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.
SwitSwat
3 years ago