The Conduit looks sharp, plays however you want it to (needs publisher?)

Rawmeat Cowboy over at GoNintendo got his hands on the Conduit, the ambitious FPS for Wii from the dedicated guys at High Voltage, and he was, to put it succinctly, pretty impressed with what he saw.

To quote a hardcore gamer, “how were the graphics?” Not bad, he said, noting all the little attentions to detail the High Voltage team had put into the Conduit. You want real-time cloud movement in the scope of your sniper sight? You got it.

The controls weren’t even final build yet, but RMC didn’t care. You can map any control to any button. You can also control certain weapons’ shots using the IR pointer. Want to bend a shot mid air to hit an enemy? Go ahead. “For those that loved the controls in Metroid Prime 3 or Medal of Honor: Heroes II, The Conduit takes the best parts from both and one-ups them. It’s exactly the type of thing we wanted to see,” he said.

The one hiccup seemed to be publishers, which isn’t surprising. The big pubs need to sell big budget games to break even these days, and only “safe” titles (see also: Sony press conference) will see the light of day. Here’s hoping E3 works as it was once intended to, and gets these guys the publisher their dedication and passion for the Wii as a development platform deserves.