both Eric and Matt stressed that work was still being done on its mechanics and that later in the game players would be forced to use the ASE in more complicated puzzle and battle scenarios involving some more difficult enemies.

We were playing through an early level on easy (embarrassingly, I still died once) and Matt and Eric said that the final game would be more challenging, which we hope is true because once we started playing smarter it got a bit easy to take out enemies. Not that the AI wasn’t intelligent, but they weren’t always making the smartest decisions. Most of the time, a few well placed shots would take one out.

Melee felt solid despite the fact that we didn’t get to land it much thanks to the enemies being too smart to run up to us and get hit in the face with the butt of our gun. Sometimes good AI is just a pain in the ass.

As for multiplayer, the team is still working on it. We asked if Nintendo’s announcement of Wii Speak meant they would be using the group speaker too, but answers on voice chat were still limited to the standard “We’re working on it,” though it seemed like they had known about the possibility. Nintendo had been keeping many of its other plans close to the chest though, as MotionPlus had been as much of a surprise to High Voltage as it was to the rest of us. They said they would definitely be seeing if there was any benefit to reworking the control scheme around MotionPlus, but if the opening level was any indication the game doesn’t really need it.

We’re pretty excited about the game. It isn’t going to blow the FPS market out of the water – this isn’t a Halo killer (if such a thing exists). But it looks like it’s going to prove that the Wii can be a home to high-end, well produced, visually compelling games with adult oriented themes and action. What we can’t tell you yet is whether or not The Conduit will move beyond just being a must-have because it’s the only game in town, and step up to the level of classic FPS action that will make it a truly great game. We’re sure hoping it does.