One of the weirder games from my childhood. Revisiting it now I can appreciate the core ideas behind it, but the execution just isn’t there. Being a ghost is cool, being a janky ghost ehh not so much. Not exactly a “hidden gem” of the Cube, but it’s at least worth a shot just to see how certain ideas which were a bit ahead of their time were executed.
The ideas are there but the game is simply underbaked. I think a more modern take could make this interesting, but this a clunky experiment of the time. I'm happy it exists and it just barely overstays its welcome.
Interesting adventure-esque puzzle elements, story is as schlocky as you can get. The fps parts are the least enjoyable and almost feel like a last minute addition before shipping the final product.
Combat is shit sure, but I don't know... the premise and soundtrack is sick and nostalgia do be hitting. Giest 2 perhaps??
I’m starting to realize that I might have an obsession with possession games, and for good reason. They’re convenient mechanics that developers can slip into practically any genre, because they’re extremely simple and consistent to implement but also allow developers to naturally iterate off the environments presented to construct a variety of scenarios despite using the same base structure. Not only that, they allow the developers to quickly pump out a variety of different characters/objects for players to possess that don’t need to be completely fleshed-out with backstories and a full toolkit. Simply put, possession mechanics are a super easy way to utilize heavy context-sensitivity but with the added benefit of feeling more grounded thanks to consistent execution, while providing an easy in-narrative explanation for why the mechanics exist within the lore.
Case in point, let’s consider Geist. Here’s the pitch: the game combines elements of several of my favorite possession games in Ghost Trick, Haunt the House, and a touch of Why Am I Dead at Sea (predating all of these titles by several years!), and it has guns to boot. How could this game possibly be bad!? You play as the ghost of John Raimi, separated from his physical body after being captured in a raid gone wrong, and it’s up to you to foil Volks Corporation’s schemes while saving himself and his pals from a score of supernatural projects. To do so, Raimi must possess objects to scare staff and animals around the facility, and then possess those living creatures in turn to progress deeper with their different abilities. Oh, and sometimes there are gunfights too.
Like most games fixated on possession mechanics, you can think of Geist as having two distinct modes: ghost mode and possession mode. As an ethereal being, Raimi can pass through thin walls like chain-link fences and glowing wall-cracks (referred to as “Slips”) while time is slowed around him. However, he cannot physically interact with most objects (including solid doors) outside of possession, and is constantly racing against the clock because his spirit remains untethered to the world without his body. Consequently, Raimi must possess hosts to reset the timer while utilizing their functionalities to progress. Humans and animals provide more resistance, and as such must be scared by possessing inanimate objects to thoroughly terrify them into submission. Thus, the game provides a plethora of different situations to tackle through the intersection of these two different modes while keeping the controls and baseline mechanics the same. One minute you’re possessing a dog to bark at rats, then the next minute you’re possessing a rat you just frightened to utilize crawlspaces, then the minute after that you’re possessing furniture accessed from the crawlspace to scare the living daylights out of a scientist so you can access his credentials for the lab. Not every element is fully realized (for example, I would have loved if there were more dogs present to serve as hazards that could alert guards to the presence of ghosts to enforce stealth while simultaneously providing possessable vessels that could trick those same guards into opening doors for me), and some of the levels are fairly linear in approach as a result with only one clear solution, but I can’t fault Geist too much; after all, the concept never wore out its welcome in the first place when I was constantly thrown new objectives and new hosts to mess around with.
That said, Geist starts to stray a bit from the light when they pull out the guns. Just judging it as a strict FPS compared to its contemporaries, the flaws are extremely pronounced. For example, aiming feels very stiff due to the sluggish camera scrolling speed (with no way to adjust camera sensitivity in the options menu) as well as constant frame drops further complicating precise aim. There’s also slight but very noticeable aim assist that often snaps the reticle to nearby targets, which gets obnoxious when you’re trying to scroll the camera over to focus on higher-priority enemies but the reticle gets stuck along the way. Having said that, weapon hitboxes are greatly exaggerated, so the reticle often glows red while hovering an inch off the enemy model and landing shots can feel very undeserved. Firefights are ridiculously free even while discounting this, however: much of this is due to the poor AI, as enemies have practically no self-preservation instincts and will often fail to react to faraway shots or run straight into live gunfire from the player. Additionally, most enemies go down in a few shots regardless of where they’re shot (so you don’t even need to go for the head) and the player has infinite ammo/grenades once a soldier is possessed, so as long as the player remembers to reload clips during downtime, the player can just fire at abandon mowing down everything in their way.
The result is that the vast majority of combat ranges from forgettable to disappointing, but even while criticizing the poor base gunplay mechanics, I can acknowledge the potential that the combat had when combined with the possession mechanics. In my mind, the best encounters should focus on emphasizing the interplay between ghost mode and possession mode, through coaxing the player to jump out of hosts to exploit arena set-pieces and then immediately jumping back into hosts to continue assaults. Geist does manage to rise to the occasion a few times, starting with a mid-game sequence where Raimi must jump in and out of explosive objects scattered around a corridor to clear a path for his friend. The developers then immediately variate upon this with a succinct chase sequence. Perhaps the most ambitious segment of the game, the player has to juggle possessing a motorcycle to steer past traps, possessing a mounted truck turret to lay down gunfire, and jumping back onto the road to temporarily possess explosive crates to detonate upon nearby foes. Admittingly these moments are rare in the overall scope of Geist’s many combat scenarios, but it's these welcome glimpses of promise that really incentivized me to push forward.
It is a shame then, that the later levels of the game lean heavily into straight action sequences which don't build upon the core possession premise very well. For instance, the first half of Chapter 7 involves various combat simulations where the player generally possesses one host per exercise and must eliminate all enemies in the arena while staying contained within the host. There’s nothing offensively bad about most of these exercises (except for the opening sniping sequence, which I found to be extremely tedious due to the slow and forced zoom-in of the scope every time I had to aim another shot), but I have to wonder what compelled the devs to shoehorn these straight gunplay sequences in when Chapter 5’s highs more than demonstrate their prowess. The real kicker however, comes in during the last couple of chapters, where you’re given access to characters that can enter rechargeable “boost-mode” to take out enemies in slow-mo. While this sounds great in theory, the game is more than happy to swarm you with bulkier enemies in the last couple of hours, meaning that the optimal strategy is to camp by activating boost mode, safely walking out of cover to take potshots, and then retreating back to cover before boost mode expires and waiting for the gauge to refresh so the process begins anew. Think of this as a budget version of F.E.A.R.’s bullet-time mechanics, though missing the dynamic AI to pressure players into experimentation and also lacking the flashy particle physics and satisfying weapon impact. The annoying hostile ghosts exclusive to these chapters also reinforce this behavior, because trying to approach said ghosts will result in them grabbing the player and dragging them off-stage or into hazards, giving the player insufficient time to mash out of the hold. As such, Geist ironically slogs its way to a conclusion due to betting it all on extravagant combat in exchange for its clever possession puzzles.
Surprisingly, despite all my criticism, I found myself really enjoying the whole experience. It’s a heavily flawed game that has plenty of room for improvement, but at the same time, no flawed game has left me quite as excited for what the medium is capable of as this game has. I find it hard to be overly derogatory towards Geist; N-Space feels like it was trying to accomplish so much with surprisingly little, and I have nothing but respect for such an enthusiastic team that approached the game’s development like a puppy excited to play with a new chew toy. It may not be a very polished game, but it’s a game that dares to try and break new ground and was one of the first major titles that dared to tinker with possession mechanics. Geist paved the way for many more experimental yet realized possession adventure games that have since become mainstays of my personal recommendations, and I couldn’t ask for anything more than that from my favorite era of gaming.
Case in point, let’s consider Geist. Here’s the pitch: the game combines elements of several of my favorite possession games in Ghost Trick, Haunt the House, and a touch of Why Am I Dead at Sea (predating all of these titles by several years!), and it has guns to boot. How could this game possibly be bad!? You play as the ghost of John Raimi, separated from his physical body after being captured in a raid gone wrong, and it’s up to you to foil Volks Corporation’s schemes while saving himself and his pals from a score of supernatural projects. To do so, Raimi must possess objects to scare staff and animals around the facility, and then possess those living creatures in turn to progress deeper with their different abilities. Oh, and sometimes there are gunfights too.
Like most games fixated on possession mechanics, you can think of Geist as having two distinct modes: ghost mode and possession mode. As an ethereal being, Raimi can pass through thin walls like chain-link fences and glowing wall-cracks (referred to as “Slips”) while time is slowed around him. However, he cannot physically interact with most objects (including solid doors) outside of possession, and is constantly racing against the clock because his spirit remains untethered to the world without his body. Consequently, Raimi must possess hosts to reset the timer while utilizing their functionalities to progress. Humans and animals provide more resistance, and as such must be scared by possessing inanimate objects to thoroughly terrify them into submission. Thus, the game provides a plethora of different situations to tackle through the intersection of these two different modes while keeping the controls and baseline mechanics the same. One minute you’re possessing a dog to bark at rats, then the next minute you’re possessing a rat you just frightened to utilize crawlspaces, then the minute after that you’re possessing furniture accessed from the crawlspace to scare the living daylights out of a scientist so you can access his credentials for the lab. Not every element is fully realized (for example, I would have loved if there were more dogs present to serve as hazards that could alert guards to the presence of ghosts to enforce stealth while simultaneously providing possessable vessels that could trick those same guards into opening doors for me), and some of the levels are fairly linear in approach as a result with only one clear solution, but I can’t fault Geist too much; after all, the concept never wore out its welcome in the first place when I was constantly thrown new objectives and new hosts to mess around with.
That said, Geist starts to stray a bit from the light when they pull out the guns. Just judging it as a strict FPS compared to its contemporaries, the flaws are extremely pronounced. For example, aiming feels very stiff due to the sluggish camera scrolling speed (with no way to adjust camera sensitivity in the options menu) as well as constant frame drops further complicating precise aim. There’s also slight but very noticeable aim assist that often snaps the reticle to nearby targets, which gets obnoxious when you’re trying to scroll the camera over to focus on higher-priority enemies but the reticle gets stuck along the way. Having said that, weapon hitboxes are greatly exaggerated, so the reticle often glows red while hovering an inch off the enemy model and landing shots can feel very undeserved. Firefights are ridiculously free even while discounting this, however: much of this is due to the poor AI, as enemies have practically no self-preservation instincts and will often fail to react to faraway shots or run straight into live gunfire from the player. Additionally, most enemies go down in a few shots regardless of where they’re shot (so you don’t even need to go for the head) and the player has infinite ammo/grenades once a soldier is possessed, so as long as the player remembers to reload clips during downtime, the player can just fire at abandon mowing down everything in their way.
The result is that the vast majority of combat ranges from forgettable to disappointing, but even while criticizing the poor base gunplay mechanics, I can acknowledge the potential that the combat had when combined with the possession mechanics. In my mind, the best encounters should focus on emphasizing the interplay between ghost mode and possession mode, through coaxing the player to jump out of hosts to exploit arena set-pieces and then immediately jumping back into hosts to continue assaults. Geist does manage to rise to the occasion a few times, starting with a mid-game sequence where Raimi must jump in and out of explosive objects scattered around a corridor to clear a path for his friend. The developers then immediately variate upon this with a succinct chase sequence. Perhaps the most ambitious segment of the game, the player has to juggle possessing a motorcycle to steer past traps, possessing a mounted truck turret to lay down gunfire, and jumping back onto the road to temporarily possess explosive crates to detonate upon nearby foes. Admittingly these moments are rare in the overall scope of Geist’s many combat scenarios, but it's these welcome glimpses of promise that really incentivized me to push forward.
It is a shame then, that the later levels of the game lean heavily into straight action sequences which don't build upon the core possession premise very well. For instance, the first half of Chapter 7 involves various combat simulations where the player generally possesses one host per exercise and must eliminate all enemies in the arena while staying contained within the host. There’s nothing offensively bad about most of these exercises (except for the opening sniping sequence, which I found to be extremely tedious due to the slow and forced zoom-in of the scope every time I had to aim another shot), but I have to wonder what compelled the devs to shoehorn these straight gunplay sequences in when Chapter 5’s highs more than demonstrate their prowess. The real kicker however, comes in during the last couple of chapters, where you’re given access to characters that can enter rechargeable “boost-mode” to take out enemies in slow-mo. While this sounds great in theory, the game is more than happy to swarm you with bulkier enemies in the last couple of hours, meaning that the optimal strategy is to camp by activating boost mode, safely walking out of cover to take potshots, and then retreating back to cover before boost mode expires and waiting for the gauge to refresh so the process begins anew. Think of this as a budget version of F.E.A.R.’s bullet-time mechanics, though missing the dynamic AI to pressure players into experimentation and also lacking the flashy particle physics and satisfying weapon impact. The annoying hostile ghosts exclusive to these chapters also reinforce this behavior, because trying to approach said ghosts will result in them grabbing the player and dragging them off-stage or into hazards, giving the player insufficient time to mash out of the hold. As such, Geist ironically slogs its way to a conclusion due to betting it all on extravagant combat in exchange for its clever possession puzzles.
