Conduit 2

Sadly, the best part of this game is the first level. It’s kind of down hill from there on I’m afraid, but not so much that it ruins the whole experience.

The game looks stunning (the water effects in that first level are luscious) and it really pushes the Wii to its limits. The story is lame, though kind of cheesy lame which makes it bad, but enjoyable. It see's you visiting a wide variety of both alien and terrestrial locations.

The game also arms you with a mix of alien and terrestrial weapons. It sounds cool to be using lots of funky alien weaponry to blast your way through Conduit 2's interesting environments, but in truth it's a lot more satisfying firing an semi-automatic from good old fashioned Earth.  

The missions involve you collecting alien spirits, which apparently give you extra powers to defeat the games ultimate bad guy. This would be a good Zeldaish method of progression... Except there was no noticeable evidence of these rewards aiding combat in any way. Imagine getting to the next temple in Zelda and NOT getting a shiny new item to use? Yeah...  

This makes working through the game quite repetitive, so it's a good job it's nice to look at as you'd probably give up well before the ending if it wasn't. 

And if you get to the ending, you'll see it's predictably quite tacky, the incredible looking cut scene feeling far too short with a shoehorned plot device to make way for a possible sequel. 

This review sounds much more harsh than I originally intended, as I actually had fun playing through this game despite it's pitfalls. If you’re willing to take the rough with the smooth then this will make for a fairly enjoyable play, on a format that had a tendency to be ignored. I'd also recomend a Wii classic controller for the most fun. 

6.5/10

(originally posted on Tumblr a long time ago. Edited and reposted in October 2013)