BitSnark

Wii owners jealous of the online co-op goodness that is Valve’s Left 4 Dead can hopefully breathe a sigh of relief, as High Voltage Software, the talented folks behind forthcoming Wii FPS The Conduit, will be releasing The Grinder late next year.

Billed as an online co-op horror FPS experience; a first for Nintendo’s shovelware infested console and certainly more than a little inspired by Left 4 Dead (the developers reference Valve’s seminal title frequently in the IGN interview shown below) the title will be aiming to give an experience similar to that seen on more demographically ‘mature’ consoles.

Like Left 4 Dead the premise is simple; players can choose from a selection of different characters and then hop online and set out to kill not just zombies but also werewolves and vampires in horrifically violent ways.

A four-player, mature, online co-op shooter for the Wii? Hell yes.

I mean as far as the ‘bottom line’ goes maybe yes, mature games don’t sell in the huge numbers that the suit wearing stiffs at the investor and analyst firms would like, but its refreshing to see a developer taking a brave step and pushing the Wii platform in both technical and conceptual ways, that it really ought to have been before now.

This is especially true in the current climate of garbage-ware and ‘me-too’ titles which plague the platform; serving not to exploit any of the Wii’s considerable (and perhaps forgotten) potential but rather to line the pockets of recession-paranoid, innovation bereft publishers.

The Grinder, is due to be shown at E3 2009.

IGN have the full rundown below:

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/986/986663p1.html