Surprisingly, despite all my criticism, I found myself really enjoying the whole experience. It’s a heavily flawed game that has plenty of room for improvement, but at the same time, no flawed game has left me quite as excited for what the medium is capable of as this game has. I find it hard to be overly derogatory towards Geist; N-Space feels like it was trying to accomplish so much with surprisingly little, and I have nothing but respect for such an enthusiastic team that approached the game’s development like a puppy excited to play with a new chew toy. It may not be a very polished game, but it’s a game that dares to try and break new ground and was one of the first major titles that dared to tinker with possession mechanics. Geist paved the way for many more experimental yet realized possession adventure games that have since become mainstays of my personal recommendations, and I couldn’t ask for anything more than that from my favorite era of gaming.
A flawed and janky, but interesting FPS that represents a unique footnote in Nintendo's history during the Gamecube generation where they briefly toyed with appealing to a mature audience. The shooting might be kind of clunky and the level design's a bit drab, but possessing all manner of soldiers, people, animals, and even inanimate objects is pretty fun sometimes. This game's kind of like a streamlined version of the 2000 PC game Messiah's concept adapted to the FPS genre, but not as memorable or creative.
It's okay. The development behind this game is really interesting and I think it's really cool that Nintendo took a chance on such a weird and ambitious game like this, but it do make sense why it didn't sell well at all. The possession mechanic is really cool and there are a solid amount of fun puzzles that utilize it. The overall design of the levels feel a bit unbalanced and all over the place, like they settled in a weird grey area between "shooter with possession elements on the side" and "possession-based adventure game with shooting elements on the side", with the game kinda resulting in it being neither. The games visuals are decent enough and the plot is existent. I do think the multiplayer would be fun with multiple people being able to possess things but I haven't tried that yet. Overall it was neat albeit not groundbreaking and I'm glad I played it. If you are curious enough about the game to be looking at reviews here I'd def suggest checking it out.
Geist is a game that anyone who is a Gamecube enthusiast will have at least heard about about and know of. Often assumed to be Nintendo’s “Halo Killer”, this has a small kernel of truth to it. In the early 2000s, after seeing the success of Halo CE, Nintendo began shopping around NA for a first person shooter with “unique mechanics”, of all devs, N-space, a company known mostly for licensed games, impressed Nintendo with their pitch about an FPS where you could become a ghost(the working title was “FEAR”, imagine a game with that title coming out in 2005 haha). Despite numerous delays, the partnership was amicable and N-Space produced one of the most interesting IPs in Nintendo’s library.
During the course of development, Shigeru Miyamoto and Kensuke Tanabe were fascinated by the possession mechanic, and used their authority to heavily alter the direction of the game, Geist’s similarity to Halo soon became only barely there and it instead ended up being far more like Metroid Prime (with some beats Half Life 1), which greatly benefited the game, as the change in focus to puzzle centric game play made it far more memorable for any one who plays it in the long run. Unfortunately this also came at the cost of the FPS mechanics feeling half baked and unpolished.
Geist’s possession mechanic is its most memorable and polished feature. Raimi’s spectral form is mostly invisible and in order to progress through 85% of the game, you need to possess objects, people, and animals to solve environmental puzzles. In order for a person or animal to be possessed, you have to scare them first, this leads to some very entertaining novelties, like using a TV to project a demonic image of a cat to scare rats, taking over a steam pipe to make it explode to draw a guards attention, hijacking a vending machine to make soda fly at a scientist then having a sink fill with blood to make him fall backwards, making dog food fly out of a bowl, etc.
This need to scare living vessels contextualizes the feeling of playing as a ghost brilliantly, and allows each puzzle to have time to breathe.
The progression of each step in the puzzles rely entirely on the players logical observation skills, A chef is going to naturally investigate a malfunctioning oven, a dog barking will obviously scare small prey animals like rats, a technician will try and diagnose what kind of malware is on a laptop etc. Geist nails its name sake when engaging with the possessions, rewarding the player for problem solving and playing on the satisfaction of their correct assumptions.
Unfortunately the FPS part of Geist fares far worse, and while thankfully you won’t be engaging with it that often, it’s always boring to unpleasant when you have to do these segments.
The biggest issue is the lack of good audio and visual feedback when your bullets hit your targets. 99% of the time you have no visual or audio indicators that you’re doing damage, but this doesn’t mean the game is difficult, on the contrary, Geist is one of the easiest FPSes you’ll ever play. Each soldier goes down in 2-4 hits, and the later Demon enemies are incredibly weak up close.
The camera turning speed is also very sluggish, for the majority of the game when doing puzzles, this is tolerable, but it makes tracking enemies a pain during combat sections. To compensate for this, and the overall unfinished nature of the shooting, The hit boxes for your weapons are enormous, your reticule will often light up red while a solid foot off the target, so any potential frustration is replaced with boredom.
Sometimes you can possess enemy turrets or explosive crates, but due to how powerful you already are, this generally pointless sans a set piece and puzzle in chapter 5, the latter is the only interesting section of combat in the game, as you need to strategically possess the right turrets in a tight time frame.
Geist does feature a good handful of boss fights, but they aren’t very exciting or fun to engage with, at the very least each attack is very well telegraphed and the arenas are large enough that the sluggish camera turning is never an issue, since one can just move aside or vertically to avoid attacks.
Given how powerful Raimi is, the bosses are very easy to take care of, You will often do so much chip damage with the rifles the game provides you with for most encounters that you can generally bypass scripted weak points, And each boss area is very generous with health packs, so you will never be in genuine danger.
Geist suffers from very poor enemy variety, you will fight a total of five enemies for the entire game and all of them get mogged easily by the insanely high damage of your guns. 90% of the combat is killing soldiers made of paper, sometimes small imp demons who die in one hit, and every once in a while spider demons who die in 3 seconds when you simply get right next to them and hold down the fire button. There’s zero tension in the FPS segments due to your high damage output and the plentiful health packs in every 3rd room.
I saved the last enemy type for last as they only show up near the end game, and aren’t even really an enemy to begin with, they are basically a rope trap that pulls you into fire or enemy soldiers, you simply deal with these by firing your grenades. Making the final stretch of combat near the end game tension-less.
Due to the possession mechanic being the central focus, you will have infinite ammo when in combat to compensate for being unable to possess focused soldiers, This isn’t balanced very well given every weapon has massive magazine sizes, and grenades instantly restock, so for many mob fights, you can just wail on the Z button.
There is a Multiplayer mode, But it isn’t very good as it uses the same unfinished shooting mechanics in three basic TDM, CTF and DM modes. If you really like the gun play might get something out of it, as the bots can actually be quite vicious if you crank up their AI to the max. Though map design is nothing more than a few layered empty rooms.
Geist is one of the better looking Gamecube games with a realistic art style, god rays shimmer convincingly and there’s some great particle density, your guns show off impressive smoke trails after being fired. The textures have impressive depth, showcasing bumpy rusted edges, brushed steel shimmering, and pustule infested skin on the demons.
The art direction is quite nice, Raimi’s ghost form in particular is striking, looking like a spectral nerve chart, the darkened, heavily industrial volks facility feels like a truly oppressive prison with it’s tight corridors, dim blueish lighting, and winding geometry.
The UI is rather basic, but looks fine overall, with the map you can access pressing left on the D-pad being very reminiscent of Metroid prime, though given how distinct each room is, you will never need to use it.
The games Frame rate is mostly stable, but drops heavily in combat sections if heavy amounts of gunfire is active, going all the way down from 60-low 20s at many points, if it wasn’t for these sections being laughably easy, this could very well have made the game borderline unbearable during said sections.
Animation quality is passable. The mo cap for cut scenes is basic but not distracting because the actors aren’t constantly moving slightly like so many games of the 7th gen onward would be plagued with, enemy bodies often go flying after dying and it can look very comical at times, but bosses as mentioned before have clear, exaggerated tells with their moves, so fighting the latter is never frustrating.
Musically Geist is highly competent but tracks fail with their intended mood. Most of the game for when you’ll be in ghost form, the game sometimes plays dark atmospheric songs, these don’t really make you feel that powerful because Raimi always feels powerful, and the same can be applied to music that plays during combat. As the Increased tempo in the percussion and horns don’t make you feel like you are facing a threat, due to you always being the biggest threat from a game play standpoint.
Geist’s Voice acting is not very good, the delivery of every character is incredibly flat and bland. Nothing stands out as truly bad or good, but every line sounds like the actors are thumbing through each word that they have also memorized several times. While the tone of each voice fits each character, the delivery leaves much to be desired.
Geist’s plot is initially interesting though it’s not executed particularly well. The initial premise of a man weaponizing his interest in the occult to conquer the earth after the death of his sister left him with nothing is a solid concept. And there is some minor influences of Half Life 1 here as well, given the volk facility was researching another dimension and there’s a “accident” that sets the demons free.
Of course this has little impact, despite the Demon lord being incredibly powerful, for some reason he needs to weaponize human ghosts to carry out his plans, despite quite a few lesser demons coming in by the seemingly hundreds mid game. And the reveal that he has been in control of volks’s corpse for decades makes the initial premise not being relevant a huge letdown.
The Demons never feel like a threat of course due to how strong Raimi is, and the fact that each of the bosses are fought multiple times with zero changes in tactics. Despite the insistence from your allies that these creatures are a threat to the human race, the consistent jobbing sure does not make this feel truthful.
Geist’s human cast isn’t that memorable either. Aside from the secondary antagonist being afraid of dogs, no one stands out as likeable or dislike-able, Every one speaks and carries themselves in a professional demeanour and the flat voice acting reinforces how bland everyone is.
Raimi himself is a silent protagonist, but he’s rarely expressive in cut scenes. At most you may get the occasional smirk and/or gasp, but in general he’s just your vehicle for the world.
On a better note the story is excellently paced, Geist knows just when to kick you back into action after a gauntlet of puzzles, with waves of firefights leading to a boss encounter, that then winds you down again for some exploration with no puzzle solving for a good bit, giving your brain a good rest before you engage in the same excellent structure again.
Geist is a very bizarre IP in Nintendo's catalogue. Originally intended to be a Halo competitor, it instead became a Metroid prime lite with fantastic puzzles and excellent production values, with an unfinished FPS attached to it. It’s worth playing for sheer curiosities sake as the novelties of the ghost puzzles will elicit feelings of moderate joy in seeing how the possession subjects react or how Raimi can fuck with said objects, The music may not elicit the mood it intends due to how OP you are, but it is generally enjoyable, the story and cast are a bit humdrum, but the pacing is also excellent so you won’t be dreading any of the lows for long, and while the combat isn’t good, the puzzles that make up the majority of your playtime more than make this worth a look.
7/10.
During the course of development, Shigeru Miyamoto and Kensuke Tanabe were fascinated by the possession mechanic, and used their authority to heavily alter the direction of the game, Geist’s similarity to Halo soon became only barely there and it instead ended up being far more like Metroid Prime (with some beats Half Life 1), which greatly benefited the game, as the change in focus to puzzle centric game play made it far more memorable for any one who plays it in the long run. Unfortunately this also came at the cost of the FPS mechanics feeling half baked and unpolished.
Geist’s possession mechanic is its most memorable and polished feature. Raimi’s spectral form is mostly invisible and in order to progress through 85% of the game, you need to possess objects, people, and animals to solve environmental puzzles. In order for a person or animal to be possessed, you have to scare them first, this leads to some very entertaining novelties, like using a TV to project a demonic image of a cat to scare rats, taking over a steam pipe to make it explode to draw a guards attention, hijacking a vending machine to make soda fly at a scientist then having a sink fill with blood to make him fall backwards, making dog food fly out of a bowl, etc.
This need to scare living vessels contextualizes the feeling of playing as a ghost brilliantly, and allows each puzzle to have time to breathe.
The progression of each step in the puzzles rely entirely on the players logical observation skills, A chef is going to naturally investigate a malfunctioning oven, a dog barking will obviously scare small prey animals like rats, a technician will try and diagnose what kind of malware is on a laptop etc. Geist nails its name sake when engaging with the possessions, rewarding the player for problem solving and playing on the satisfaction of their correct assumptions.
Unfortunately the FPS part of Geist fares far worse, and while thankfully you won’t be engaging with it that often, it’s always boring to unpleasant when you have to do these segments.
The biggest issue is the lack of good audio and visual feedback when your bullets hit your targets. 99% of the time you have no visual or audio indicators that you’re doing damage, but this doesn’t mean the game is difficult, on the contrary, Geist is one of the easiest FPSes you’ll ever play. Each soldier goes down in 2-4 hits, and the later Demon enemies are incredibly weak up close.
The camera turning speed is also very sluggish, for the majority of the game when doing puzzles, this is tolerable, but it makes tracking enemies a pain during combat sections. To compensate for this, and the overall unfinished nature of the shooting, The hit boxes for your weapons are enormous, your reticule will often light up red while a solid foot off the target, so any potential frustration is replaced with boredom.
