Review by: Brandon "Tear Mite" Cackowski-Schnell

Here's what I need to be happy when playing a shooter: good controls, good visuals, and enemies that aren't brain dead. If I get that, I'm generally happy. I may not know shooter art, but I know what I like—and I like The Conduit.

First off, the control scheme is brilliant. Every aspect of the controls is customizable from the size of the bounding box to the cursor sensitivity to how quickly you turn around. Best of all, the tweaking is done in game so that you can get immediate feedback on your changes and then alter things accordingly. My only real complaint about the customization options is that it may be too detailed, especially for those not used to playing shooters. Had a few templates shipped with the game it would have saved some time in the menus. Still though, it's a minor complaint and once you get your controls dialed in, you won't touch them again.

Along with control tweaking you can also map any action to any button to come up with a control scheme that works to your liking. The game uses minimal motion controls, a thrust forward of the Wiimote pulls off a melee attack and a throwing motion with the Nunchuck tosses grenades, and they work well however if you don't want any motion controls at all, go ahead and map them to something else. A word of warning though: the game uses every conceivable button on the Wiimote and Nunchuck, so you may have to figure out which actions you don't want to perform at all and then sacrifice them to the motion gods. I stuck with the default controls and had no problem lobbing grenades towards enemies or delivering meaty thwacks to human and alien alike. Punching an alien mite in the mandible while holding the All Seeing Eye (we'll get to that later) became something of a side game for me.

The game puts you in the shoes of Michael Ford, Secret Service agent extraordinaire. Ford recently saved the life of the President and for his efforts gets picked to track down a terrorist cell and obtain the All Seeing Eye (ASE), a floating globe thingy that allows Ford to hack terminals, uncover hidden messages and hidden alien mines, and gain access to cool experimental weapons.