Geist Introduction - GameCube
0Geist (or "geist") is an interesting FPS I heard vaguely about several years ago (On G4 or some televised program, I don't remember), where the verdict on it was that it was a good shooter that didn't live up to its potential. During one of my casual conversations with Highretrogameblood89 (now hrgl89), he brought this title up but I didn't own the game so I couldn't say much about it. About a month or two ago, I was inside of a GameStop looking to buy some PSP games (many of them go for real cheap really fast) and saw Geist for a few bucks, so I decided to pick it up along with a couple other GC games, Resident Evil 4 and Mega Man Network Transmission.
After playing Geist for a good while, I couldn't help but feel that the game was pretty fresh but still felt far too much like every other FPS out there, and it's sort of linear too. Playing as John Raimi, a middle-aged specialist in Biological and Chemical threats, you are hired by an elite counter-terrorism group known as CR-2 who wants you to join an assault team to extract a valuable discovery by your mentor and close friend, Thomas Bryson. The task is carried out in ernest and you are soon attacked; obviously they don't want you to leave alive with Bryson's secret... and you don't escape. Just as you're about to escape, your team is manipulated by an unseen force and you are fatally wounded and subjected to cruel experiments. The end result is that your spirit is seperated from your body and now you roam as a ghost... and your journey begins as you try to get your body back and not slip into the afterlife.
The main draw of the game is possession, whether it be objects, animals, or humans. However, you have to scare people in a preset way in order to take control of their bodies; you can't have much fun with the system and even if one scare point seems logical, it won't work unless you do it as the game has it scripted, which is a real shame, and the puzzles quickly become redundent. There is some rare deviation in this system, specifically with animal possession, but it's too far and between. Almost everything else outside of the possession and ghost system of the game (such as replenishing Ghost Energy, floating, slipping through cracks, etc.) will be familiar if you've ever played a FPS, except most enemies don't have much in the ways of A.I. and health is often abundant.
The game is sort of trippy and some of the boss battles and level strategies are pretty creative, but the possession system was a little more prohibitive than it should have been and the story is a little dry. I don't have any qualms with the audio/visuals and the multiplayer is also pretty good (complete with ghastly possession and anti-possession). It's a good game that should be pretty cheap these days, so I recommend it. We have roughly the first fourty minutes of gameplay. Enjoy.