Since Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, we Nintendo fanboys have fasted unnecessarily from our usual quality content consumption - that is, from mature, thoughtful control implementation in a Wii title.  However, that is precisely what The Conduit aims to dab-a-dollop atop our appetite’s plate here, something worth playing, system controls worth chewing the fat over.  What is known as the upcoming prodigious Wii title and is famous for its non-"kiddie" targeting shall be here soon enough.  We all shall be paying our sighs and hyperventilating shortly thereafter.  The breaths of fresh air will be too tasteful to leave unpilfered.  Countless consumers have offered their own words of Wiisdom as of late and the minutes taken in effect read like a letter of complaint.  "No stagnation without re-compensation!," they say. Many are unsatisfied with the recent trend of haphazard use of the Wii remote, or rather negligible use.  Nintendo has issued games of the standard appeal and none have been entirely happy about the affair.  A moment of truth has been allowed for a time, though; let us pray it is acted upon.  The Conduit is one of the games with the most pretensed outlooks riding upon it - whether fairly or unfairly - and hopefully will deliver on its unrequested polarized fame.  Infamy shan't reign on Wii's titles' parade any longer, we hope.  We shall see with this one.

          So what makes The Conduit a new kid on the block (and not just more plastic produced by lack of game population control)?  Well, simply put, its control scheme.  Besides that it really hasn't pretty pennies of virtue and value to offer the everyday video gamer that has already played a console shooter.  It takes the highly acclaimed Wii remote and capitalizes on its potential.  The biggest contributor to The Conduit’s publicity ventures lies in the game's controller specs’ customization.  You want to map analog sensitivity to that of The Notebook?  Saw III?  Go for it, champ.  The crosshair's sensor box (collisions detected with its perimeter begin rotating the camera) can be squashed and cut to fit, jostled from side to side to accommodate the player's preferences, shrunk and enlarged for more or less cursor aiming while the camera is still fixed, and all kinds of variations that will appease all players.  If one would want to simulate the effect of a PC first-person shooter, the "cursor box" simply needs to be squeezed to the smallest possible size.  Doing so would make the slightest hand movement turn the screen into an aiming kaleidoscope, though.  However, your reproduction of a PC FPS on a console would be successful.  Alongside the many features of control stick, cursor, and scope controllability configs, extensive button mapping is included as well.  "Anything [keyboards] can do it can do better.  It can do anything better than [keyboards]..."  That is the theme of this release and perhaps the sole running mate in its sales campaigning besides simply being a Wii candidate.

          But what is the game actually about besides appeasing the picky?  Well now, kick back in your rocker and waken your ear, lad.  You enter the realm of console hip shooting as a secret service agent going by the name of Mr. Ford.  Who’re you workin’ for, you say?  That’d be a secret government organization by the name of The Trust.  It is handling, personally, a recent alien invasion.  You’re the lucky agent they’ve called to solve the mystery behind the phenomenon.  The game itself borrows from both Halo and Perfect Dark in its presentation; aliens bouncing ‘pon bullets of foreign origin is integrated into a secret agent play style that also sports weaponry a bit closer to home.  Gameplay itself skates by like butter on ice with hiccup-less progression, pothole-free run speed, and delivers dandily on professional, triple-bladed, soft-shave smoothness standards.  A blip in the gameplay runtime is a mythical creature at worst.  However, this supplements the game’s experience not heavily enough to outbalance a glaring feature that blinds with blatancy – how generic of a facelift this to-be-shipped title has been given.  The player won’t be awed by innovative sidearm designs, monolithic displays of outlandish, extra-terrestrial genius, an art direction that isn’t motley or immature, or mechanics opening eyes to console potential.  What will be found is a filler of the typical alien invasion first-person shooter stereotype.  It headlines with customizable control blueprinting alone, it seems.  This may not prove unsatisfactory, however, for neither a claim to history books nor vow-riddled worship appears begged for by the release.  The title looks to draft the humble, “good times”-minded folk to its fan base.  Whoever said a spot of inconsequential “bulletry” and preferential “buttonry” can’t suffice?

          So needless to say, nothing new other than control personalization catering really will ship with the price tag this time.  Groundbreaking run-and-guns have already raised the bar rather high… this one simply seems to reach that “You must be this high to ride” limit without overtaking expectations.  True, it boasts of some of the finest controls dated.  True, this is precisely the sort of technical implementation Nintendo fans have been waiting ever since the Wii’s release.  True, it stole the Wii Best of E3 Award of 2008.  But also true, everything it has to offer has been dined upon previously… and consumers prefer varied diets.  Pick this one up when it comes out for a genuinely enjoyable thrill ride, just don’t expect Half-Life’s Combine to have changed ports or Master Chief’s stumbled-upon cousin marketed.  It will be respectable, I’ll admit.  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though.