"The Conduit": A Rare Noble Effort of the Gaming Industry

Image via Wikipedia

For a little over a year or so, those in the gaming industry "know" have been aware about a really random blip on the Nintendo Wii's radar--a third-party, first-person shooter, built from the ground up for Nintendo's underpowered console titled, simply, The Conduit. This blip was important for a couple of reasons: 1) this game wasn't yet being backed by a huge, game-making machine like EA, but the relatively small team at High Voltage Software; 2) the reason it wasn't being backed was because it was a wholly original title trying to do something very risky in financially uncertain times. Throwing in with an untested company on a risk could mean bankruptcy along with so many other video game companies being purchased or sold off based a single moderate flop. So High Voltage made a full-time job of showing off their highly polished shooter. It was reported that at one demonstration, gamers thought they were looking at a new XBOX 360 game (a console capable of, among other things, better graphics than the Wii). All their hard work paid off, and the game was picked up by Sega--a Cinderella story if there ever was one!

But with a week after the game's release, is it a happily ever after? Sales reports aren't in yet, but the reviews are. And the general consensus seems to be, "Meh. Pretty good." And largely, I have to agree with them. Having finished the game earlier this week and finally had the chance to try out all of the game's toted sixteen person, online multiplayer options last night, I feel like I have a good grip on where the game is "meh" and where it's "pretty good."

For starters we have the game's story, though I hesitate to call it even that. It's more of a plot, a very, very, simple and used plot. Our hero, Agent Michael Ford, finds himself at the center of a huge conspiracy involving aliens. If it sounds familiar, that's because it is. This game would have been right at home during the X-Files series heyday--in fact, I think it was. I wish I could say it gets more interesting than that, but really, it doesn't.

The plot twists are expected, as is the cliffhanger ending. I wish I could say that these are at least original elements for a video game, but really, they're just tried and true. The game clearly pulls heavily from Valve's Half-Life 2 series (the government's experimental wormholes open the gates for alien invasion; our hero even wears an experimental protective suit/body armour), and I even found myself waxing nostalgic for the original Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64 (some of the weapons and level design seem straight out of Joanna Dark's own conspiracy/alien invasion adventure).

Having finished the story, I don't know why it's there, and I didn't really enjoy it--the difficulty curve, for example, at the end is outrageous. I zoomed through pretty much the whole game only to get stuck on the last level by about 200 consistently spawning guards. Which brings me to the game's AI. The bad guys aren't smart so much as the game just bombards you with more of them.

And what bothers me most about the cliffhanger and obvious sequel-cue is that, sadly, it seems a future game will be marred by the same issues. Of course, all of this would suggest I don't like the game, but that's just the single-player mode.

The multiplayer, however, works shockingly well! This is where all of High Voltage's hard work obviously went. Okay, despite all the story's flaws, it's still visually impressive. And that really flows over into the multiplayer. Time and again, I've gotten online with anywhere from on other person to a dozen and played match after match of flawless multiplayer. On my Wii! Even Smash Bros. Brawl was hampered by lag issues!

High Voltage has really given Wii gamers something to sink their teeth into here. There are dozens of kinds of online matches to participate in, excellent weapon sets, and phenomenal level design. This aspect of the game won't be getting old anytime soon. In fact, the main reason I bought into the hype of this game was the promise of being able to play an online shooter with my Wii owning little brothers on the other side of the country. And to that end, we're already having fun.

All in all, as the hype for this game was centred around the amazing visuals, the highly customizable controls and interface, and the multiplayer, I'd say High Voltage succeeded. In the long run, however, the success of the game (not financially--at least not yet--but in terms of making a big-kid game for a seemingly little-kid console) will hopefully pave the way for more games like it. Indeed, High Voltage has already shown work on two new Wii-exclusive titles: The Grinder and Gladiator A.D. (the former further indicating the company's efforts to mimic what Valve has done for PC gaming on the Wii). In the end The Conduit is a noble effort, but it's value lies in its promise of things to come.

"Scott Pilgrim vs. The World"

I have to admit, this is a somewhat lackluster follow-up to Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life. That's not to say that it's bad, only that it isn't as epic. There's really only one instance of what I dubbed "nerd realism" in my review of O'Malley's first book in the series. But what can you do with the second installment in a book series?

You write one book and hope it takes off. But you realize that for it to do so you have to tell a good, complete story and hope for the best. And it does take off, so you continue the greater story your first book only hinted at. Only you can't just jump right in! You have characters to introduce, sub-plots to establish, and really that takes a while book in itself--to say nothing of just moving your main plot along!

This is that book in the Scott Pilgrim series...I hope.