Sometimes you can possess enemy turrets or explosive crates, but due to how powerful you already are, this generally pointless sans a set piece and puzzle in chapter 5, the latter is the only interesting section of combat in the game, as you need to strategically possess the right turrets in a tight time frame.
Geist does feature a good handful of boss fights, but they aren’t very exciting or fun to engage with, at the very least each attack is very well telegraphed and the arenas are large enough that the sluggish camera turning is never an issue, since one can just move aside or vertically to avoid attacks.
Given how powerful Raimi is, the bosses are very easy to take care of, You will often do so much chip damage with the rifles the game provides you with for most encounters that you can generally bypass scripted weak points, And each boss area is very generous with health packs, so you will never be in genuine danger.
Geist suffers from very poor enemy variety, you will fight a total of five enemies for the entire game and all of them get mogged easily by the insanely high damage of your guns. 90% of the combat is killing soldiers made of paper, sometimes small imp demons who die in one hit, and every once in a while spider demons who die in 3 seconds when you simply get right next to them and hold down the fire button. There’s zero tension in the FPS segments due to your high damage output and the plentiful health packs in every 3rd room.
I saved the last enemy type for last as they only show up near the end game, and aren’t even really an enemy to begin with, they are basically a rope trap that pulls you into fire or enemy soldiers, you simply deal with these by firing your grenades. Making the final stretch of combat near the end game tension-less.
Due to the possession mechanic being the central focus, you will have infinite ammo when in combat to compensate for being unable to possess focused soldiers, This isn’t balanced very well given every weapon has massive magazine sizes, and grenades instantly restock, so for many mob fights, you can just wail on the Z button.
There is a Multiplayer mode, But it isn’t very good as it uses the same unfinished shooting mechanics in three basic TDM, CTF and DM modes. If you really like the gun play might get something out of it, as the bots can actually be quite vicious if you crank up their AI to the max. Though map design is nothing more than a few layered empty rooms.
Geist is one of the better looking Gamecube games with a realistic art style, god rays shimmer convincingly and there’s some great particle density, your guns show off impressive smoke trails after being fired. The textures have impressive depth, showcasing bumpy rusted edges, brushed steel shimmering, and pustule infested skin on the demons.
The art direction is quite nice, Raimi’s ghost form in particular is striking, looking like a spectral nerve chart, the darkened, heavily industrial volks facility feels like a truly oppressive prison with it’s tight corridors, dim blueish lighting, and winding geometry.
The UI is rather basic, but looks fine overall, with the map you can access pressing left on the D-pad being very reminiscent of Metroid prime, though given how distinct each room is, you will never need to use it.
The games Frame rate is mostly stable, but drops heavily in combat sections if heavy amounts of gunfire is active, going all the way down from 60-low 20s at many points, if it wasn’t for these sections being laughably easy, this could very well have made the game borderline unbearable during said sections.
Animation quality is passable. The mo cap for cut scenes is basic but not distracting because the actors aren’t constantly moving slightly like so many games of the 7th gen onward would be plagued with, enemy bodies often go flying after dying and it can look very comical at times, but bosses as mentioned before have clear, exaggerated tells with their moves, so fighting the latter is never frustrating.
Musically Geist is highly competent but tracks fail with their intended mood. Most of the game for when you’ll be in ghost form, the game sometimes plays dark atmospheric songs, these don’t really make you feel that powerful because Raimi always feels powerful, and the same can be applied to music that plays during combat. As the Increased tempo in the percussion and horns don’t make you feel like you are facing a threat, due to you always being the biggest threat from a game play standpoint.
Geist’s Voice acting is not very good, the delivery of every character is incredibly flat and bland. Nothing stands out as truly bad or good, but every line sounds like the actors are thumbing through each word that they have also memorized several times. While the tone of each voice fits each character, the delivery leaves much to be desired.
Geist’s plot is initially interesting though it’s not executed particularly well. The initial premise of a man weaponizing his interest in the occult to conquer the earth after the death of his sister left him with nothing is a solid concept. And there is some minor influences of Half Life 1 here as well, given the volk facility was researching another dimension and there’s a “accident” that sets the demons free.
Of course this has little impact, despite the Demon lord being incredibly powerful, for some reason he needs to weaponize human ghosts to carry out his plans, despite quite a few lesser demons coming in by the seemingly hundreds mid game. And the reveal that he has been in control of volks’s corpse for decades makes the initial premise not being relevant a huge letdown.
The Demons never feel like a threat of course due to how strong Raimi is, and the fact that each of the bosses are fought multiple times with zero changes in tactics. Despite the insistence from your allies that these creatures are a threat to the human race, the consistent jobbing sure does not make this feel truthful.
Geist’s human cast isn’t that memorable either. Aside from the secondary antagonist being afraid of dogs, no one stands out as likeable or dislike-able, Every one speaks and carries themselves in a professional demeanour and the flat voice acting reinforces how bland everyone is.
Raimi himself is a silent protagonist, but he’s rarely expressive in cut scenes. At most you may get the occasional smirk and/or gasp, but in general he’s just your vehicle for the world.
On a better note the story is excellently paced, Geist knows just when to kick you back into action after a gauntlet of puzzles, with waves of firefights leading to a boss encounter, that then winds you down again for some exploration with no puzzle solving for a good bit, giving your brain a good rest before you engage in the same excellent structure again.
Geist is a very bizarre IP in Nintendo's catalogue. Originally intended to be a Halo competitor, it instead became a Metroid prime lite with fantastic puzzles and excellent production values, with an unfinished FPS attached to it. It’s worth playing for sheer curiosities sake as the novelties of the ghost puzzles will elicit feelings of moderate joy in seeing how the possession subjects react or how Raimi can fuck with said objects, The music may not elicit the mood it intends due to how OP you are, but it is generally enjoyable, the story and cast are a bit humdrum, but the pacing is also excellent so you won’t be dreading any of the lows for long, and while the combat isn’t good, the puzzles that make up the majority of your playtime more than make this worth a look.
7/10.
Honestly, I think this game kinda rules.
The MattMcMuscles Wha Happen video details the broader behind the scenes production issues, but the basics come down to a simple fact: N-Space thought they were making a shooter with ghost possession segments, Nintendo thought they were making an adventure ghost game with some shooting segments. This split focus impacted the game's reviews from critics: the public found both elements too weak to really give the game much attention.
I'm certainly willing to admit that the game has flaws. Its a very linear game, with only one solution to each puzzle you encounter in the game. I think Nintendo's instinct was right: they really should have leaned into the possession aspect and create an adventure game with all kinds of different options and routes to success.
Even so, I just found the experience overall pleasant. The gun gameplay is janky, but its a pleasant kind of janky. The kind of janky where I'm never annoyed by combat or the occasional death. Because the enemies aren't that advanced, I can actually train my Bad At Gun Combat brain to approach enemies like its own puzzle. Time slows down when you aren't possessing people, and this gives me more time to plan out the room and form a strategy of attack. In one noticeable section, players who are paying attention can possess various wall-mounted guns and clear a path forward for the host you're possessing. Its not an often occurrence and its easy to get out-numbered regardless of planning, but it honestly just works for me.
The split focus of the game also means that the gameplay is honestly changing quite frequently. One chapter involves hopping between various animals to unlock doors, one involves staying with one host to stealth around the facility. Hosts often have different abilities and different weaknesses that can hamper them. Intercut between those chapters are some shooting segments, featuring different kinds of enemies and different weaponry at your disposal.
Its hard to say if more time in the oven would have changed anything for Geist. It had already been delayed for two years and the studio was barely making by already. But sometimes I think jank is great to have in a game. It adds a special kind of flavor. A ramshackle charm. You can tell everyone involved was excited by the experimentation, excited about what they were making, and all the post-production interviews feature shockingly happy devs who are proud of what they made. You gotta love people who love their work.
The MattMcMuscles Wha Happen video details the broader behind the scenes production issues, but the basics come down to a simple fact: N-Space thought they were making a shooter with ghost possession segments, Nintendo thought they were making an adventure ghost game with some shooting segments. This split focus impacted the game's reviews from critics: the public found both elements too weak to really give the game much attention.
I'm certainly willing to admit that the game has flaws. Its a very linear game, with only one solution to each puzzle you encounter in the game. I think Nintendo's instinct was right: they really should have leaned into the possession aspect and create an adventure game with all kinds of different options and routes to success.
Even so, I just found the experience overall pleasant. The gun gameplay is janky, but its a pleasant kind of janky. The kind of janky where I'm never annoyed by combat or the occasional death. Because the enemies aren't that advanced, I can actually train my Bad At Gun Combat brain to approach enemies like its own puzzle. Time slows down when you aren't possessing people, and this gives me more time to plan out the room and form a strategy of attack. In one noticeable section, players who are paying attention can possess various wall-mounted guns and clear a path forward for the host you're possessing. Its not an often occurrence and its easy to get out-numbered regardless of planning, but it honestly just works for me.
The split focus of the game also means that the gameplay is honestly changing quite frequently. One chapter involves hopping between various animals to unlock doors, one involves staying with one host to stealth around the facility. Hosts often have different abilities and different weaknesses that can hamper them. Intercut between those chapters are some shooting segments, featuring different kinds of enemies and different weaponry at your disposal.
Its hard to say if more time in the oven would have changed anything for Geist. It had already been delayed for two years and the studio was barely making by already. But sometimes I think jank is great to have in a game. It adds a special kind of flavor. A ramshackle charm. You can tell everyone involved was excited by the experimentation, excited about what they were making, and all the post-production interviews feature shockingly happy devs who are proud of what they made. You gotta love people who love their work.
This isn’t just a game. Geist transcends humanity itself and is the pure essence of living. Nothing will ever be like Geist ever again and the one thing we can do as the world to catch up to this holy Geist is to play video games and praise THE Geist. Jesus gets second place
Geist was a childhood favorite - mostly for the multiplayer. Just the fact you can possess a chef and throw plates as a weapon put it's above other games. Otherwise, in terms of the campaign, it's an alright game. Geist's campaign is cheesy with lots of missed gameplay potential, but still it's decent.
This game was on my wishlist since 2005, and I bought it recently for a fetching $25 just for the privilege of enjoying it 15 years later.
I've cranked out a lot of games this year, some of which had been on what would now be considered my Backlog™ for upwards of a decade. So far, this one has disappointed me the most.
Gameplay is clunky as all get out. The controls are right but they feel wrong. Aiming with the C-Stick is the move, but the look sensitivity is agonizingly slow, and you can't adjust it. Unforgivable. Every shooter of the generation tried to either outdo Halo or at least ape Halo's attributes. I learned after playing this game that it was in development for many years and underwent a lot of revising and fine tuning. The idea that it survived 3 years of development in a world where Halo existed without getting a higher look sensitivity or at least the option to select one is a war crime.
Other things disappointed me too. The graphics are surprisingly not-great and the animations aren't either. The framerate dips a lot which just makes shooting even harder. The story is okay, but considering the story drives the entire game, I found it largely dull. The central conceit is interesting, and the gameplay possibilities promised by it had intrigued me ever since I was a kid. One of the issues is that it ends up being very linear. I always imagined you could approach the game's events from any number of literal or figurative angles, using your ghost abilities creatively, wreaking havoc, and using some ingenuity to progress through the game.
In practice, the ghost abilities are scripted and offer no flexibility. What they do offer is a lot of confusion; even when I knew what the game wanted me to do to advance, I wasn't always sure how it wanted me to do it. Objects in the environment which you can possess aren't visually marked as such until you inspect them, and while it would be lame to just highlight them in a color to make it obvious, it also resulted in my being stuck on more than one occasion when I tore apart an environment looking for whatever object I surely needed to possess and couldn't find. When I finally figured it out, it felt like a triumph as often as it felt like a pain. I groaned a lot playing this game, and I got stuck a lot.
Something about Geist has that undeniable Nintendo charm. The writing in the text prompts you get around the environment are amusing. The way you scare people and solve puzzles, though often annoying, is also sometimes really fun and brought a smile to my face. For all its flaws, it is a Nintendo product and it has that quality about it.
The game is also surprisingly spooky. Whereas I thought the "spookiness" would begin and end with your spirit being separated from your body and allowing you to possess other objects--which could pass for more sci-fi than paranormal--the story absolutely dives into a lot of paranormal/horror content. It was not the tone I was expecting and not a tone I loved. I'm not the biggest horror guy in the world, but I've been known to make exceptions here and there.
Later on, the game also gets pretty challenging. I could go hours without dying and then hit a section that killed me multiple times. The last couple fights are pretty gnarly.
I appreciate Geist. It tries a lot of things. I'm honestly surprised it was as rocky as it was. I expected better from Nintendo, and I expected better from a game faced with so many delays for quality control. When it works, it's good. But it's highly uneven, difficult to figure out, and frustrating to play.
I've cranked out a lot of games this year, some of which had been on what would now be considered my Backlog™ for upwards of a decade. So far, this one has disappointed me the most.
