For anyone who doesn't know, The Conduit is a very hyped-up game from developers High Voltage Software and Publisher SEGA. It's a first person shooter that pushes the graphics on the Wii, and has a 12 player online mode. That's really all anyone needs to know.

Sure there's a story (aliens are attacking Washington DC), but it's not exactly new or anything to be excited about. Really, I would say that the story serves only as an excuse to shoot stuff.

This game feels a lot like Rare's Perfect Dark for the N64; which can only be a good thing. A lot of that has to do with the awesome weapon designs that HVS did; the alien weapons are easily my favorite.

Then there's the controls... this game really sets a new industry standard for FPS control on the Wii. You can adjust EVERYTHING and do so in real time. You can make your character turn faster, change the "bounding box," adjust the sensitivity-- pretty much anything. Plus, you can set any button (along with two gestures), to do anything. Other developers have already taken notice of this smart control scheme; Ubisoft's RedSteel 2 team said they plan to implement the same kind of customization.

Finally, the online mode is absolutely fantastic. I didn't experience any lag at all during my play throughs (I also got first a few times when we won >.> ). The respawn time is really quick too, (faster than CoD) and it doesn't take long to set up the match (again, I'm pretty sure it's faster than CoD's process, and a bit more fair when it comes to selecting the rules). In fact, as I played, there were a few points were I thought it felt like Valve's Team Fortress 2. There aren't differences in characters like the Heavy or Scout (though you can customize your character's appearance), but the level layouts and designs are what really showed HVS are clearly TF2 fans.

So, this game is great and if I had WiiSpeak, I bet I'd like it even more. This is one of the few games to support WiiSpeak (though honestly, Nintendo should have just done a headset...). High Voltage Software did a really great job on this game's development. Reviewers can complain about the lack of variety when it comes to enemies in story mode, or the similar sized environments, but the multilayer is what really makes this game.

Since making this game, HVS has announced another Online Multiplayer FPS game exclusively (as of now anyhow) for the Wii. The Grinder is basically Valve's Left 4 Dead on the Wii; players team up with 3 other players and shoot Vampires, Warewolves, and other creepy monsters. The game promises to be just as pretty as the Conduit (perhaps even more so), and actually have even more characters on the screen at once (just a few levels in to the Conduit, you already see quite of lot of enemies on the screen). It's already an instant buy for me.