Webcomic Compilations A Student Lent Me

The title says it all :-)

Comedity: A Comedy of Personae, volume 1 by Garth Cameron Graham:
Had a student in my comics centred composition class not lent this to me, I'd have never known about it. And at first, I wasn't really into it. It was funny, but there was something about it that just didn't settle well. Shortly before finishing it, I realized what that something was. The premise of this strip was basically the same thing my best friend and I wanted to write after high school--only our's were short stories. I suppose what didn't set well was that Garth Cameron Graham's story got off the ground and ours didn't. Of course, most people still don't know about Comedity, but that doesn't mean it didn't turn out great.

The beginnings are rocky (as they often are), but as the strips continue, you get to watch Graham's style evolve, see him grow as an artist. And that is a satisfying experience. However, perhaps the reason his strip is so unknown has a lot to do with who his target audience is. Like Penny Arcade and XKCD, Comedity is a webcomic (though anthologized in print here) with a niche audience. In this case, nerdy artists and video game fanboys. Even a self-proclaimed nerd like myself has trouble getting some of the jokes. And that's maybe my only complaint--those instances come way too often.

Still, I'm currently rereading it online for its awesomeness. Unfortunately, Graham ended the strip in October of last year. Fortunately, it was to move onto a new comic, Finder's Keepers. Unfortunately, it isn't as good as Comedity.

Read Or The Owl Will Eat You (El Goonish Shive) by Dan Shive:
This is another one of those webcomic series suffering from what Yatzee over at Zero Punctuation calls the plague of webcomics. It follows his formula for a typical webcomic to a T: a dumb character whose antics should have him beat by his best friend, a best friend who tirelessly lets himself be dragged into said dumb character's antics, and a girl(s) who begrudgingly cleans up after the guys while simultaneously falling in love with them for some reason.

Fragile Gravity: Summertime Brews by Barb Fischer:
This webcomic anthology has its ups and downs. On the one hand, it's an excellent look into the world of small comic production--the con-going, the tireless effort, the characters' brush with insanity at the realization that what they do is, essentially, crazy, etc.

But on the other hand, this, like many webcomics, caters to a niche audience. Consequently, it's riddled with inside jokes that even a self-proclaimed nerd like myself can't get.

And while the writing leaves something to be desired, the art is definitely interesting. While it looks like manga, I'd be hesitant to call it that. Instead, it's more of a hybrid of sorts, combining the "cartoony" style of western comics with manga.

It isn't coloured, which isn't necessarily a deal breaker for me, but it makes it a little difficult to look at closely. Paradoxically, the style begs to be looked at closely--even if only because the collected work is pretty long.

Back from Vacation!

I took a break from blogging during my and my wife Veronica's first vacation in a year and a half. It took the form of a three work, cross country road trip/family reunion: Memphis to visit Veronica's grandparents and my old lifeguarding buddies; Gulfport to visit my newly relocated parents; Disney World with my family and my brother's fiancée (probably our last vacation as a family for a long, long time). (I'm working on getting some pictures up.) Needless to say, Veronica and I are still recovering (we got back Sunday night, did virtually nothing Monday, and were finally able to muster the strength to get to the grocery store Tuesday).

But that I'm sitting here blogging when I'm sleepy at barely 10 o'clock tells me I'm recovering and ready to get back into the grove of things. Of course, whether I was ready or not, my summer class and new job started on Monday. The latter is something I've largely kept under my hat because it wasn't a sure thing until the last month or so, and I didn't want to jinx it.

Like most universities, mine has a program for incoming freshmen with the purpose of preparing them for the transition into college. Unfortunately, as it stands, the program is largely ineffective. In a really bold move that I don't fully understand, coordination of the program was given to the English department. And the chair asked me to help her coordinate the new program for the fall. It's a big job, but I'm extremely excited to be a part of it, the chance to effect change on the most basic level--how new students view college. I'll be teaching less, but I'll also be better able to focus on what I'm teaching--two of my three fall classes are part of the program I'm helping coordinate.

I'm also excited about some of the changes I'll be making to my standing Rhetoric of Comics course that I haven't really changed since I first taught it last summer. The biggest change will be the use of a class blog for student reactions to readings (rather than the always boring "one-page response" I've been doing). I've been wanting to try this for awhile now, and summer school is a great chance to experiment before the fall--like I did last summer just by teaching a composition course on comics! Part of what I'm hoping my students will get out of this will be to learn to keep their audience (who for once, won't be just me) in mind. I also think that this little online community will make research seem less daunting come the Research Paper at the end of the semester. So feel free to check it out and comment if you like; you can find it at TheRhetoricofComics.blogspot.com.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?