A competent shooter that is ultimately a victim of hype.
Controls: this is the games strongest point by far. You can customise pretty much everything and you can tell a lot of thought went into it. You can adjust everything from the button layout to the size of the 'bounding box'. You can even decide whether you want to use motion controls or not. After about a minute of tweaking I got the controls I wanted. I also noticed that the game stops your character from moving if you accidentally point away from the sensor bar. If you've played other shooters like Red Steel or Metroid Prime 3 you'll know how much of a problem this can be.
Graphics: Probably the most over hyped aspect of The Conduit it and suffers because of it. The game has some pretty crisp textures (particularly on the guns) but the environments generally look bland. The game would have benefited from a unique art style to support the tech. Instead, I see it as a game that struggles to find its identity visually.
Gameplay: The Conduit is a standard run and gun shooter affair. As with the graphics, it struggles to find its identity here as well and simply 'borrows' ideas from the best shooters around. You have the cover system from Killzone 2, the arrow that points you to your objective from Halo, the 'loner fighting aliens' feel from Half-life... I'm not saying the gameplay is bad but it certainly feels unoriginal. Still, it is a welcome addition to the Wii's game library as shooters have been very scarce on the system.
Story: This is the weakest part of the game. It simply tries too hard to be a clever, convoluted conspiracy but fails because the writing isn't up to scratch. The voice actors did the best with the material but ultimately its a cliched mess.
Online: HVS did quite well with making the online as painless and seamless as possible. They minimized the use of friends codes, Wiii Speak is supported and you have multiple modes to choose from. This is all standard for shooters on other systems, but hardly any games are online on Wii so this is a great showcase for its potential. The only complaint I have is that it can take up to 3 minutes to find players for matches. From what I've played I've hardly experienced any lag at all. Its actually been quite fun.
All in all The Conduit is an average shooter done well. The customised controls make the game feel slicker and more innovative than it actually is and the whole experience is dampened by a lack of identity. It doesn't live up to the hype but if you're like me and just play games to have fun you should definitely pick it up. Who knows.. you might get a laugh or two out of the bad story :)