High Voltage has another Wii-exclusive in development, and this one hopes to achieve no-less than a gory Left 4 Dead extravaganza on the Nintendo console.

Due next autumn, The Grinder is a first-person shooter playable online by up-to four friends either co-operatively during the campaign or in multiplayer modes yet to be detailed.

"We've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead and there really isn't that kind of frantic cooperative experience on the Wii right now. There's certainly nothing that takes advantage of the Wii hardware the way we are able to with our engine," Eric Nofsinger, chief creative officer at High Voltage, told IGN.

The Grinder is set in a world where monsters are a part of day-to-day life. Players control four members of an A-Team assembled to deal with them. Making up the team are Hector, a gruff bounty hunter; Doc, an underground doctor and former hunter; AJ, a female explorer terrified of re-encountering The Slasher; and Miko, a Japanese assassin with a taste for monster blood.

They each approach situations with different skills and abilities, and these - along with weapons - will be upgradeable as the game progresses. There will be a couple of "untraditional" upgrade mechanics, too, although these are secrets for now.

Characters will be able to dual-wield both run-of-the-mill and "imaginative" weapons, and Wii MotionPlus controls will be added to help Miko swish her swords. There's even a bullet-penetration feature that sees projectiles going through multiple enemies.

Examples of enemies are vampires that prefer melee and use teleportation, hulking mini-boss werewolves and The Slasher, a straitjacket-clad boss who is going to be unveiled proper at a later date.

WiiSpeak is a "no-brainer" for inclusion as The Conduit already supports the voice-comm feature, and Leaderboard and Achievement features will be detailed some other time.

Visually and technically The Grinder appears to be very accomplished, and High Voltage promises lots of enemies on screen with little to no impact on framerate. The Grinder sounds rather grisly, too.

"There will be blood... And lots of it," said High Voltage founder Kerry Ganofsky. "This is not a game for the squeamish."

Eric Nosfinger added that it will be "somewhere between Dead Alive and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" in terms of content. "Right now you will see several hundred gallons of blood if you play through the E3 demo," he said.

We'll know better what to expect when The Conduit is released on Wii at the end of June. Pop over to The Conduit gamepage to find out more about High Voltage's first Wii game.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/wi...-for-squeamish ...