With The Conduit out of the way and a couple more Wii projects being polished off, High Voltage Software is now ready to make the leap into the "next-generation." They've signed an agreement with developer Terminal Reality that grants them a lifetime license for the Infernal Engine, which was the driving force behind the extremely well-received Ghostbusters: The Videogame on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Joe Kreiner, VP Sales and Marketing at Terminal Reality, neatly dismisses the Wii as a current generation platform.

"With more than 75 titles shipped, High Voltage Software has a proven track record of developing quality products on all of the current platforms. Through the use of the Infernal Engine technologies, they are now able to extend that remarkable track record into the next-generation platforms."

Poor Wii. Still, considering how painful it was to read reviews for The Conduit, perhaps moving to a new platform is in order.

But the Wii-exclusive first-person shooter hopes to win gamers over not with its plot and known voice talent, but its nuanced controls and solid multiplayer gaming. With the ability to tweak every control in the game, from HUD layout to motion controls, High Voltage Software seems to be going out of its way to try and appease an audience sometimes hard to please on the Nintendo console.

But can even the voice talent, sci-fi plot and solid controls help turn a core game into a mainstream success on the Wii?

Loved
Tight Controls: Even without messing around with the settings, The Conduit has responsive, tight controls for a point-and-aim shooter. Players use the nunchuk to move around the game while aiming and firing off shots with the Wii Remote. The buttons on the two controllers let you jump, duck, spin around, swap weapons and grenade types on the fly and reload. Stabbing toward the screen with the remote lets you pull off a melee attack and swinging the nunchuk lets you toss a grenade.

Control Customization: While the presets for The Conduits controls are fairly good, the ability to change just about everything in the game's controls means you can make the game play like you want to. After beating the campaign, for instance, I went in and shrunk the Wii Remote's dead zone down to the size of a largish postage stamp. Moving outside of the dead zone moves the camera. Making the dead zone that small meant that the game felt and played like I was using a mouse to aim and shoot and gave me a sizable advantage over gamers who hadn't tweaked in multiplayer matches. You can also change sensitivity, the location of everything on the HUD, what the game does when the remote stops pointing off the screen and the button mapping.

Weapons: The Conduit has more than a dozen weapons and three types of grenades. The weapons are broken down into three categories: conventional human guns, high-tech Trust guns and alien guns. The weapons all act differently enough to give the game, and better still the multiplayer matches, a lot of variety. Some guns even detect when you twist the remote, allowing you to tweak the spread of multishot weapons.

The ASE: One of the only interesting twists that The Conduit brings to the first-person shooter genre is the inclusion of the alien All Seeing Eye. The floating ball can detect items in a hidden phase state and pull them into the physical world. Unfortunately, that means putting your gun away for a few minutes as you sweep an area and then use the ASE to pull it into the world. It's a nice twist that breaks the monotony of running and gunning.

Interesting Level Design: While much of The Conduit's single player campaign is a bit monotonous, the levels you have to fight your way through offer up a pretty broad spectrum of settings and maps. The game has you working your way through the White House, the Pentagon, down city streets and inside bunkers. It's a nice reminder that not all shooters have to take place on a battlefield.

Multiplayer Matches: The Conduit's multiplayer matches are surprisingly fun to play. While the game only includes three modes of play, each mode can be tweaked with a variety of rule sets that change the maps, the weapons and basic rules of the game. Add to that the inclusion of voice chat support through the Wii Speak peripheral and the variety of weapons and you've got yourself a fairly robust Wii shooter.

Hated
Background Graphics: While The Conduit's front-and-center graphics are fairly impressive, the little stuff, the backdrops, the decals, have some major issues and go a long way to undermine the game's overall visuals. Looking through windows in buildings net you flat backdrops that look like cardboard cut-outs. Blaster burns from weapons sometimes float in midair. The horizon for some settings is often blurry, and uninspired.

Blundering Enemies: The enemy artificial intelligence, the heart of any single-player experience in a shooter, is tragically flawed. Enemy aliens and humans occasionally get stuck behind things, continue to fire despite having no clear line of fire, and respond to obvious triggers in the game, allowing you to systematically clear a room with careful footwork.

Voice Acting: With the likes of Kevin Sorbo (Hercules, Andromeda), William Morgan Sheppard and Mark Sheppard doing voice work for the game, you'd think it would be, at least, a fun listen. You'd be wrong. The trite dialog is made worse, not better, when this trio get their voices on it.

Plot: Conspiracy theories are often not the best fodder for video games. Generic conspiracy theories are even worse. While the plot is pretty straightforward, it would be easy to get confused searching for some substance in the dialog.

Despite its shortcomings, I was pleasantly surprised to find The Conduit to be a solid shooter that offers just enough in its single-player campaign to keep me playing to the end and enough multiplayer support to make me want to stick around after I'm done.

The key moment for me was when I went in and played around with the control settings. Once fine-tuned to my tastes, The Conduit felt nearly as intuitive and precise as a shooter played on a PC.