Gameplay is clunky as all get out. The controls are right but they feel wrong. Aiming with the C-Stick is the move, but the look sensitivity is agonizingly slow, and you can't adjust it. Unforgivable. Every shooter of the generation tried to either outdo Halo or at least ape Halo's attributes. I learned after playing this game that it was in development for many years and underwent a lot of revising and fine tuning. The idea that it survived 3 years of development in a world where Halo existed without getting a higher look sensitivity or at least the option to select one is a war crime.
Other things disappointed me too. The graphics are surprisingly not-great and the animations aren't either. The framerate dips a lot which just makes shooting even harder. The story is okay, but considering the story drives the entire game, I found it largely dull. The central conceit is interesting, and the gameplay possibilities promised by it had intrigued me ever since I was a kid. One of the issues is that it ends up being very linear. I always imagined you could approach the game's events from any number of literal or figurative angles, using your ghost abilities creatively, wreaking havoc, and using some ingenuity to progress through the game.
In practice, the ghost abilities are scripted and offer no flexibility. What they do offer is a lot of confusion; even when I knew what the game wanted me to do to advance, I wasn't always sure how it wanted me to do it. Objects in the environment which you can possess aren't visually marked as such until you inspect them, and while it would be lame to just highlight them in a color to make it obvious, it also resulted in my being stuck on more than one occasion when I tore apart an environment looking for whatever object I surely needed to possess and couldn't find. When I finally figured it out, it felt like a triumph as often as it felt like a pain. I groaned a lot playing this game, and I got stuck a lot.
Something about Geist has that undeniable Nintendo charm. The writing in the text prompts you get around the environment are amusing. The way you scare people and solve puzzles, though often annoying, is also sometimes really fun and brought a smile to my face. For all its flaws, it is a Nintendo product and it has that quality about it.
The game is also surprisingly spooky. Whereas I thought the "spookiness" would begin and end with your spirit being separated from your body and allowing you to possess other objects--which could pass for more sci-fi than paranormal--the story absolutely dives into a lot of paranormal/horror content. It was not the tone I was expecting and not a tone I loved. I'm not the biggest horror guy in the world, but I've been known to make exceptions here and there.
Later on, the game also gets pretty challenging. I could go hours without dying and then hit a section that killed me multiple times. The last couple fights are pretty gnarly.
I appreciate Geist. It tries a lot of things. I'm honestly surprised it was as rocky as it was. I expected better from Nintendo, and I expected better from a game faced with so many delays for quality control. When it works, it's good. But it's highly uneven, difficult to figure out, and frustrating to play.
really interesting game with good ideas but my god auto aim in this game is HORRIBLE
One of the few games i regret finishing
This review contains spoilers
Geist is a first person shooter/ghost possession simulator developed by n-Space Inc., the developer of such games like “Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas”, the Nintendo DS ports to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as well as Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes. Why mention these three? These seemed like the most interesting to me out of all of them, considering the rest of their games seem to be ports to older generations or strange shovelware. However, this game was developed out of a desire for a partnership from Nintendo, who was hoping to hit up that Metroid Prime first person shooter sort of vibe for another Nintendo classic. According to the Matt McMuscles video I ended up finding, n-Space heard the call and went to town creating a specific pitch just for them. The game would be created as a fruitful and positive partnership, but one that had a clash of visions between the parent company and the developers themselves. The debut on launch wasn’t exactly solid either, it didn’t sell for shit and it was kinda swept under the rug, even though it was the second Nintendo Gamecube exclusive game to receive the M Rating (other than the beloved cult classic Eternal Darkness).
As for my personal history with the game, the only thing I ever remembered about this game was the cover art and that’s literally it. I didn’t know anything about this game other than seeing it here and there sparingly, though I eventually did get a copy in my quest to collect console exclusive games for all of my systems. This one I picked up at the nearby retro game store for around 60 dollars maybe a couple of years back? I honestly don’t remember, but this was back when I had a lot more disposable income to go ham on. As of recently, I’ve also been trying to hit up all of my consoles and at least beat one video game on each; this year was going to be Wind Waker after beating Breath of the Wild, but having tried it on my CRTV I could barely read any of the text. However, for some reason, I was able to read Geist’s text, and after a couple of buddies gave it a shot, I figured why not because I needed a shorter game after Shadowman. Gonna start off with the plot here because it’s a strange and unexpected one, like something you’d see from a 1990s blockbuster movie of sorts.
Volk’s Lab (Chapter 1): You play as John Raimi, a scientist who works for CR-2, a counter terrorism group who are investigating the activities of the Volks Corporation for…terrorist stuff. Raimi and other CR-2 members are preparing to raid a Volks base located in Southern France in order to rescue Raimi’s old college buddy, a guy named Thomas Bryson. Bryson has been working undercover into the Volks Corporation because CR-2 believes that the corpo has been creating biological weapons. Bryson’s last whereabouts had him relaying info about viruses and demons and shit and so the group raids this mansion compound where they find Bryson and rescue him while he’s doing sciency stuff. After uploading information to the PDA, shit goes haywire and CR-2 are forced to make an attempted escape, which ends in a lot of dead bodies and ghost friendly fire (aka possessing dead bodies and killing everyone in sight), which ends in Bryson and Raimi getting captured. When Raimi comes too, he finds himself strapped to the top of a machine half naked, where the machine forces the spirit out of his own body.
Containment (Chapter 2) cuts to the head of Volks Corporation, Alexander Volks and his butt buddy mercenary leader Rourke, are walking and talking about the “separation process” with the “civie”. Volks apparently thought very highly of Raimi in context with his experiments and as such prepares for him to undergo a brainwashing program. Stuck in some hyper optimistic form of nature, Raimi dwells only in the situation to overtly try to program him to kill and murder. However, he wakes up to a small green ghost girl destroying the machines named Gigi, who wakes you up and helps you escape. Raimi starts to build up his ghost skills and infiltrates a lab, where it’s learned that Bryson is scheduled for a “separation” later that same day. Raimi ends up having to shoot his way through the sector and learns that Bryson is still alive and is scheduled for the same process at a later date. Along the way he has a fight with Cord, an underling of Rourke’s, who escapes before Raimi shoots through tons of goons and then slips away into a pipe.
Separation (Chapter 3): The next time you see Raimi, he pops out of the pipe and into a dog bowl, which he uses to scare the nearby pupper so he can escape in his quest to free Bryson. He possesses an engineer and makes his way up to the control room which controls the laser hosting the Separation Process, before possessing the laser and destroying the entire machine as Bryson is strapped to the top. Not only does this halt the process, but also opens up an entire portal to the ghost underworld or whatever you call it in what you could call supernatural Half-Life on the Gamecube. In fact before I continue, in essence the game feels like it could be Half Life on the Gamecube, but just with ghost possession and such. Between the secret base in the desert, looping back around to certain areas, the soldiers, random creatures you have to fight and probably a lot more than I can note, it’s a strange and familiar feeling that I enjoy and adds a couple of notches onto the likeability meter for me. Regardless, Raimi possesses a mechanical engineer guy with a rivet gun and enters another boss fight with Cord that involves possessing everyone in a room and just going to town on Cord, and it’s here that Cord finally kicks the bucket. After Raimi leaves, Rourke kills an engineer in an attempt to keep the laser alive and brings forth a full demon ghost invasion before he initiates a quarantine and goes to meet with Volks.
Medical (Chapter 4) has Raimi popping out into a cave and infiltrating the medical unit, where through a cutscene we learn that Bryson is basically in some sort of vegetative coma, in which he needs a counter agent to come out of or else he flatlines. Rourke doesn’t give a shit though and pimp slaps a doctor lady in order to send the message to let the guy die. Back in the spirit world, Gigi talks to Raimi about her fears of the spirit world being opened. Raimi makes his way to the women’s shower room…yes it’s as weird as it sounds but it’s 2005 and everyone’s covered in soap suds or towels. Through some crazy DOOM 3 mirror shit, he scares the hell out of the doctor lady (named Samantha) and possesses her body before throwing on some clothes and exploring the facility. “Sam Raimi” (as I call her for now), goes to find Bryson in the lab before alien ghosts (?) pop out of the vents and kill the guards, causing chaos to erupt and lots of fire. Sam Raimi grabs a fire extinguisher and makes her way to the Morgue downstairs, fighting through more aliens and grabbing the counter agent out of the freezer. Sam comes back to save Bryson but he’s weak, and he also SOMEHOW recognizes that Raimi is possessing this doctor due to the fact that he never fucking speaks and it’s somehow one of the most unintentional funniest gags in the game. Like how the fuck do you recognize that this female doctor is your mute best friend from college? What gave you that idea? Do you even know that he’s a ghost now? Fuck if I know, shit’s mad weird. Regardless a soldier pops into the meet and greet before a weak Bryson slashes the dude in the hell and finishes him off. Sam Raimi steals soldier gear off the dead guy and puts her head in a bun before shooting their way out of the facility. They make their way to an elevator where Sam Raimi and Bryson confirm their suspicions that “Project Zed” has nothing to do with zombies before a giant creature named “The Hydra” swallows Bryson whole. Sam Raimi shoots this thing like fifty thousand fucking times before the shell snaps and the creature slithers into a whole. Bryson is alive though and covered in blue goo so very radical save on their end.
Escape (Chapter 5) is the longest chapter I think, and it starts with the reveal that Alexander Volks is actually possessed by a demon, which Rourke doesn’t know and can’t figure out I guess because why else would an old fuck in a Bond villain chair try to contact the spirit world? It doesn’t matter though as Sam Raimi fights her way through a facility before promptly being abandoned by the host to her own shit. Now just as Raimi, he floats and slips his way through the facility to possess boxes, rats and then finally a chef which he uses to poison an entire group of soldiers. Bryson has recovered now, and meets up with Chef Raimi to scheme their way into the control room. Raimi possesses a scientist guy before contacting his buddies at CR-2 for extraction in the radio room before finally breaking into the control room. It’s here where they both learn that Raimi’s body is still around and in Volk’s possession as well as learning what Project Zed is. Project Zed’s main goal is about gathering an army of ghosts, whose job it is (under Volk’s leadership) to possess a bunch of people at the “Paris Summit” and go to town assassinating certain leaders and saving others in order to fulfill a “New World Order” design under Volk’s rule. The urge to get the data to CR-2 presents itself and the two make their great escape which involves a lengthy process that includes: possessing turrets, possessing a motorcycle during an octane high action chase sequence before finally taking down four anti-air units to make way for evac. However, shit goes bad anyways and as Bryson escapes on the helicopter, some douchebag possessing Raimi’s OG body blows it up. Raimi gives chase to his old body and the next chapter comes up.
Chapter 6 (aka Gigi) is the exposition dump chapter, and it starts with Volks giving orders to his demon buddy possessing old Raimi to “keep the ghost contained and out of the facility”. That doesn’t really happen though as he just blows up a bridge before running off. Raimi instead makes his way through an old dilapidated mansion, and the origin story of Volks is acquired. He’s the brother of Gigi, the green ghost, and they both used to live at this mansion with their Aunt Giselle who built the place. Tragedy started years ago when the kids were at the big ass tree and Gigi fell off attempting to annoy Alexander, smacking her head on the ground below. Sadly having cracked her neck, and with her older brother taking an interest in the occult (the books he reads coming from his aunt), he decides in childhood nativity to resurrect her and everything goes horribly wrong. Gigi becomes a ghost and Alex is smacked by a giant demon, who leaves a mark that slowly possesses him over time. Gigi brings Raimi to a hole in the wall, and uses scare tactics to possess a soldier and proceeds through a destroyed subway station. However, he runs into a group of soldiers who set up an ambush and hit him with some ghost ray stuff which not only kills the host body (I think) but hurts him in the spirit world as well. Using Raimi’s OG body as bait, Volks recaptures Raimi and sticks him back into the brainwashing machine, but not before Rourke pops up and tells him that he’ll personally kill the ghost himself after the summit is done.
Captured (Chapter 7) is another long chapter like 5 and starts with Volks and possessed Raimi delivering plot exposition about brainwashing and their plans before ghost Raimi is thrown into a simulation. In here, Ghost Raimi is forced into several training exercises that involve CIA level black ops and assassinations and is probably one of the more interesting yet kind of frustrating chapters? However, an explosion rumbles everything and one of the demon monster things kills and breaks shit, which helps Raimi out of his containment unit in a twist of irony. Raimi goes about turning the power back and possessing some scientists with clever gags and some sick ass firepower. Using this sick ass firepower, he runs into the Hydra again below in the caves and slays it before disembarking his former host and jumping into a slip that leads to the auditorium where Volks is at. Volks becomes a full ghost demon and gives other brainwashed spectral assassins a speech on the downfall of humanity, the stupidity of politicians and talks about the “end of man”.
