The Conduit Playthrough - Part 1

This is part 1 of my capture of me playing through The Conduit for the Wii. This was recorded directly from my Wii (not the Wii U). I'm playing on guarded difficulty.

Although I played Perfect Dark a ton during the Nintendo 64 era, I didn't really continue on to any other FPS titles after that. Nintendo got rid of Rare early in the GameCube era, which eliminated any possibility of another game like Perfect Dark, and I just didn't see any new shooters that interested me.

One of the biggest problems I had with the genre at this point was the changing control scheme. Although I handled the N64's single analog control scheme decently, I couldn't migrate to the new dual analog setup that was on the new systems like the GameCube and Xbox. I certainly tried, but it quickly became clear that I simply HATED the dual analog control scheme. It was too complex, clunky, and convoluted. So I pretty much gave up on shooters, which wasn't a big deal to me since I had mostly stuck to Goldeneye and Perfect Dark before that.

Then sometime in either 2008 or 2009 I saw a preview for The Conduit in Nintendo Power magazine, and just like that my interest in the FPS genre was reignited after a 9-year hiatus. The screenshots from the game reminded me of Perfect Dark due to the sci-fi settings and weapons, and best of all, the control scheme was no longer an issue! In fact, High Voltage Software was stating that they were offering more control customization than what had been offered in Metroid Prime 3.

Lucky for me, I got to attend E3 2009 (I had attended E3 2001 and 2003 before that), and I got to visit HVS's booth and play The Conduit before it was released. I was instantly hooked. The controls were just awesome, and I was having non-stop fun playing against other E3 attendees. I must have played the game a dozen times while I was there (only the multiplayer mode was available). I even saw one HVS employee running back with a best of show award from IGN. That was interesting to say the least.

After E3 I went and pre-ordered the game from GameStop, which meant that I got the Special Edition at no extra cost. I proceeded to play through the entire campaign in one day and then jump online after that. The campaign was decent, but the online was what really hooked me. The Conduit became my go-to game for multiplayer on the Wii during this time.

After about a year, however, the flaws in the multiplayer mode (glitches, hackers, bunny hopping, overpowered USP45, the voting system) started to get on my nerves. I stopped playing the game a few months before Conduit 2 was released, and after Conduit 2 came out, I only came back to The Conduit on rare occasions.

The campaign in this game is rather straightforward. It's basically just run and gun while waves and waves of enemies bombard you. There's occasional ASE stuff, but it's not all that interesting. Sadly, The Conduit just doesn't compare to earlier shooters like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. There are also questionable design decisions like endlessly spawning enemies and those annoying ghost mines.

For this playthrough I completed the game on the standard difficulty level: guarded. I did this in order to achieve a no-death run. If you increase the difficulty at all, you'll be in for quite a few deaths. The biggest problem is that enemies can kill you instantly with charged shots from weapons like the Strike Rifle, not to mention grenades, and there's almost no way to predict when that will happen. So I tried to keep the difficulty moderately sane. But don't be fooled, this game is still a pain in the ass to complete on this difficulty level without dying. I hope you enjoy the footage.

In this first part I completed Chapters 1 and 2.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and the Wii's component cables. I'm using a Wii Remote and nunchuck.