Switching on my copy of The Conduit for the first time was a great feeling. Here was a game I had waited for, literally, for years. N-Europe has been following The Conduit for a very long time, and the process in which it has been made has been very inclusive for fans. I really wanted this game to be good. And while I was playing through it, I really enjoyed it. A lot. Until... it ended. Way too soon. The warning signs were there already - you can see from the start how many missions are in the single player. You can also see how quickly you zip through the story in your save file's percentage on the main screen.

Starting my review with this criticism isn't how I wanted to begin, believe me, but since completing the game yesterday, the disappointment it wasn't longer really hasn't left my head. Not to mention how abruptly the whole game ends. Without wanting to spoil things for those still to finish it, the climax of the game sees you getting ready to fight and kill who you think is the main boss of the game, only for when you get there the credits to suddenly start rolling, during which the story for a sequel is set in place. It's a bit like getting to the end of Metroid Prime and being told the final Dark Samus battle will be on the next game instead.

On a more positive note, it has to be said that up until that point I was having a whale of a time. The levels are decently designed, the weapons are cool and the whole game looks great. You play as Agent Ford, a one-man army faced with repelling the alien invasion and infiltration of Washington D.C. and the President (alas, there is no cameo from Mr. Obama). There's a couple of plot twists as you go through the game, but largely the story is ignorable. If you have the time you can stop and switch on radios positioned around levels for short broadcasts of what's happening in the outside world, though stopping to listen to these grinds the game to a juddering halt and are thus easily skipped in favour of carrying on with the level at hand instead.

These meaty invisible monsters need revealing with your trusty A.S.E. (All-Seeing-Eye) device.

You're helped by instructions through an earpiece which moves the story along and will prompt you with hints if you're taking too long to work out where to go next. Saying that, the levels are linear shoot-em-up affairs, well designed, though a little bit same-y. While the game is set in D.C., most levels are generic underground bunkers, secret HQs and military facilities. When you do finally get outside on the street in one level, well, it's a breath of fresh air.

The alien threat ("The Drudge") comes in around six different flavours, ranging from annoying little bug things to bigger, more well equipped bug things. This sort of fits the story, but really just ends up in you killing the same things over and over - there isn't much variation once you meet all the enemies, and there are only a couple of real "boss" creatures. And no ending boss. Grrr. But I mentioned that already.

High Voltage has obviously worked hard to develop a fully customisable game, and the Wii-mote and Nunchuck controls work perfectly, showing off just how perfect the Wii is for first-person shooters. Credit to High Voltage for taking on the family friendly Wii stereotype with a game full of beautiful-looking guns and guts.

Online multi-player... ridiculously fun.

Completing the single-player game thankfully isn't the end of the experience - as you progress you can unlock cheats which give you unlimited ammo, one shot kills, new player skins etc. to be used in your next play-through. There's also collectible items in the levels themselves to go back and find. What I know I will be spending a considerable amount of time doing in the future doing however is playing more of the game's incredibly addictive online multi-player, which works like a dream.

That the title lacks offline split-screen play is something of a crime, yet the online play is so good it really does make up for it. A level swarming with 12 real-life people makes for some real heart-stopping and teeth-gritting action, the maps are great and shockingly for the Wii, it all just... works. Brilliantly. It's smooth, the player search and match set-up options are easy as pie and you can quickly and easily find and join any of your friends if they're online too. Not to mention, there's a tasty menu of match options available, from deathmatch styles like Last Man Standing, to team games and Capture the Flag-style matches, along with some more unique modes like Bounty Hunter (you must only kill a specific player, and vice-versa) and A.S.E Football (who can keep a hold of the A.S.E. device the longest).

It goes a long way to redeeming what otherwise is a brilliant game, blighted by the fact there just isn't enough of it. They say the trick is leaving the audience wanting more - well, High Voltage, let's have some more soon.

- Tom "Tphi" Phillips
Editor-in-Chief, N-Europe.com