The Conduit was developed by High Voltage Software and published by Sega for the Wii on June 23. The Teen-rated game retails for $49.99. Played through the entire single-player campaign and a dozen or so matches of online multiplayer matches.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Looks pretty damn good for a Wii title, doesn't it? High Voltage seems to be positioning themselves as the premeir source for more mature games on Nintendo's console, and they've certainly got a good handle on the system's technical specs. If the game play can hold up to the graphics, The Grinder could definitely be one to watch.

High Voltage Software's art director Matt Corso introduced me to their new Wii title The Grinder today by asking me if I remembered Hunter: The Reckoning. I did. Corso worked on the White Wolf roleplaying game based title, and in many ways The Grinder is its spiritual successor. The difference here is that The Grinder is a grindhouse-inspired first-person shooter instead of an isometric third-person affair. It could very well end up being the Nintendo Wii's answer to Left 4 Dead.

Unlike Valve's PC and Xbox 360 survival horror shooter, The Grinder does have a story. It takes place in an alternate reality version of the Southwest United States, where monsters infest the world like insects. Since the government's response to monster outbreaks is saturation bombing, small towns pool their money to hire monster hunters who take care of things in a much more personal manner.

For such an early build, the game certainly looks striking. It uses a modified version of The Conduit's engine, tweaked, polished and overlaid with grindhouse film artifacts. As Matt started playing I immediately noticed the film crackle on the screen, and he promised even more effects would be included later, such as film burning and stuttering, all in the name of giving the game that 70's horror film flair that worked so well in House of the Dead: Overkill. The comparison ends there, however. This game is much prettier than Overkill, running smoothly with hordes of enemies on the screen at once.

Corso's character was armed with a pair of pistols as he approached a dusty Western town rife with rickety buildings. Kicking open a door revealed stylized vampires feasting on the recently dead...yellowish, naked creatures with twisted features reminiscent of the classic movie Nosferatu. Bullets flew, and soon the floor ran with the blood of the undead. He ran upstairs, opened the door, and an NPC stepped out for a conversation.

That's another feature of The Grinder that sets it apart from other co-operative survival horror shooters out today. There is a full story, with colorful NPCs guiding your team as you wade through horror after horror to get the job done.

About that team...as Matt plays, I hear voices. Placeholder voices for teammates that weren't implemented in the demo I watched. They are with you all the time in The Grinder, played by bots in single-player mode or populated by other players in drop-in, drop-out multiplayer. Rather than just four characters with guns, the game promises a variety of different playable characters, including a Japanese female hunter who primarily uses melee attacks, enhanced courtesy of the game's full support for the Wii Motion Plus.

The enemies grow progressively harder as Matt progresses through the level, with hordes of vampires giving way to huge werewolves. One particularly fearsome creature was a large, humanoid stalker character that simply walks slowly towards you, soaking up bullets as if they were water. Your character is much faster than he is, but true to horror film conventions he teleports, so that just when you think you've lost him you turn around and there he is. You don't see him teleport - he's just there.

According to Corso, High Voltage has managed to get 65 creatures on screen at one time with no slowdown, but was still tweaking the balance for multiplayer to make sure players have the smoothest experience possible.

The Grinder is shaping up to be a worthy successor to Hunter: The Reckoning and the answer to Wii owners who want a little Left 4 Dead in their lives. I just hope there are enough of those to make the game worthwhile for High Voltage.

Image Courtesy of IGN, as hotel internet cannot download a 220 meg press kit this week.

No matter how you feel about announcement announcements, there's no way we're going to get the game companies from stopping during this time of the year. E3 is only two weeks away, but High Voltage Software cannot contain themselves any longer, announcing that they will reveal a new original intellectual property at the show.

"I won't say much about our new property until we unveil it at E3," said Eric Nofsinger, Chief Creative Officer of High Voltage Software. "But I can guarantee that we are continuing to push our technology to the absolute limit in order to deliver experiences that are beyond jaw-dropping."

Beyond jaw-dropping? That might be a bit too exciting for my blood. Let's hope they pull that back a bit before the show. I enjoy my jaw. It keeps me from having to eat by smashing my head down onto my plate over and over.

I wish I could say there were a whole bunch of amazing first-person experiences to compare it to on Nintendo's console, but sadly that isn't the case. There are plenty of ports, and Red Steel, but nothing that really stands out as a contender for the definitive experience. If The Conduit shapes up as well as I hope it will, I'd gladly let it wear that crown once it sees release this June.

For better or worse, Wii MotionPlus support has since been dropped from The Conduit, a seemingly curious decision for a first-person shooter. 1UP decided to find out, straight from High Voltage Software, why the Wii game has shunned the Wii Remote add-on.

"When we actually implemented it for the Conduit, it didn't really add anything for our primarily ranged combat," explains High Voltage VP Eric Nofsinger. "We had hoped that it would allow for better off screen IR tracking, but the device seems to lend itself more naturally for hand to hand combat where the player can calibrate in-between bouts."