Chapter 8 (Rourke) begins with a time limit: the summit is in an hour and Volks charges Rourke with making sure no more complications arise. However, that doesn’t work for long as Raimi does his damndest to make sure he can possess Rourke. This consists of lifting up a sheet to scare his secretary, finding a white rat and leading other rats to their death, possessing the animal trainer and bringing her dog along for the ride. It was hinted at in Chapter 3 that Rourke does NOT like dogs in the slightest, and that finally comes to fruition here. Rourke has a near panic attack and attempts to kill the dog but that fails and ends in possessing the mercenary leader himself. Making his way through a restricted area, Rourke Raimi grabs some sick ass power armor and shoots his way through multiple facilities. An attempted ambush by the anti-ghost unit happens again but they’re all put down before Possessed Raimi taunts you to give chase. You end up abandoning Rourke to save Raimi’s old body (with the threat of old Raimi being crushed), but in return the demon possessing you takes over Rourke’s body. A boss battle commences which involves a lot of shooting that ends in Rourke’s death before you end up blowing the demon ghost up with a lot of grenades from the launcher.
Chapter 9 (Volks) has Raimi making his way up to the personnel transport holding the ghosts and shooting it down with both the anti-air launcher and a lot of machine gun fire. Following this, all the ghosts pop out and attempt to smash open your booty hole but end up dying with a lot of grenades…again. The rest of the chapter mainly consists of Raimi shooting through goons and soldiers before running into two giant statues that attempt to squash you violently. What are these statues? Who knows. They just kind of come out of nowhere and my strange headcanon for the game is that it’s demonic possession. Once Raimi destroys them, he enters the main portal room where Volk goes off on his evil speech about how humans are weak and messed up his plans before threatening to kill Raimi. This goes absolutely nowhere as it ends with Volks flopping out of his flying chair in death. Gigi attempts to mourn her now dead brother before the demon pulls her inside in a trippy futuristic 90s looking spirit sequence and you end up fighting the demon in a way that feels reminiscent to some weird hacking session in a cyberpunk game. Either way the little boy is still trapped and Raimi fights to destroy the demon once and for all. It ends with the Demon dying and the facility blowing up, though Alexander and Gigi reunite in the afterlife in peace, while Raimi escapes the facility and is saved in a helicopter by Bryson, the dog from earlier, and the blonde doctor that Raimi possessed earlier before flying off into the sunset.
The plot of Geist is one of those plots that to me felt interesting, but not in a super in depth sense. It has the vibe of a hollywood blockbuster, something fun and such for the audience to watch but not with so much in depth lore and plot that it’s built for a whole franchise or sequels. It has it’s main plot expositions in one chapter and honestly the game’s plot feels more revolved around the set pieces involving possession. The character development for Raimi consists of “old buddy” and “mute fucker” while anyone else of note in the story is kind of just there. The most interesting ones are Gigi and Alexander and they have the most motive and such even if it’s simplified. My question mainly involves plot holes right, like who is Aunt Giselle? Why does she have occult books for her nephew to read? Who was the demon possessing Volks? Who were these creatures? Why were there demon aliens and ghosts? Who were the golems at the end? How did Sam (I think that’s her name? Apologies if I forget) get out and use her guns when she was just a scientist before? Where are they going now? Why was the Volks Corporation getting investigated to begin with? Who knows, and honestly this isn’t the kind of game that really cares for those types of questions. That’s perfectly fine, not everything needs to be some sort of hit franchise thing and as a one off it’s good but if you end up wanting to play the game, come into it with the expectation of just having a fun time and that’s it.
Geist’s gameplay is probably the most interesting part of the entire experience playing it. The whole premise has two sides of it: either it’s a first person shooter or you’re playing as the ghost possessing people. In order to possess people they have to be in full fear mode, in which their character model is surrounded by a red outline of sorts. However, in order to do that, you’ll need to scare them and oftentimes you’ll need to possess multiple nearby objects (which are always available) in order to scare them. The thing about these possession mechanics is that these sections actually provide the most thinking AND the most fun, and once the game turns into an FPS that’s when the experience is kinda iffy. These possession mechanics are like a puzzle in itself, where you kind of have to figure out what’ll scare the person you’re trying to possess. It’s also pretty damn cool that you’re able to see the first person perspective of say, inside of a television or from the perspective of a pipe as you’re about to make it burst. There’s also a ghost health mechanic that you have that’s introduced in the second level but honestly feels kind of useless besides two separate occasions with anti-ghost units as they’re the only ones who can damage you EVEN if they have health stuff for the ghost placed everywhere. Unless I’m missing something entirely, which in case I guess I’m either lucky or dumb but if something is only used twice, placing ghost health things in places where there’s no danger kind of feels pointless but I digress.
Sometimes you’ll also run into collectibles, of which there are two versions: one of which you’ll only be able to collect as a physical host and the other of which you’ll only be able to unlock as Ghost Raimi. They don’t really do much except unlock multiplayer characters and levels, but if that’s the sort of thing you like, then it’s good. You’ll also unlock some of the ghost collectibles by jumping through “slips”, little holes created in random spots on the floor or walls that’ll kick you to another location on the map. Some of these collectibles are a bitch to find simply because it would be in a place you wouldn’t expect (like the bottom of a giant pit) as a ghost because you automatically assume heights with instant death but it’s nothing that a guide can’t fix. I also want to add that for the most part, humans and animals take scaring before possession, but generally other than that you can possess anything, or anything within reason I should say. There isn’t really a huge sandbox with possession, you can’t take the form of a pencil on a desk or something, it’s mostly structured and scripted objects that you can form into but at the same time like the effort is still there. Most of the other stuff is just flavored text which describes what the objects are.
The shooting itself isn’t exactly that bad either to be honest. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about the actual combat itself and in all honesty I never really felt like I had a problem with it? It didn’t feel as good as say something like Halo or Call of Duty, but it felt serviceable and adequate without feeling like it was a bullet sponge cacophony. The only real mechanics for the shooting involves healing yourself with nearby medkits, and perhaps pressing the Z button to use a grenade launcher as an example and you’ll always have infinite ammo so that’s not really a big deal. Most enemies in terms of this combat as well are also pushovers, albeit pushovers whose AI are both really dumb and still attempt to kill you. That is until the latter half of the campaign, where the developers decided to push these enemies that possess your body in order to drag you towards something to die or to get shot out in public by others. While in concept it’s a cool idea, in actual game design it’s really fucking obnoxious, especially in the last level after you take down the helicopter. I remember dying once or twice to this and having to actively jank the game by hiding out in an area with a destroyed fence while these ghosts attempt to possess me and having to lure them out slowly one by one because otherwise they’d just drag my ass into the corpse of the nearby fiery helicopter I JUST took down. Other than that, you’ll fight some alien creatures too here and there but nothing really crazy. Overall, the combat, while it makes up a huge portion of the game, isn’t something that I hate and in fact feels decent but it didn’t really stand out in any way either. For me however, that’s okay because I’d rather it be average than be a fucking slog. Besides, I think most people are here for the ghost possession stuff, though if there’s one aspect of combat that I didn’t really care for it’s the boss battles.
I’ll say my experiences with the boss battles were a mixed bag for me, some of them are okay and just require constantly shooting at one spot while some require a bit of puzzling to do and were generally the better ones. Some of my least favorite boss fights include the one against Cord, one of the mercenaries under supporting antagonist Rourke. His boss fights require both ghost powers AND shooting people. In the first battle you have to kind of duck and weave all of his bullets and then switch to ghost when he throws his grenades. Now time slows down luckily, but my experience was that I would possess the grenade, roll it over to him and fuckin’ bada boom right? But while waiting for the animation to blow up and switch to ghost he’ll be shooting me and taking part of my health down unless I’m behind a certain cover and/or lucky, so unless I was doing it wrong that was a frustrating boss. The last one with Cord is more of a puzzle, where you have to switch back and forth between several different soldiers and turrets in one room, ignoring everyone else and just constantly pumping Cord full of bullets until the last corpse remains. Speaking of Cord, I had a weird glitch where I tried to get a collectible in Cord’s first boss room, but apparently I died after the cutscene but it still kicked me out to the next room anyways once I accepted the checkpoint. Luckily I restarted from the last checkpoint and it left me in that boss room but I was still really fucking annoyed that I almost lost a collectible due to some weird after cutscene death trickery bullshit. Other boss battles include a giant bullet sponge creature coming out of the ground that overstays its welcome a bit, two giant statues and a flying fat man ghost. My main issue with some of these other battles include the fact that they’re either monotonously long but simple and are just there to waste time or just feel unfair in some aspects like those two statues who rushed me straight after a cutscene where I took one down and killed me instantly.
In fact, that seems to be a strange pacing problem for the game. The beginning half to a bit into the third it’s actually pretty cool and clever with how it uses its game mechanics before it turns into a middling shooter around the last third or so. That’s not to say it’s bad or unbearable, but it definitely would have landed on its feet better instead of stumbling around. Some fun bits from the first two thirds of the game include set pieces like possessing a motorcycle while juggling not getting shot and exploding other props to make a path ahead of you; or alternatively a slower paced one involves taking over a chef and poisoning some customers with rat poison, or earlier than those two involve possessing a naked woman in the shower (notable because it’s weird but there are soap suds around the parts so I guess that’s better? I don’t know, I guess 2005 was pervert season). The variation between the set pieces is pretty good in all honesty, one time you’ll be hopping around riveting beams together and the next there’s a protection mission with your ghost form and then it’s a chase sequence. However, again it could’ve used a stronger third act; that’s not to say the last third doesn’t have stuff in it, in fact you get to possess a dog (adorable) and rats (just adorable depending on whom you ask) with their own sort of puzzle mechanics as well. It just means that it feels kind of middling throughout the final leg of the game, even if it has some fun stuff sprinkled in here and there.
Overall, I’ve heard alot of mixed things about the controls and the gameplay design from others. My feeling on that is that it’s totally valid to not care for the core gameplay, it has its issues and would have perhaps been a little bit better in certain departments. However, there’s something about the time that I played it where for the most part I was honestly having a fun time (besides boss battles and ghost possessor enemies). Even the controls I heard so many complaints about to me felt decent enough to where it wasn’t honestly a problem for me. I guess if I were to give a complaint about my time, it’s that sometimes it took me a while to grasp what objects needed to be possessed for progression purposes though I also would have just been a giant dunce. I remember needing to restart the last section in the Escape chapter due to figuring out the turrets that had me frustrated at first until I learned what to do. The escape thing with the motorcycle, while cool, maybe could’ve been choreographed better. I guess I wasn’t appreciative of having to replay the entirety of Chapter 6 again due to the fact there seemingly weren't many checkpoints and the game froze on me once or twice though there would have actually been checkpoints and I forgot. Overall I don’t know, certain aspects were mixed but overall it was a good time and I had my joy with it, especially due to the nostalgic feeling of playing the game on the GameCube. Who knows, though I’d say for the average player that most people would give it a shoulder shrug.
There’s also a multiplayer for those who went and got all the collectibles in the game like I did, however I didn’t really play the multiplayer nor knew anyone who wanted to give it a try. I can tell you however that a lot of people seemed to have fun with the possession mechanics in it and in all honesty, it looks like it could be one of the old Timesplitters games just from how wacky it is. Maybe one of these days if I play it with friends, I’ll give this section a rewrite and let you know how it is.
The sound design to Geist is a bit of an interesting one. If we’re going to start with voice acting, we’ll start with the fact that the third Raimi brother does not speak in the slightest. The entire time that you go through the game you’ll be silent and other people will be talking to you as if you’re having a conversation with them. It’s amusing and gets even more so when you possess a woman and rescue your buddy, who basically figures out your Raimi…somehow. In fact, for the most part there isn’t any in game voiceover at all besides a few bits here and there. When you greet people, they’ll play a generic voice clip (like Bryson just saying “Raimi”) while the actual words he’s saying are displayed with separate text. It’s not a bad thing persay, I didn’t really have a problem with that, though I do think it’s funny that the subtitles covered half of the lower screen on my CRTV. Voice acting is also fine for the most part, everyone does their job and blends in seamlessly to the game’s world. There aren’t any big names or even memorable performances for the most part that I specifically remember, though again I’m perfectly okay with it. The actual sounds for the rest of the game are decent though, with a lot of ear pleasers like rope sounds and footsteps, though I feel like the weapon sounds can be hit or miss. The pistol sounds straight out of Timesplitters to be honest, and they probably got it from the same sound pack. The AUG sounds like it should be a heavier weapon than it actually is, in fact most of the weapons sound like they come straight from the sound packs that other games use. It’s also fine, but don’t really feel like they have an originality to them otherwise. It is what it is though for the most part, and I can understand the need to get what you can get from the places you can get them from.
Geist’s soundtrack, composed by Michael Reed and Brad Martin is a very orchestral game, filled with choirs, heavy strings and a sort of bombasticness to it for a large portion of the run time. My personal feelings on it go along the lines of that it’s a decent score, and fits the game in the 2004-5 era that it encapsulates. However, it’s also for the most part just kind of okay to me. There aren’t really any tracks that pop out, nothing that really makes me wanna download it and listen to it often. In fact, the game kind of feels like it’s ripping on the whole Halo orchestral soundtrack vibe. Keep in mind that this isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’s perfectly okay for it to blend into the background as long as it enhances what the game’s atmosphere is about and for the most part it does that decently enough. If I were to point out one track though that’s kind of odd, I believe it would be Juliet. See, in game, there’s a part where you need to possess a bunch of mice and force them to activate all of the mouse traps in order for them to get killed so you can make your way to the exit as the main mouse that needs to go back to their owner. Thing is that during this, you get music that straight up sounds like it could come from fuckin’ Matilda or some shit and it’s a really bizarre dissonance piece that I have no feelings on what to make of it.
