An interesting project with a lot of potential.
In The Conduit, you play as Michael Ford, your average stereotypical hero, complete with a husky voice and a proper dose of badass wit. This sets the tone for the entire game in terms of story, as the alien conspiracy trick has been done many, many times before in both games and movies, and the few characters you'll meet along the way are on par with the protagonist, in that they all are archetypes of some sort. The storytelling and voice acting is decent enough, however, to at least make the story aspect bearable, if not interesting. The cheap cliffhanger at the end of the game will be a genuine disappointment to everyone, however.
Unfortunately, the artistic and level design is on a similar level of mediocrity. While some of the early levels, which take place in locations such as subway stations and airports, may be interesting, the game all too quickly turns into a corridor crawler, with an occasional trip to an equally sterile outside world. The levels themselves are all very linear, and the only puzzling you'll do involves an object called the All-Seeing Eye (ASE), which can be used to uncover various objects which are invisible to the naked eye. Other than that, your sole objective in The Conduit is to get from point A to B (which is not uncommonly a straight line), and shoot all enemies that cross your path.
Luckily, this is where the game excels. With highly customisable Wii controls, The Conduit is THE best controlling FPS on any console to date. The Wiimote is used to aim, with some of its buttons being used to reload or switch your weapons, and the Nunchuck is used to move and crouch. Additionally, thrusting the Wiimote will make you do a melee attack, while you can throw a grenade by flicking the Nunchuck. Everything works perfectly, and the controls can even be customised to a very high degree, with the game allowing players to adjust such aspects as sensitivity, turning speed, running speed, and button mapping. Even the placement and transparency of the HUD can be altered. All of this makes for a highly satisfying experience, and with a few interesting weapons thrown in the mix, the gunplay is so enormously fun that the shooting aspect which stands at the core of the gameplay just never gets old.
Having great controls is not the only promise the developers managed to fulfill, however: technically, this game is one of the more interesting titles. The environments might not be as stunning graphically as some might have hoped, but the character models are highly detailed and just a pleasure to look at. Before you blow their brains out, that is. One can only imagine how this game would look if the environments were as impressive as the characters in terms of visuals, but all in all the whole experience will appealing to the eye of any Wii gamer.
It's too bad that the music isn't quite as interesting. The few tunes included in this game (such as the title track) are interesting, but the score could've used a bit more fringe. The environmental sounds do their job and the voice acting is actually great, but the music doesn't really succeed in making the experience a bit more interesting.
Another problem is the game's length. Even if you're taking it easy, it will not take you more than 5-6 hours to complete the campaign. Due to the pleasant gunplay and controls, the game is replayable, but after the main game's sudden ending, few gamers will be able to resist a sense of emptiness and slight disappointment.
After the campaign you can still go online, which is rewarding though nothing out of the ordinary. Still, Wii owners have little alternatives, so the online shootouts, which feature the same great controls and gunplay as the main game, can prove to be quite a blast (both literally and figuratively), especially considering the level design actually turns out a lot better in multiplayer matches. Things only get better with WiiSpeak support, although it's a shame that it only works if you're playing with friends (which is more the fault of Nintendo's policy than an inherent flaw of the game itself).
In the end, The Conduit is an interesting title, as it is one of the few to showcase absolutely perfect controls. Apart from the controls, however, it does too little to distinguish itself from other shooters, and it's not pleasant to imagine how this game would be without its awesome controls. The lack of variation in artistic design, as well as the linear, straightforward level design, are two of the things that hurt this title most, seeing as they painfully reveal that, beneath the perfect controls, The Conduit is nothing out of the ordinary as an FPS. It's still too much proof-of-concept and too shallow as a gameplay experience, and it still has too many problems to be considered truly great. Apparently High Voltage will be addressing a lot of the complaints in Conduit 2, which will come out for Wii at the end of the year. If they succeed, they might just produce a classic, but with the hype surrounding the first Conduit game in mind, a certain amount of reluctancy is probably advised.