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.