Game review: The Conduit 2 - Nintendo Wii

This was a nagging feeling I had when playing Goldeneye last year and once again I found myself thinking the exactly the same thing when I started playing The Conduit 2.

Hell, even my other half must have noticed it, asking me if I was having one of my “retro moments”, when in actual fact I was playing the latest FPS on the Wii.

Still, if there's anything time has taught me, it's that no matter how old a game looks it should not affect how well a it plays. Super Mario Brothers is still great. As is The Secret of Monkey Island. As is Doom and many, many others.

Sadly, the dated presentation is not the major problem with The Conduit 2. It's the tedious motion controls.

They just don't work for me. Whether it was addition of the wii motion plus and the sensitivity levels, I don't know. But no matter which way I amended the settings, I just couldn't get into the swing of it.

With the motion plus, I just found that Agent Ford would stare up at the sky or towards the ground. I ashamed to say it, but it was almost like all my previous knowledge of playing a FPS game was wiped from my memory and I was playing with dual sticks for the first time.

Yep, give me a dual stick controller any day.

Sadly on the classic controller, things are not that much better. Controls were pretty unresponsive and the layout of the classic controller makes FPS gaming on the Wii a somewhat awkward and uncomfortable experience.

As far as the plot goes, it picks up after the events if the first game yet oddly enough the game makes no effort to tell you what on Earth is going on. Basically Agent Ford is hot on the heels of John Adams, following him through a conduit to an oil rig in the Bermuda Triangle.

As things progress, you get the impression that things are a bit more comical this time round. Instead of trying to be an earnest tactical shooter like the Halo series, The Conduit 2 plays out more like a schlocky sci-fi, complete with big monsters and b-movie inspired villains. Not to mention the odd one liner that usually falls flat on the ground, barely raising a smirk let alone a smile.

So cue plenty of running down dull corridors and taking out ineptly trained henchmen who have about as much skill with a weapon as a Star Wars storm trooper.

Now, maybe I'm being a little unfair on The Conduit 2 - despite it's flaws, there were elements of the first game that I quite enjoyed.

For starters, it was the first game on the wii that attempted to bring motion controls to the FPS genre. Now in a market that includes lasts years Goldeneye and several Call of Duty titles, that novelty is gone. So when a game like this comes out, it really needs to excel itself.

But the single player experience just left me feeling "meh". I've seen it all done before and more importantly, I had a better time in the process.

Aside from the single player campaign, The Conduit 2 boasts a multiplayer mode. A welcome feature to those who don't own a 360 (I would say a Playstation 3 too, but at the time of writing PSN still isn't back up and running).

Offering up to 12 players online and 4 players on one console, it's good to see that the split screen market hasn't completely died out.

So, should you get The Conduit 2?

Well, I personally couldn't get to grips with it. The dated visuals and the controls were enough to put me off playing a game like this on the wii for a long time.

But if you enjoyed the first game and you don't mind waving your arms around to a newly released game that already looks dated, The Conduit 2 might float your boat.

Verdict: 6 out of 10

The Good:
Somewhat comical
Good to see a multiplayer mode

The Bad:
Horrid controls
Poor AI