What I can say about the graphics and art direction is this: whilst the game runs on the Gamecube and as such looks very similar to Metroid Prime in terms of blocky graphics, it also personally looks not only kind of improved in some ways but in all honesty gave me a lot of nostalgia for the old Gamecube days even if I had never played the game once in my life. I never really noticed anything bad graphically, though I’ll admit I never really focused too much on how good a game looks HD quality wise to the extent that others would be. The art design and atmosphere surrounding it however in all honesty, I’ll say that I enjoyed it for the most part. In a lot of ways it reminded me of a semi-worse version of Half Life with ghost possession: for the most part you’re at a military base in the desert and the only thing you’ll be seeing is cold steel and warm, crusty orange rocks on the outside. It’s not bad, though I’ll admit I wish there was a bit more variation in the environment. I’ll also say that for some reason, there are people who classify this as a horror game just because there were ghosts and possession. I’ll tell you from first hand experience that there’s no way in hell that this game was trying to be a horror game in any way shape or form, and if it was then it’s a bad one considering there wasn’t anything actually scary or any attempt at actually scaring anyone.
Geist to me was one of those games that while it flopped with the finances and has some frustrating qualities, it’s also one of those games that really grew on me despite the frustrations and for the most part I left the game feeling pretty decent about it. I feel like it’s one of those underrated titles that deserve a bit more attention and perhaps a backwards compatibility thing with the Switch. Will that ever happen? No, probably not and as always it’s a damn shame. It’s kind of forgotten in time, a distant memory of a memory that few people would even have the capacity TO remember anything other than the cool ass cover art. I’d say maybe Nightdive could potentially remaster it but considering how close to the chest Nintendo is with their property, I’ll sadly say that the game will probably just fade into obscurity and will have less of a chance than even fellow M Rated Eternal Darkness would. It doesn’t exactly help that for the rest of their years until the end their portfolio mostly consisted of more ports and more shovelware before they inevitably closed shop around 2016. As for gaming for the rest of the year, I have to write up reviews for Eternal Evil and probably Dead Island soon but after that besides some Steam games, I’ll probably just end up chilling out and playing some Lost Judgment til’ the end in anticipation for 2024.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geist_(video_game)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Geist
https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/8iaye9/nintendo_rewind_geist_2005/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdHBotsjvLU&ab_channel=MattMcMuscles
https://www.destructoid.com/geist-developer-closed-down-after-21-years/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQpE56aG06s&ab_channel=GoldMetalSonic
https://www.nsidr.com/archive/interview-n-space/
http://cube.gamespy.com/gamecube/geist/641298p5.html
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/meteos-geist-kirby-and-yoshi-coming-in-june/1100-6121267/
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/killer-7-in-stores-7-7-no-geist-until-august/1100-6126759/
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/2233/gdc-2005-geist-interview-with-jeff-kalles
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/2260/the-geist-interview
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=8382.550
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gamecube/914965-geist/faqs/38594
https://www.ign.com/wikis/geist/Walkthrough_-_Volks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oVK07WA_UY&list=PLIWIHaWddtA00qRRNieKzig3tK4tcin
FG&index=19&ab_channel=chasebergamot
https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/geist-ost-gamecube
As for my personal history with the game, the only thing I ever remembered about this game was the cover art and that’s literally it. I didn’t know anything about this game other than seeing it here and there sparingly, though I eventually did get a copy in my quest to collect console exclusive games for all of my systems. This one I picked up at the nearby retro game store for around 60 dollars maybe a couple of years back? I honestly don’t remember, but this was back when I had a lot more disposable income to go ham on. As of recently, I’ve also been trying to hit up all of my consoles and at least beat one video game on each; this year was going to be Wind Waker after beating Breath of the Wild, but having tried it on my CRTV I could barely read any of the text. However, for some reason, I was able to read Geist’s text, and after a couple of buddies gave it a shot, I figured why not because I needed a shorter game after Shadowman. Gonna start off with the plot here because it’s a strange and unexpected one, like something you’d see from a 1990s blockbuster movie of sorts.
Volk’s Lab (Chapter 1): You play as John Raimi, a scientist who works for CR-2, a counter terrorism group who are investigating the activities of the Volks Corporation for…terrorist stuff. Raimi and other CR-2 members are preparing to raid a Volks base located in Southern France in order to rescue Raimi’s old college buddy, a guy named Thomas Bryson. Bryson has been working undercover into the Volks Corporation because CR-2 believes that the corpo has been creating biological weapons. Bryson’s last whereabouts had him relaying info about viruses and demons and shit and so the group raids this mansion compound where they find Bryson and rescue him while he’s doing sciency stuff. After uploading information to the PDA, shit goes haywire and CR-2 are forced to make an attempted escape, which ends in a lot of dead bodies and ghost friendly fire (aka possessing dead bodies and killing everyone in sight), which ends in Bryson and Raimi getting captured. When Raimi comes too, he finds himself strapped to the top of a machine half naked, where the machine forces the spirit out of his own body.
Containment (Chapter 2) cuts to the head of Volks Corporation, Alexander Volks and his butt buddy mercenary leader Rourke, are walking and talking about the “separation process” with the “civie”. Volks apparently thought very highly of Raimi in context with his experiments and as such prepares for him to undergo a brainwashing program. Stuck in some hyper optimistic form of nature, Raimi dwells only in the situation to overtly try to program him to kill and murder. However, he wakes up to a small green ghost girl destroying the machines named Gigi, who wakes you up and helps you escape. Raimi starts to build up his ghost skills and infiltrates a lab, where it’s learned that Bryson is scheduled for a “separation” later that same day. Raimi ends up having to shoot his way through the sector and learns that Bryson is still alive and is scheduled for the same process at a later date. Along the way he has a fight with Cord, an underling of Rourke’s, who escapes before Raimi shoots through tons of goons and then slips away into a pipe.
Separation (Chapter 3): The next time you see Raimi, he pops out of the pipe and into a dog bowl, which he uses to scare the nearby pupper so he can escape in his quest to free Bryson. He possesses an engineer and makes his way up to the control room which controls the laser hosting the Separation Process, before possessing the laser and destroying the entire machine as Bryson is strapped to the top. Not only does this halt the process, but also opens up an entire portal to the ghost underworld or whatever you call it in what you could call supernatural Half-Life on the Gamecube. In fact before I continue, in essence the game feels like it could be Half Life on the Gamecube, but just with ghost possession and such. Between the secret base in the desert, looping back around to certain areas, the soldiers, random creatures you have to fight and probably a lot more than I can note, it’s a strange and familiar feeling that I enjoy and adds a couple of notches onto the likeability meter for me. Regardless, Raimi possesses a mechanical engineer guy with a rivet gun and enters another boss fight with Cord that involves possessing everyone in a room and just going to town on Cord, and it’s here that Cord finally kicks the bucket. After Raimi leaves, Rourke kills an engineer in an attempt to keep the laser alive and brings forth a full demon ghost invasion before he initiates a quarantine and goes to meet with Volks.
Medical (Chapter 4) has Raimi popping out into a cave and infiltrating the medical unit, where through a cutscene we learn that Bryson is basically in some sort of vegetative coma, in which he needs a counter agent to come out of or else he flatlines. Rourke doesn’t give a shit though and pimp slaps a doctor lady in order to send the message to let the guy die. Back in the spirit world, Gigi talks to Raimi about her fears of the spirit world being opened. Raimi makes his way to the women’s shower room…yes it’s as weird as it sounds but it’s 2005 and everyone’s covered in soap suds or towels. Through some crazy DOOM 3 mirror shit, he scares the hell out of the doctor lady (named Samantha) and possesses her body before throwing on some clothes and exploring the facility. “Sam Raimi” (as I call her for now), goes to find Bryson in the lab before alien ghosts (?) pop out of the vents and kill the guards, causing chaos to erupt and lots of fire. Sam Raimi grabs a fire extinguisher and makes her way to the Morgue downstairs, fighting through more aliens and grabbing the counter agent out of the freezer. Sam comes back to save Bryson but he’s weak, and he also SOMEHOW recognizes that Raimi is possessing this doctor due to the fact that he never fucking speaks and it’s somehow one of the most unintentional funniest gags in the game. Like how the fuck do you recognize that this female doctor is your mute best friend from college? What gave you that idea? Do you even know that he’s a ghost now? Fuck if I know, shit’s mad weird. Regardless a soldier pops into the meet and greet before a weak Bryson slashes the dude in the hell and finishes him off. Sam Raimi steals soldier gear off the dead guy and puts her head in a bun before shooting their way out of the facility. They make their way to an elevator where Sam Raimi and Bryson confirm their suspicions that “Project Zed” has nothing to do with zombies before a giant creature named “The Hydra” swallows Bryson whole. Sam Raimi shoots this thing like fifty thousand fucking times before the shell snaps and the creature slithers into a whole. Bryson is alive though and covered in blue goo so very radical save on their end.
Escape (Chapter 5) is the longest chapter I think, and it starts with the reveal that Alexander Volks is actually possessed by a demon, which Rourke doesn’t know and can’t figure out I guess because why else would an old fuck in a Bond villain chair try to contact the spirit world? It doesn’t matter though as Sam Raimi fights her way through a facility before promptly being abandoned by the host to her own shit. Now just as Raimi, he floats and slips his way through the facility to possess boxes, rats and then finally a chef which he uses to poison an entire group of soldiers. Bryson has recovered now, and meets up with Chef Raimi to scheme their way into the control room. Raimi possesses a scientist guy before contacting his buddies at CR-2 for extraction in the radio room before finally breaking into the control room. It’s here where they both learn that Raimi’s body is still around and in Volk’s possession as well as learning what Project Zed is. Project Zed’s main goal is about gathering an army of ghosts, whose job it is (under Volk’s leadership) to possess a bunch of people at the “Paris Summit” and go to town assassinating certain leaders and saving others in order to fulfill a “New World Order” design under Volk’s rule. The urge to get the data to CR-2 presents itself and the two make their great escape which involves a lengthy process that includes: possessing turrets, possessing a motorcycle during an octane high action chase sequence before finally taking down four anti-air units to make way for evac. However, shit goes bad anyways and as Bryson escapes on the helicopter, some douchebag possessing Raimi’s OG body blows it up. Raimi gives chase to his old body and the next chapter comes up.
Chapter 6 (aka Gigi) is the exposition dump chapter, and it starts with Volks giving orders to his demon buddy possessing old Raimi to “keep the ghost contained and out of the facility”. That doesn’t really happen though as he just blows up a bridge before running off. Raimi instead makes his way through an old dilapidated mansion, and the origin story of Volks is acquired. He’s the brother of Gigi, the green ghost, and they both used to live at this mansion with their Aunt Giselle who built the place. Tragedy started years ago when the kids were at the big ass tree and Gigi fell off attempting to annoy Alexander, smacking her head on the ground below. Sadly having cracked her neck, and with her older brother taking an interest in the occult (the books he reads coming from his aunt), he decides in childhood nativity to resurrect her and everything goes horribly wrong. Gigi becomes a ghost and Alex is smacked by a giant demon, who leaves a mark that slowly possesses him over time. Gigi brings Raimi to a hole in the wall, and uses scare tactics to possess a soldier and proceeds through a destroyed subway station. However, he runs into a group of soldiers who set up an ambush and hit him with some ghost ray stuff which not only kills the host body (I think) but hurts him in the spirit world as well. Using Raimi’s OG body as bait, Volks recaptures Raimi and sticks him back into the brainwashing machine, but not before Rourke pops up and tells him that he’ll personally kill the ghost himself after the summit is done.
Captured (Chapter 7) is another long chapter like 5 and starts with Volks and possessed Raimi delivering plot exposition about brainwashing and their plans before ghost Raimi is thrown into a simulation. In here, Ghost Raimi is forced into several training exercises that involve CIA level black ops and assassinations and is probably one of the more interesting yet kind of frustrating chapters? However, an explosion rumbles everything and one of the demon monster things kills and breaks shit, which helps Raimi out of his containment unit in a twist of irony. Raimi goes about turning the power back and possessing some scientists with clever gags and some sick ass firepower. Using this sick ass firepower, he runs into the Hydra again below in the caves and slays it before disembarking his former host and jumping into a slip that leads to the auditorium where Volks is at. Volks becomes a full ghost demon and gives other brainwashed spectral assassins a speech on the downfall of humanity, the stupidity of politicians and talks about the “end of man”.
