The Conduit to feature LAN play, publisher to be named “in the coming month”

Tech-focused Web site Ars Technica went hands-on with The Conduit, High Voltage Software’s hotly anticipated Wii shooter, at PAX and came away with glowing impressions, as well as news for Wii owners who might be skeptical the publisher-less game will be released.

“We’re not ready to officially announce anything,” said High Voltage’s Rob Nicholls. “But things are in the works. Look for the word in the coming month.”

As if unrivaled Wii visuals, an extensive single-player campaign, online and offline multiplayer modes and fully customizable controls weren’t adequate selling points for The Conduit, Nicholls also revealed High Voltage is “working with Nintendo” to include LAN play.

As has become the standard for encounters with The Conduit, Ars Technica bestowed little but enthusiastic praise upon the game:

The Conduit is already easily the best looking Wii game, at least from a technical level. It’s hard to ignore the stellar particle effects, real-time lighting, fluid animation, fast-paced action, and screen-filling boss. While some of the texture work is relatively low resolution, and the environments themselves were in need of more post-process lighting effects, the game could easily be confused with an Xbox 360 title. But the real question is, how does it play?

The Conduit exhibits many lessons learned from past Wii first-person shooter titles. The game gathers what companies like Retro Studios, Ubisoft, and EA have learned with regard to bounding boxes and IR aiming on the console, and offers the most competent FPS control on the platform yet. This is spearheaded by an unbelievably vast amount of customization options. Players can jump into the menu and then adjust a ton of sliders and settings to refine the control for themselves. This is all done within the actual game engine while playing, as opposed to static menus, so you can get a feel for the changes you make instantly.

Check Ars Technica’s full article for more, including some interesting weapon descriptions and more gameplay impressions.