SEGA Addicts at High Voltage Software

It's Bill Zoeker and everyone's favorite yellow fruit Francis

Hey all you SEGA addicts out there in SEGA land, how have you been?  Un huh…Yeah…no I didn’t know that…hey shut up for a second, this is my write up.  Annnnnnyway, this time I’m here to talk about the release party Destructoid had for the High Voltage Game Conduit 2.  And Yes I’m fully aware that Conduit 2 came out weeks ago, but this isn’t my day job ok?

To celebrate, Destructoid decided to do a 24 hour play-a-thon/livestream.  It was held in a room inside High Voltage Studios with web cams, pizza, pop, and enough TV’s to keep Elvis busy for at least an evening.  Did that Elvis joke go over your head?  Well look it up, I’ve got better things to talk about then my dated celebrity jokes.  Things like men in panda suits or full body green leotards, multiplayer, and simulated sex acts between said panda and green leotard man.

Remember kids: VHS copies of Duck Soup should never be used as a cod piece (Destructoid people know what I'm talking about)

Now since I’m forced to have a real job, Tom and I were only able to visit for a few hours, so I can’t imagine what kind of shenanigans went on after we left.  What I can tell you is that we were visited by a ghost panda that would terrorize the livestream from time to time, an impromptu shooting of the Conduit 2 movie starring the ghost panda and the man in a green leotard.  But anyone who watched the livestream will know what I’m talking about, and anyone who didn’t, well shame on you!  Since this is a write up about the party maybe it would be beneficial to say a sentence or two about that.

We arrived at High Voltage Studios at around 8:00pm; unfortunately we didn’t get inside the building until 9pm.  We had some trouble getting anyone inside to notice that we were waiting outside in the rain.  Just about when we were going to give up hope of playing Conduit 2, one of the employees was leaving for the night and we were finally able to gain entrance to the livestream.

The room they were having the livestream in was a decent size room with about 4 LCD TV’s set up on either side of the room, and near the door sitting in bean bag chairs was the members of Destructoid, entertaining the many people who were watching other people play Conduit 2.  There was also pizza leavings, as it looks like they had been ravaged earlier in the day, but there was plenty of Pop (or Soda for you east coasts) and granola bars.

Say hi to David Bruno from SEGA. hi David!!!!

Now the main attraction: Conduit 2.  The Game has pretty nice graphics for a Wii title.  The control scheme, while challenging to a Wiimote noob like myself is actually a pretty good way to control the game.  Small movements with the Wiimote will just move the cursor around the screen, while bigger movements will make the character turn around.  I of course had difficulty doing subtle movements as I don’t really play the Wii on a regular basis, but anyone who has played a 1^st person shooter using the Wiimote will feel right at home.  Conduit 2 has a very futuristic sci-fi look, very inspired by Half Life 2.  I played through the first level of the single player campaign, which involves you flipping switches and avoiding a beg Leviathan monster that will pop in from time to time to scare you or BBQ some bad guys that were previously in your way.  At the end of stage one you actually get to fight the beast at a dock using a machine gun turret.  Once the monsters’ life has gone down enough, you then have to use the grappling hook on the turret to snag the monster and keep it in place so you can quickly run to the other end and hop into that turret and finish the monster off with the other grappling hook.  Over all it was pretty cool.

Really? the biggest TV in the room and there's not a Wii hooked up to it?

But the real fun is in multiplayer, which I played quite a bit of.  I tried some matches with the Wiimote but got my ass handed to me.  Not that I didn’t get my ass handed to me using the classic controller, but at least I could see my attacker using the conventional controller.  The maps are very varied.  We fought in a city carved into the side of a mountain that had a very Middle Eastern look to it.  There is a Level that is styled after a Chinese garden, with hedges for cover and some small buildings to hide in.  There is also a big open Aztec looking ruin level that kind of reminded me of a halo map.  There are many different game modes including standard death match, CTF, and King of the Hill, but there was one game mode that stood out from the pack; I think it was called Balloons.  Each player starts with a number of balloons floating over their heads and for every kill you score you gain another balloon, but for every time you die you lose a balloon.  When you run out of balloons then you die for good.

The weapons are pretty standard with one gun I used standing out from the rest (though I did not get a chance to try all the weapons).  There are your standard pistols, shotguns, machine guns, but there was a gun that you could charge up and would fire an electric wire across the screen, with glowing balls on each end towards your foe.  It looks like an electric Bola, and behaves like one too.  If the enemy was between the two glowing balls the wire would wrap around whatever part of the enemy it came into contact with and then the balls would collide and explode sending the enemy flying.  It was fun to see it wrap around a soldiers head and, BANG!!  No more soldier.

Tom and I had a good time there at High Voltage Games.  I wish I could have stayed the whole 24 hours, but since I had to go to work the next day we had to call it quits at around 12am.  Well, it was fun while it lasted.  I would also like to give a special thanks to Bill Zoeker from Destructoid.com for inviting us and being a fan of SEGA addicts.