Chapter 8 (Rourke) begins with a time limit: the summit is in an hour and Volks charges Rourke with making sure no more complications arise. However, that doesn’t work for long as Raimi does his damndest to make sure he can possess Rourke. This consists of lifting up a sheet to scare his secretary, finding a white rat and leading other rats to their death, possessing the animal trainer and bringing her dog along for the ride. It was hinted at in Chapter 3 that Rourke does NOT like dogs in the slightest, and that finally comes to fruition here. Rourke has a near panic attack and attempts to kill the dog but that fails and ends in possessing the mercenary leader himself. Making his way through a restricted area, Rourke Raimi grabs some sick ass power armor and shoots his way through multiple facilities. An attempted ambush by the anti-ghost unit happens again but they’re all put down before Possessed Raimi taunts you to give chase. You end up abandoning Rourke to save Raimi’s old body (with the threat of old Raimi being crushed), but in return the demon possessing you takes over Rourke’s body. A boss battle commences which involves a lot of shooting that ends in Rourke’s death before you end up blowing the demon ghost up with a lot of grenades from the launcher.
Chapter 9 (Volks) has Raimi making his way up to the personnel transport holding the ghosts and shooting it down with both the anti-air launcher and a lot of machine gun fire. Following this, all the ghosts pop out and attempt to smash open your booty hole but end up dying with a lot of grenades…again. The rest of the chapter mainly consists of Raimi shooting through goons and soldiers before running into two giant statues that attempt to squash you violently. What are these statues? Who knows. They just kind of come out of nowhere and my strange headcanon for the game is that it’s demonic possession. Once Raimi destroys them, he enters the main portal room where Volk goes off on his evil speech about how humans are weak and messed up his plans before threatening to kill Raimi. This goes absolutely nowhere as it ends with Volks flopping out of his flying chair in death. Gigi attempts to mourn her now dead brother before the demon pulls her inside in a trippy futuristic 90s looking spirit sequence and you end up fighting the demon in a way that feels reminiscent to some weird hacking session in a cyberpunk game. Either way the little boy is still trapped and Raimi fights to destroy the demon once and for all. It ends with the Demon dying and the facility blowing up, though Alexander and Gigi reunite in the afterlife in peace, while Raimi escapes the facility and is saved in a helicopter by Bryson, the dog from earlier, and the blonde doctor that Raimi possessed earlier before flying off into the sunset.
The plot of Geist is one of those plots that to me felt interesting, but not in a super in depth sense. It has the vibe of a hollywood blockbuster, something fun and such for the audience to watch but not with so much in depth lore and plot that it’s built for a whole franchise or sequels. It has it’s main plot expositions in one chapter and honestly the game’s plot feels more revolved around the set pieces involving possession. The character development for Raimi consists of “old buddy” and “mute fucker” while anyone else of note in the story is kind of just there. The most interesting ones are Gigi and Alexander and they have the most motive and such even if it’s simplified. My question mainly involves plot holes right, like who is Aunt Giselle? Why does she have occult books for her nephew to read? Who was the demon possessing Volks? Who were these creatures? Why were there demon aliens and ghosts? Who were the golems at the end? How did Sam (I think that’s her name? Apologies if I forget) get out and use her guns when she was just a scientist before? Where are they going now? Why was the Volks Corporation getting investigated to begin with? Who knows, and honestly this isn’t the kind of game that really cares for those types of questions. That’s perfectly fine, not everything needs to be some sort of hit franchise thing and as a one off it’s good but if you end up wanting to play the game, come into it with the expectation of just having a fun time and that’s it.
Geist’s gameplay is probably the most interesting part of the entire experience playing it. The whole premise has two sides of it: either it’s a first person shooter or you’re playing as the ghost possessing people. In order to possess people they have to be in full fear mode, in which their character model is surrounded by a red outline of sorts. However, in order to do that, you’ll need to scare them and oftentimes you’ll need to possess multiple nearby objects (which are always available) in order to scare them. The thing about these possession mechanics is that these sections actually provide the most thinking AND the most fun, and once the game turns into an FPS that’s when the experience is kinda iffy. These possession mechanics are like a puzzle in itself, where you kind of have to figure out what’ll scare the person you’re trying to possess. It’s also pretty damn cool that you’re able to see the first person perspective of say, inside of a television or from the perspective of a pipe as you’re about to make it burst. There’s also a ghost health mechanic that you have that’s introduced in the second level but honestly feels kind of useless besides two separate occasions with anti-ghost units as they’re the only ones who can damage you EVEN if they have health stuff for the ghost placed everywhere. Unless I’m missing something entirely, which in case I guess I’m either lucky or dumb but if something is only used twice, placing ghost health things in places where there’s no danger kind of feels pointless but I digress.
Sometimes you’ll also run into collectibles, of which there are two versions: one of which you’ll only be able to collect as a physical host and the other of which you’ll only be able to unlock as Ghost Raimi. They don’t really do much except unlock multiplayer characters and levels, but if that’s the sort of thing you like, then it’s good. You’ll also unlock some of the ghost collectibles by jumping through “slips”, little holes created in random spots on the floor or walls that’ll kick you to another location on the map. Some of these collectibles are a bitch to find simply because it would be in a place you wouldn’t expect (like the bottom of a giant pit) as a ghost because you automatically assume heights with instant death but it’s nothing that a guide can’t fix. I also want to add that for the most part, humans and animals take scaring before possession, but generally other than that you can possess anything, or anything within reason I should say. There isn’t really a huge sandbox with possession, you can’t take the form of a pencil on a desk or something, it’s mostly structured and scripted objects that you can form into but at the same time like the effort is still there. Most of the other stuff is just flavored text which describes what the objects are.
The shooting itself isn’t exactly that bad either to be honest. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about the actual combat itself and in all honesty I never really felt like I had a problem with it? It didn’t feel as good as say something like Halo or Call of Duty, but it felt serviceable and adequate without feeling like it was a bullet sponge cacophony. The only real mechanics for the shooting involves healing yourself with nearby medkits, and perhaps pressing the Z button to use a grenade launcher as an example and you’ll always have infinite ammo so that’s not really a big deal. Most enemies in terms of this combat as well are also pushovers, albeit pushovers whose AI are both really dumb and still attempt to kill you. That is until the latter half of the campaign, where the developers decided to push these enemies that possess your body in order to drag you towards something to die or to get shot out in public by others. While in concept it’s a cool idea, in actual game design it’s really fucking obnoxious, especially in the last level after you take down the helicopter. I remember dying once or twice to this and having to actively jank the game by hiding out in an area with a destroyed fence while these ghosts attempt to possess me and having to lure them out slowly one by one because otherwise they’d just drag my ass into the corpse of the nearby fiery helicopter I JUST took down. Other than that, you’ll fight some alien creatures too here and there but nothing really crazy. Overall, the combat, while it makes up a huge portion of the game, isn’t something that I hate and in fact feels decent but it didn’t really stand out in any way either. For me however, that’s okay because I’d rather it be average than be a fucking slog. Besides, I think most people are here for the ghost possession stuff, though if there’s one aspect of combat that I didn’t really care for it’s the boss battles.
I’ll say my experiences with the boss battles were a mixed bag for me, some of them are okay and just require constantly shooting at one spot while some require a bit of puzzling to do and were generally the better ones. Some of my least favorite boss fights include the one against Cord, one of the mercenaries under supporting antagonist Rourke. His boss fights require both ghost powers AND shooting people. In the first battle you have to kind of duck and weave all of his bullets and then switch to ghost when he throws his grenades. Now time slows down luckily, but my experience was that I would possess the grenade, roll it over to him and fuckin’ bada boom right? But while waiting for the animation to blow up and switch to ghost he’ll be shooting me and taking part of my health down unless I’m behind a certain cover and/or lucky, so unless I was doing it wrong that was a frustrating boss. The last one with Cord is more of a puzzle, where you have to switch back and forth between several different soldiers and turrets in one room, ignoring everyone else and just constantly pumping Cord full of bullets until the last corpse remains. Speaking of Cord, I had a weird glitch where I tried to get a collectible in Cord’s first boss room, but apparently I died after the cutscene but it still kicked me out to the next room anyways once I accepted the checkpoint. Luckily I restarted from the last checkpoint and it left me in that boss room but I was still really fucking annoyed that I almost lost a collectible due to some weird after cutscene death trickery bullshit. Other boss battles include a giant bullet sponge creature coming out of the ground that overstays its welcome a bit, two giant statues and a flying fat man ghost. My main issue with some of these other battles include the fact that they’re either monotonously long but simple and are just there to waste time or just feel unfair in some aspects like those two statues who rushed me straight after a cutscene where I took one down and killed me instantly.
In fact, that seems to be a strange pacing problem for the game. The beginning half to a bit into the third it’s actually pretty cool and clever with how it uses its game mechanics before it turns into a middling shooter around the last third or so. That’s not to say it’s bad or unbearable, but it definitely would have landed on its feet better instead of stumbling around. Some fun bits from the first two thirds of the game include set pieces like possessing a motorcycle while juggling not getting shot and exploding other props to make a path ahead of you; or alternatively a slower paced one involves taking over a chef and poisoning some customers with rat poison, or earlier than those two involve possessing a naked woman in the shower (notable because it’s weird but there are soap suds around the parts so I guess that’s better? I don’t know, I guess 2005 was pervert season). The variation between the set pieces is pretty good in all honesty, one time you’ll be hopping around riveting beams together and the next there’s a protection mission with your ghost form and then it’s a chase sequence. However, again it could’ve used a stronger third act; that’s not to say the last third doesn’t have stuff in it, in fact you get to possess a dog (adorable) and rats (just adorable depending on whom you ask) with their own sort of puzzle mechanics as well. It just means that it feels kind of middling throughout the final leg of the game, even if it has some fun stuff sprinkled in here and there.
Overall, I’ve heard alot of mixed things about the controls and the gameplay design from others. My feeling on that is that it’s totally valid to not care for the core gameplay, it has its issues and would have perhaps been a little bit better in certain departments. However, there’s something about the time that I played it where for the most part I was honestly having a fun time (besides boss battles and ghost possessor enemies). Even the controls I heard so many complaints about to me felt decent enough to where it wasn’t honestly a problem for me. I guess if I were to give a complaint about my time, it’s that sometimes it took me a while to grasp what objects needed to be possessed for progression purposes though I also would have just been a giant dunce. I remember needing to restart the last section in the Escape chapter due to figuring out the turrets that had me frustrated at first until I learned what to do. The escape thing with the motorcycle, while cool, maybe could’ve been choreographed better. I guess I wasn’t appreciative of having to replay the entirety of Chapter 6 again due to the fact there seemingly weren't many checkpoints and the game froze on me once or twice though there would have actually been checkpoints and I forgot. Overall I don’t know, certain aspects were mixed but overall it was a good time and I had my joy with it, especially due to the nostalgic feeling of playing the game on the GameCube. Who knows, though I’d say for the average player that most people would give it a shoulder shrug.
There’s also a multiplayer for those who went and got all the collectibles in the game like I did, however I didn’t really play the multiplayer nor knew anyone who wanted to give it a try. I can tell you however that a lot of people seemed to have fun with the possession mechanics in it and in all honesty, it looks like it could be one of the old Timesplitters games just from how wacky it is. Maybe one of these days if I play it with friends, I’ll give this section a rewrite and let you know how it is.
The sound design to Geist is a bit of an interesting one. If we’re going to start with voice acting, we’ll start with the fact that the third Raimi brother does not speak in the slightest. The entire time that you go through the game you’ll be silent and other people will be talking to you as if you’re having a conversation with them. It’s amusing and gets even more so when you possess a woman and rescue your buddy, who basically figures out your Raimi…somehow. In fact, for the most part there isn’t any in game voiceover at all besides a few bits here and there. When you greet people, they’ll play a generic voice clip (like Bryson just saying “Raimi”) while the actual words he’s saying are displayed with separate text. It’s not a bad thing persay, I didn’t really have a problem with that, though I do think it’s funny that the subtitles covered half of the lower screen on my CRTV. Voice acting is also fine for the most part, everyone does their job and blends in seamlessly to the game’s world. There aren’t any big names or even memorable performances for the most part that I specifically remember, though again I’m perfectly okay with it. The actual sounds for the rest of the game are decent though, with a lot of ear pleasers like rope sounds and footsteps, though I feel like the weapon sounds can be hit or miss. The pistol sounds straight out of Timesplitters to be honest, and they probably got it from the same sound pack. The AUG sounds like it should be a heavier weapon than it actually is, in fact most of the weapons sound like they come straight from the sound packs that other games use. It’s also fine, but don’t really feel like they have an originality to them otherwise. It is what it is though for the most part, and I can understand the need to get what you can get from the places you can get them from.
