E3 '10: Conduit 2

I have a special place in my gaming time for FPS on the Wii. Being primarily a PC gamer, I have only one FPS game I've ever enjoyed on a console controller (GoldenEye, naturally), so I appreciate being able to point at things I want to shoot--it's closer to what I'm accustomed. When I walked through Sega's booth, I happened to see a match of Conduit 2 being played, and decided to jump in as a slightly bewildered player.

Thankfully I have been replaying the Metroids in anticipation of its newest release this August, so was fairly comfortable with using the nunchuk and Wiimote to move around and shoot. It is quite simple.

What took some more play was dealing with the choices of weapons--particularly the powers and perks each weapon had. As Tony Mecca explained to me, they decided to carefully balance the weapons so that while they had perks, they also had negatives of which you needed to be careful. He showed me his favorite gun (I rather enjoyed it as well), that shot some manner of blue laser, and if I held the trigger down, would let me go invisible for a bit. I could not stay invisible too long without the gun freezing, however, which is a similar problem when you shoot too often, as the weapon doesn't reload traditionally.

I had started with a sniper rifle, which was sluggish, and was much less useful for someone who did not know the map or the best vantage points from which to kill people from a distance.

Along with new multiplayer modes, I was told they had hired a writer for this game. While that is no guarantee of a better plot, it certainly stands a chance of faring better with a game that wants to get into conspiracies and aliens. Maybe?

Graphically it was quite fine, and I had no problem distinguishing my enemies in the multiplayer. I only tested the versus, which had a variety of places on the map from which to make certain decisions on how to approach my enemies with my invisi-cold gun.

The only question I have now is whether or not it will conflict with GoldenEye Wii, which will likely have a strong nostalgia factor for many (though if it doesn't have the fantastic Grace Jones as May Day for me to play, I'm not sure I can look at it again).