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It’s been almost three years since the Wii’s launch, and studios that make shooters are still struggling to come up with a simple, responsive, and fun way to navigate 3-D game worlds from a first-person perspective using the system’s unique motion-sensitive and infrared controls.

Many gamers had their hopes set on The Conduit, a new sci-fi action game from High Voltage Software and Sega designed exclusively for Nintendo’s console. Early buzz suggested that it could be the first first-person shooter to crack the Wii control puzzle.

Now that it's out, I'm not sure the reality will live up to everyone's expectations.

There’s no doubting that The Conduit sets a new bar in terms of Wii interface customization. Players have the option to not only choose one of several preset configurations, but also re-jig the entire control scheme. You can assign any function to any button you like.

More than that, players can customize just about every motion control and pointer sensitivity parameter they can think of. You can alter the Wii remote's deadzone (the area in which the infrared targeting reticule moves without shifting the camera), adjust the motion sensitivity of both the remote and nunchuk, and set how quickly the screen should turn when pushing the remote pointer to the edge. You can also toggle on or off the ability to turn the camera while the pointer is off-screen, or switch to a more traditional camera controlled by the nunchuk's joystick.

It’s all highly empowering. These customization options not only allow players to tinker till their heart’s content, they also provide a window into the Wii development process, showing players many of the variables game makers consider when working with the console’s interface.

But that’s also part of the problem. All of the options at our disposal can be a bit overwhelming. You could spend upwards of an hour just playing with the sensitivity sliders and tweaking them to your liking. And there’s no practice range in which to safely roam while you tweak; you can only experiment in the middle of the game.

But I suppose complaining about too many control customization options is a bit like looking a gift horse in the mouth. The point is that I was able to create a Wii control configuration for a first-person shooter that I was actually comfortable with—no small feat for me, as regular readers of this blog surely know. It wasn’t perfect—I was forced to assign important controls like scope targeting to the remote’s d-pad, which I always seem to have a difficult time reaching with my thumb when pointing the remote at the screen—but the control scheme I settled on was at least adequate enough to make me want to keep playing. Kudos to High Voltage.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the reason all of these customization options existed in the first place is because the Wii’s remote and nunchuk interface is less than ideal for this sort of game. Here is the evidence:

Normally, a significant leap forward in precision and control would necessitate more intelligent enemies, otherwise your ability to nimbly dance about the environment and target baddies with pinpoint accuracy would make a game too easy. But in The Conduit our enemies are noticeably denser than those in most other shooters. They prance about in the open, often fail to take opportune shots, have a tendency to simply charge the player, and seem to think they are well covered when in fact their heads—and, indeed, sometimes their entire bodies—are in plain sight.

And yet the game is still challenging.

That means players need their foes to be stupid to compensate for their inability—however well masked—to dexterously move about and quickly target enemies. If they were as intelligent as or had marksmenship equivalent to, say, Gears of War's Locust forces, we'd still be twisting our wrists to get into position as alien drones peppered us to death with explosive bugs.

Sega

A screenshot from Sega and High Voltage's The Conduit for Nintendo Wii. In this shot a gizmo known as the All Seeing Eye is being used to detect a ghost mine that cannot be seen by the naked eye.

Of course the true test for any game that makes extensive use of the Wii's motion sensitive and infrared capabilities is to play for a few hours and then determine whether you find yourself wishing you had a traditional controller in your hand. The Conduit’s controls never felt particularly frustrating over the course of its eight-hour campaign, but I nonetheless longed for a dual analog stick gamepad from start to finish.

It strikes me that some types of games are simply better suited to a particular form of interface. Just as I can’t imagine playing Boom Blox or Super Mario Galaxy with anything but a Wii remote and nunchuk, I’m starting to believe that shooters are somehow inherently anchored to either mice and keyboards or conventional dual thumbstick controllers.

Still, at least Wii owners finally have access to a decent exclusive shooter.

I’ve spent all my time discussing The Conduit’s controls, but I thoroughly enjoyed the game’s thrilling story about a conspiracy involving aliens on Earth as well as its novel mechanics, like the All Seeing Eye, a little sphere that reveals messages, mines, and other items hidden in a different phase state, and the multifunctional Trust suit of armour. Plus, it's one of the prettiest Wii games I've yet seen.

If nothing else, the sheer lack of similar titles in the Wii market ought to give Sega’s game good legs. There are probably plenty of Wii owners out there who, at this point, will take any good-quality first-person shooter that comes along.