Geist

"Geist is quite the back-stabber. It starts out sweet and than makes you pay! Beware!"

Geist is a first-person action game for the Nintendo Gamecube. After playing through it recently, here's what you can expect from it:

Story: 6/10

The story behind Geist is fairly complicated. You are apparently a childhood friend of an undercover agent working for the Volks Corporations, who is suspected of working with illegal technology and you are sent in to help recover your friend and down load incriminating info on Volks. Before you can get out, you are both captured, and it turns out that you're right, the Volks Corporation is doing very illegal things. For starters, they've separated your spirit from your body! After doing this, they incarcerate your spirit as well, until an accident frees you. Now you must find a way to escape, preferably with your body!

The story behind Geist actually shows quite a bit of promise. The villainous Volks Corporation (Headed up by Alexander Volks) actually has some great plans in store for their spirits that they are capturing that would have made a great expanded story. Unfortunately, the grand arc of the story is rather lame, and the characters themselves have no depth or likeablity what-so-ever. This could have been a great tale (or at least an average one) if a little more though and some better pacing was put into it.

Game play: 4/10

The game play in Geist is also a mixed bag. For the most part, Geist is an enjoyable game. As a ghost, you have to frighten people enough to be able to posses them. Once you posses them you can do whatever you want. This gives you a little bit of liberty to progress as you see fit, but there is also a fair amount of shooting in the game no matter what you do. Possessing people and turning them against their former comrades is definitely the highlight of the game. The controls work fairly well and the shooting isn't half-bad, although it could use a little work as the computer was way too accurate and always seemed to know your position even if you were in another room.

However, the ways you frighten people are rather lame, as they have you doing the weirdest stuff in order to scare people (and the people in Volks Corporations have to be some of the biggest weenies ever).. Even with the workable shooting and uninspired haunting aspects, the game is decent up to the last twenty percent where you encounter enemy ghosts. These ghosts turn this game to border-line unplayable, as they can posses you and force you into having to mash on your controller to be free. And once you're free, they'll do it all over again, sometimes with almost no break in between. Yes, it is that unforgiving, and will make you want to quit, as I'm sure hundreds of gamers did. On top of that, the last boss of the game makes you learn some new controls to fight him. These controls feel more like you're suggesting commands to your on-screen hero, as he seems to do what he wants to do despite what you say. All of these things combine to bring Geist down and justify why you see it in the bargain bin.

Graphics: 7/10

Despite the wretched game play, the graphics in Geist do look good. I found that they were done well, with a fair amount of extra details thrown in such as cluttered desktops and breakable environments such as giant television screens. The level designs were also well done, and often required multiple possessions and some small amount of strategy to traverse. The character and enemy designs were decent but offered little variety, as enemies and bosses were often reused multiple times. Overall, the graphics are pretty good, and up to par for a Gamecube title.

Music and sound effects: 7/10

The music in Geist is also fairly average. It mainly consists of dramatic mood pieces with strong drums and strings. If that's not what is currently playing, than it's most likely something light and airy to inspire a ghostly feeling. These pieces do their job well, but really don't make you sit back and notice them. In fact, you'll probably get sick of a couple of them since you will be listening to them over and over after dying in one of the game's cheap deaths. The sound effects are average as well, containing exactly what you would expect in a shooting game.

Re-playability: 7/10

Geist does make an attempt to have a reasons to play it again if you can get through the main game (and congrats if you do!). There are also hidden "ghost collectibles" throughout the game that unlock different multi-player levels and characters when you collect them. As far as the multi-player goes, you can fight in a team death-match by inhabiting lifeless soldier's bodies in any given map, as well as play a ghostly version of capture the flag by using hosts as flags. The last option is to do an "all-against-one" game where several ghosts go against a ghost-killer, attempting to posses him and make him walk into deadly traps. These multi-player matches are decent, but they aren't enough to keep you truly entertained.

Overall: 6/10

Overall, Geist is an ok game for the most part. I really feel that it was ruined by the horrendous game play shift in the last twenty percent of the game, so I really can't recommend it to anyone, no matter how cheap you may find it in the bargain bin. Have fun and keep playing!

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/23/09

Game Release: Geist (US, 08/15/05)