That's a little bit distressing to potential Wii MotionPlus owners looking forward to more, not less support for the one-to-one motion tracking peripheral. We know that Nintendo's own Wii Sports Resort relies on it, as does the EA Sports Wii lineup and expect more games to support it once, you know, the thing actually comes out.

With Sega planning to ship The Conduit this June, perhaps those rumors of a delay for the MotionPlus accessory started to give the publisher pause.

Why The Conduit Dropped Wii MotionPlus Support [1UP]

New In-Game Screens Provide Glimpse of Top-Down Space Adventure for WiiWare

CHICAGO - Nov. 19, 2008

YUKE’S Company of America today revealed the first set of in-game screenshots and level details for Evasive Space, a new action space adventure for WiiWare™ under development by High Voltage Software. Set to launch this coming January, Evasive Space will blast you off on a space adventure in which you will be piloting Konki from a top-down view through various mazes and environments; creatively using the Wii Remote™’s infrared pointer for control. The new screens offer a look at Acts 1 and 2, out of a total of four Acts, each one featuring a central theme and five scenes of varying objectives.

Act 1: Crystal World
-Scene 1: The Gobo Caverns – Timed run through a cave maze
-Scene 2: The Terradyne Asteroid – Open space play; collect “spacemen” while avoiding the asteroids
-Scene 3: The Pirate Nagumo’s Space Cruiser – Timed run through a ship maze
-Scene 4: The Galdonia Nebula – Open space play with rotating level; collect energy cells while avoiding gas clouds from the sun
-Scene 5: The Gobo Caverns 2 – Timed run through new areas of the caverns with additional upgrades to collect

Act 2: Fire World
-Scene 1: The Rings of Minot IV – Open space play with rotating level; collect energy cells while avoiding asteroids
-Scene 2: The Lava Fields of Ikaku – Timed run through a cave maze
-Scene 3: The Mugavi Belt – Open space play; avoid asteroids while collecting “spacers” and returning them to their ships
-Scene 4: The Lava Fields of Ikaku Part 2 – Timed run through new areas of the caverns while avoiding shooting steam hazards
-Scene 5: Velkor’s Pyroclasitc Ship of Doom – Maze run; collect energy cells and find the exit portal

Stay tuned for screenshots revealing Acts 3 and 4, as well as additional details about the various environments!

Evasive Space has been rated “E” for Everyone with Mild Fantasy Violence by the ESRB and will be downloadable for 1,000 Wii™ Points.

We've contacted Sega reps about the company's plans to publish The Conduit, but have yet to hear back from them. We'll let you know when and if we do.

“From the start of the project our primary goal has been to make the definitive first person shooter for the Wii, and specifically for core gamers. Asking core gamers for their input is just a logical extension of that rationale,” commented Kerry J. Ganofsky, Chief Executive Officer.

To enter you need to come up with a control scheme that uses a standard Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination. Gamers need to include the following functions:

1. Move Forward/Back
2. Strafe Left/Right
3. Jump/Activate
4. Shoot Weapon
5. Target Lock
6. Crouch
7. Reload Weapon
8. Scope/Binocular Mode
9. Switch Between Weapons Carried
10. Switch Between Grenades Carried
11. Pause Menu
12. Swap Between Weapon Carried and Weapon on Ground
13. Equip ASE (All-Seeing-Eye) / Special
14. Aim Reticule/Turn Camera
15. Melee Attack
16. Throw Grenade

Entries also need to suggest Wii motions to trigger actions.

Entries should be sent to Feedback@High-Voltage.com with the subject line of “Conduit Controller Mapping Contest”. Winning entries will be made available for selection through the UI as official controller schemes for The Conduit, with appropriate in-game credit given to their creators.

Contest entries must be received prior to November 14, 2008. Entries using duplicate schemes will be awarded based on whichever was received first. Winners grant permission to High Voltage Software (HVS) to use his/her name for professional and promotional purposes. All entries become the property of HVS and under no conditions does HVS promise any financial or monetary compensation to those who enter.

Also, a Q&A with High Voltage's software development director gives a few more details on the game itself, including:

• Three modes for online play. Offline play is single-player. LAN multiplayer likely. They're trying to get voice chat online.
• Enemies use portals to bring in reinforcements; destroying them will be a key.
• Set in fictional Earth of the near future, the story takes on a dark conspiracy-theory tone that unravels pretty fast after you get sent to investigate an extra-terrestrial encounter. Think the X-Files with stranger weapons.
• Your adversaries are called The Drudge. I battle drudgery every day, lemme tell ya. ...

Hit the jump for the eye candy.

The Conduit Information Center: Interview Qs and As [The Conduit Information Center, thanks Karasu is my Homeboy]

"Deathmatch Authorized," ... "About damn time." Is that a message? Maybe someone's getting a little impatient?

The Conduit: Videos [IGN, thanks reader Mark L.]