Geist’s soundtrack, composed by Michael Reed and Brad Martin is a very orchestral game, filled with choirs, heavy strings and a sort of bombasticness to it for a large portion of the run time. My personal feelings on it go along the lines of that it’s a decent score, and fits the game in the 2004-5 era that it encapsulates. However, it’s also for the most part just kind of okay to me. There aren’t really any tracks that pop out, nothing that really makes me wanna download it and listen to it often. In fact, the game kind of feels like it’s ripping on the whole Halo orchestral soundtrack vibe. Keep in mind that this isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’s perfectly okay for it to blend into the background as long as it enhances what the game’s atmosphere is about and for the most part it does that decently enough. If I were to point out one track though that’s kind of odd, I believe it would be Juliet. See, in game, there’s a part where you need to possess a bunch of mice and force them to activate all of the mouse traps in order for them to get killed so you can make your way to the exit as the main mouse that needs to go back to their owner. Thing is that during this, you get music that straight up sounds like it could come from fuckin’ Matilda or some shit and it’s a really bizarre dissonance piece that I have no feelings on what to make of it.
What I can say about the graphics and art direction is this: whilst the game runs on the Gamecube and as such looks very similar to Metroid Prime in terms of blocky graphics, it also personally looks not only kind of improved in some ways but in all honesty gave me a lot of nostalgia for the old Gamecube days even if I had never played the game once in my life. I never really noticed anything bad graphically, though I’ll admit I never really focused too much on how good a game looks HD quality wise to the extent that others would be. The art design and atmosphere surrounding it however in all honesty, I’ll say that I enjoyed it for the most part. In a lot of ways it reminded me of a semi-worse version of Half Life with ghost possession: for the most part you’re at a military base in the desert and the only thing you’ll be seeing is cold steel and warm, crusty orange rocks on the outside. It’s not bad, though I’ll admit I wish there was a bit more variation in the environment. I’ll also say that for some reason, there are people who classify this as a horror game just because there were ghosts and possession. I’ll tell you from first hand experience that there’s no way in hell that this game was trying to be a horror game in any way shape or form, and if it was then it’s a bad one considering there wasn’t anything actually scary or any attempt at actually scaring anyone.
Geist to me was one of those games that while it flopped with the finances and has some frustrating qualities, it’s also one of those games that really grew on me despite the frustrations and for the most part I left the game feeling pretty decent about it. I feel like it’s one of those underrated titles that deserve a bit more attention and perhaps a backwards compatibility thing with the Switch. Will that ever happen? No, probably not and as always it’s a damn shame. It’s kind of forgotten in time, a distant memory of a memory that few people would even have the capacity TO remember anything other than the cool ass cover art. I’d say maybe Nightdive could potentially remaster it but considering how close to the chest Nintendo is with their property, I’ll sadly say that the game will probably just fade into obscurity and will have less of a chance than even fellow M Rated Eternal Darkness would. It doesn’t exactly help that for the rest of their years until the end their portfolio mostly consisted of more ports and more shovelware before they inevitably closed shop around 2016. As for gaming for the rest of the year, I have to write up reviews for Eternal Evil and probably Dead Island soon but after that besides some Steam games, I’ll probably just end up chilling out and playing some Lost Judgment til’ the end in anticipation for 2024.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geist_(video_game)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Geist
https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/8iaye9/nintendo_rewind_geist_2005/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdHBotsjvLU&ab_channel=MattMcMuscles
https://www.destructoid.com/geist-developer-closed-down-after-21-years/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQpE56aG06s&ab_channel=GoldMetalSonic
https://www.nsidr.com/archive/interview-n-space/
http://cube.gamespy.com/gamecube/geist/641298p5.html
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/meteos-geist-kirby-and-yoshi-coming-in-june/1100-6121267/
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/killer-7-in-stores-7-7-no-geist-until-august/1100-6126759/
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/2233/gdc-2005-geist-interview-with-jeff-kalles
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/2260/the-geist-interview
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=8382.550
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gamecube/914965-geist/faqs/38594
https://www.ign.com/wikis/geist/Walkthrough_-_Volks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oVK07WA_UY&list=PLIWIHaWddtA00qRRNieKzig3tK4tcin
FG&index=19&ab_channel=chasebergamot
https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/geist-ost-gamecube
I've always been told this is a decent game. And after finally playing it, yes, it is a decent game. Flawed, but decent.
I think the possession mechanics are the most interesting bits of this game. The FPS part, eh, it feels weird compared to modern shooters. That's not fair to the game at all, so I'm not docking it for it.
I enjoyed most of the levels and the puzzles presented. The end game though, it felt kinda off and like they really didn't know how to finish this game. Maybe that's just me.
It was definitely interesting trying this out all these years later for my first time. I specifically remember when you get your new ghostly powers, I thought that this would have blown me away as a kid.
The Gamecube has some interesting games on it and this is one I would suggest everyone give a shot once. At least the first fiveish levels.
I think the possession mechanics are the most interesting bits of this game. The FPS part, eh, it feels weird compared to modern shooters. That's not fair to the game at all, so I'm not docking it for it.
I enjoyed most of the levels and the puzzles presented. The end game though, it felt kinda off and like they really didn't know how to finish this game. Maybe that's just me.
It was definitely interesting trying this out all these years later for my first time. I specifically remember when you get your new ghostly powers, I thought that this would have blown me away as a kid.
The Gamecube has some interesting games on it and this is one I would suggest everyone give a shot once. At least the first fiveish levels.
I think this game has SO much potential, but falls completely short at executing a plot and consistent gameplay. Multiplayer is so much fun tho!!!
This review contains spoilers
Geist is a first person shooter that allows the player to take possession of NPCs and objects, allowing them to solve puzzles using character specific abilities.
To possess a mammal, you need to possess certain objects near the mammal to scare them. Usually scaring them involves two or three stages where you scare them once and they'll move to another location. Scare them again at the new location and they'll be scared enough for you to possess them.
On paper it's a very interesting and ambitious idea, but the game executes it without a lot of finesse. You possess engineers and scientists to go through doors that are restricted, possess soldiers for firepower, and animals to go through areas that are too small for a human to fit through, or instances where you are forced to possess an animal because there isn't anything near a human that could scare them.
Almost every time you possess someone with a weapon, the game wants you to use that against anything that moves unless told otherwise. I would like some variety where you could blend in with other soldiers and talk them through letting you pass, but mostly that is usually solved with a firefight that you start. Though, the game is simple enough that accomplishing those tasks is still rewarding.
That is, until the end of the game. Then it becomes insanely annoying with sudden difficulty spikes, along with instances where you have to fight off ghosts possessing you by mashing A as quickly as possible all while moving your joystick in the opposite direction of where the ghost wants to move you. They usually want to move you into an instant kill hazard like a pit. It had gotten so annoying to deal with that I mapped a button to function like a turbo A to repel the ghosts away.
The boss before the final one also has some kind of repulsion effect to the auto aim, and if you're close enough to him, your auto aim actually aims away from him rather than be fixated on him, pretty much like trying to clamp two magnets that are of the same pole.
Speaking of auto aiming, there is neither a way to turn it off, nor does the game give you options to adjust the sensitivity of aiming. Your only option is to invert the pitch. The lack of options make controlling the characters very sluggish, and I really wish they put more emphasis on giving players more options for more comfortable controls.
I think they wanted to make it different from other FPSs by having shooting not the main focus of it, but like its lack of finesse with its ghost functions, the game clumsily flips between wanting to be a first person shooter and an adventure puzzle game in first person rather than having them seamless like System Shock and Metroid Prime.
Another gripe I have with the game is near the end. An animal trainer is missing her pet rat. During that time you control another human being. You follow down a hallway into a storage area filled with rat traps. You come into another storage room where the rat is along with other wild rats. So, I would think since I am in control of someone, I can just scoop up the fancy rat and take it to its owner, right?
Nope, you have to scare the rat, take possession of it, avoid the rat traps (which the rat will gravitate towards because the bait is too much of a temptation,) and take alternate routes to the trainer because apparently rats can't climb stairs.
But enough with my rambling. Geist feels like it had a lot of ambition while being developed, and it shows as what it accomplishes right it feels really great. Unfortunately the shortcomings of its game design along the sudden difficulty spikes at the end make completing the game feel like a fight without it feeling rewarding in the end.
To possess a mammal, you need to possess certain objects near the mammal to scare them. Usually scaring them involves two or three stages where you scare them once and they'll move to another location. Scare them again at the new location and they'll be scared enough for you to possess them.
On paper it's a very interesting and ambitious idea, but the game executes it without a lot of finesse. You possess engineers and scientists to go through doors that are restricted, possess soldiers for firepower, and animals to go through areas that are too small for a human to fit through, or instances where you are forced to possess an animal because there isn't anything near a human that could scare them.
Almost every time you possess someone with a weapon, the game wants you to use that against anything that moves unless told otherwise. I would like some variety where you could blend in with other soldiers and talk them through letting you pass, but mostly that is usually solved with a firefight that you start. Though, the game is simple enough that accomplishing those tasks is still rewarding.
That is, until the end of the game. Then it becomes insanely annoying with sudden difficulty spikes, along with instances where you have to fight off ghosts possessing you by mashing A as quickly as possible all while moving your joystick in the opposite direction of where the ghost wants to move you. They usually want to move you into an instant kill hazard like a pit. It had gotten so annoying to deal with that I mapped a button to function like a turbo A to repel the ghosts away.
The boss before the final one also has some kind of repulsion effect to the auto aim, and if you're close enough to him, your auto aim actually aims away from him rather than be fixated on him, pretty much like trying to clamp two magnets that are of the same pole.
Speaking of auto aiming, there is neither a way to turn it off, nor does the game give you options to adjust the sensitivity of aiming. Your only option is to invert the pitch. The lack of options make controlling the characters very sluggish, and I really wish they put more emphasis on giving players more options for more comfortable controls.
I think they wanted to make it different from other FPSs by having shooting not the main focus of it, but like its lack of finesse with its ghost functions, the game clumsily flips between wanting to be a first person shooter and an adventure puzzle game in first person rather than having them seamless like System Shock and Metroid Prime.
Another gripe I have with the game is near the end. An animal trainer is missing her pet rat. During that time you control another human being. You follow down a hallway into a storage area filled with rat traps. You come into another storage room where the rat is along with other wild rats. So, I would think since I am in control of someone, I can just scoop up the fancy rat and take it to its owner, right?
Nope, you have to scare the rat, take possession of it, avoid the rat traps (which the rat will gravitate towards because the bait is too much of a temptation,) and take alternate routes to the trainer because apparently rats can't climb stairs.
But enough with my rambling. Geist feels like it had a lot of ambition while being developed, and it shows as what it accomplishes right it feels really great. Unfortunately the shortcomings of its game design along the sudden difficulty spikes at the end make completing the game feel like a fight without it feeling rewarding in the end.
One of the most underrated GameCube games… for its time?
It’s a bit clunky for a shooter, but I have fond memories playing this game. Such a cool concept I would cream myself if they remade it with modern controls/graphics or maybe just a sequel.
Ur basically a ghost that can possess other things both living and inanimate (making them in-inanimate!! What fun!). U solve a bunch of puzzles this way and sneak around in other peoples’ bodies or rodents and shoot stuff (not as rodents, but maybe they can change that for the remake)
I do remember getting stuck for hours because I had to find a tiny object in a closet that I tried to inspect more than once but the hit-box so to speak was so small that it didn’t highlight when I positioned the cursor over it. Little things like this made this game feel outdated and frustrating. I’m sure if I went back and played this, I would think it’s straight trash. But this is why we need a “Geist 2: The Holy Ghost”
It’s a bit clunky for a shooter, but I have fond memories playing this game. Such a cool concept I would cream myself if they remade it with modern controls/graphics or maybe just a sequel.
Ur basically a ghost that can possess other things both living and inanimate (making them in-inanimate!! What fun!). U solve a bunch of puzzles this way and sneak around in other peoples’ bodies or rodents and shoot stuff (not as rodents, but maybe they can change that for the remake)
I do remember getting stuck for hours because I had to find a tiny object in a closet that I tried to inspect more than once but the hit-box so to speak was so small that it didn’t highlight when I positioned the cursor over it. Little things like this made this game feel outdated and frustrating. I’m sure if I went back and played this, I would think it’s straight trash. But this is why we need a “Geist 2: The Holy Ghost”
Cool idea for a shooter. Too linear to make use of it. Controls are a gong show because of the low framerate, making aiming a pain. Playing above Easy just wasnt gonna happen. Got bored quick, so didnt finish.
Missed potential by not having a single cheesy line about the term "Geist" which is just fricking lame, go ahead and call your stupid game Ghost instead then!!!!!!
Very promising gameplay concepts, but the actual game falls very short. Barebones FPS gameplay & mid puzzles, couldn't bother finishing the first real level.
+increasing concept
+puzzles are actually puzzling
+Doggy sections
~Combat is often easy
~Ragdoll physics
-Boss rush ending
-all bosses are tedious and rarely require any amount of skill
-Game is often to bright or dark
-Music and sound effects are either generic or don't work right
-difficulty comes from terrible control or combat mechanics
+puzzles are actually puzzling
+Doggy sections
~Combat is often easy
~Ragdoll physics
-Boss rush ending
-all bosses are tedious and rarely require any amount of skill
-Game is often to bright or dark
-Music and sound effects are either generic or don't work right
-difficulty comes from terrible control or combat mechanics
it was just nice to have a gamecube game that was trying, y'know?