An Intimate Afternoon With The Conduit
We were extremely delighted by a little hands-on time with “The Conduit” and its multiplayer modes. There is an amount of stigma surrounding the unreleased game because of random screenshots that are suggested to be generic looking, but the multiplayer is an absolute blast to play.
Cory is a jerk and went all Terminator on me. He’s got the T-800 sort of look in the above video. We each took part in a four player match of skill. The released game game will feature up to 12 player online multiplayer with full wiispeak support. (only for friends!) I asked one of the developers whether or not they were using friend codes and was met with the explanation that Nintendo refused to allow them to do anything else. Apparently, EA and their own system was “the only time the exception will be allowed and it will never happen again,” stated High Voltage developer regarding the matter at hand. It’s a shame, but it’s clearly not their fault. He assured me that they have done their best to make the experience as easy as possible, however, including the ability to add friends while in matches (just like in mario kart wii).
“The Conduit” feels like sweet molasses. That sounds horribly insulting because molasses is considered to be a slow moving sort of food, but the phrase contains the exact amount of syllables and inflection so as to adequately convey how thoroughly surprised and pleased I was with it. I’m certainly picking it up after it ships on 6/23 and so should you. I’m actually somewhat mad at Nintendo for not pushing it as much as it deserved during their press conference.
I’m not going to go over how it controls as this has been covered by more masculine and real news sites. Besides, you can customize EVERY BUTTON on the thing so what does it matter? If you can’t find a decent way to control it with the power of your imagination you don’t deserve to be playing games. Even maneuvers accomplished with gestures (grenade throws with nunchuck or melee attacks with wiimote thrusting) can be mapped to buttons instead.
I spent most of my time playing standard deathmatch on the “Streets” map. The level design there was probably the best I’d experienced since “Perfect Dark” on the N64. The level was varied and interesting with lots of intersecting sections, but clearly designed around how “The Conduit” controls, meaning you can duck behind cars in the street or behind window sills and jump through windows in a most intuitive manner as you battle across the depths of existence.
Only had a chance to play with “human weapons” which all felt very good, so you’ll have to get impressions of “alien weapons” from Kevin or Cory (edit from them: “not so good”). Although, I will be trying out the single player demo on either the second or third day of E3 so if none of them speak up I’ll get around to it, but not from a multiplayer context. In the end, none of it matters because what I have seen was already enough to sell me on High Voltage Software’s impressive adventure.