  In Geist, Sam Fisher...we mean...Gordon Freeman...we mean...John Raimi is a ghost who can possess just about anything. |
I was one of roughly three people on earth who absolutely loved Shiny Entertainment's much-maligned PC game Messiah, where you played as a little cherub named Bob who could jump into people's bodies and control the hapless suckers at will.
Five years later, n-Space and Nintendo's Geist uses a similar mechanic, mixing first-person shooter combat with a possession gimmick that, while relatively unique, doesn't allow you quite the same level of freedom that wee Bob had back in Messiah. On the plus side, in Geist you can also possess dogs. And computers. And telephones. And garbage cans. No, seriously.
Geist -- it's German for ghost, see -- casts you as John Raimi (no relation to Spider-Man director Sam), a scientist who is part of a special forces team sent to infiltrate the shadowy Volks Corporation. But after a brief firefight you're captured, stuck inside a giant honkin' contraption, and your soul is ripped free from your physical form, leaving you as a spectral Slim Goodbody with no meaty shell to call home.
The game revolves around exploring the sprawling Volks Corporation complex with your creepy dead girl guide, Gigi, possessing people (and animals and inanimate objects) to alternately solve simple puzzles or blaze a trail of destruction through the compound, hunting down the chief baddie in a bid to get back your body.
For every thing about Geist that's cool and unique, there's something else that feels a little hackneyed. For example, this will definitely be the only game you ever play where a boss battle involves shooting grenades out of your enemy's hand, then quickly dispossessing your human host and jumping into the grenade so that you can blow it up as it sits at your foe's feet.
But then there are stretches of very basic first-person shooter combat, with enemies that show minimal A.I., weapons that never run out of ammo and controls that can't be adjusted for sensitivity. And the GameCube's controller has never lent itself well to the standard Halo-style FPS setup, mainly because the nubby yellow C-stick is a little too small and twitchy for aiming.
The possession mechanic also feels slightly contrived at times, because you can't possess a living host until you've scared him/her/it first, generally by possessing another specific object in the immediate area and making it do something that spooks your quarry. (But again, this will be the only game you ever play in which you actually see what it's like to inhabit the, uh, soul of a garbage can.)
Geist's multiplayer modes are surprisingly fun, with three novel variants on typical deathmatch or capture-the-flag modes. In essence, human hosts scattered around the map become your weapons, but you can also possess explosive crates, gun turrets and the like to take out foes.
While there's no online play (big surprise), you can play against up to seven computer-controlled 'bots, which is something a lot of console FPS games can't boast.
Geist has spent a long time in development, and while it's visually impressive and has some novel ideas, it would have felt just that much fresher had it been released a couple years back. It's not supernaturally good, but it's also not frighteningly mediocre. Still, I kind of miss my little buddy Bob.
BOTTOM LINES
Playing as a ghost who can possess people, animals and inanimate objects is a definite novelty, but a lot of the game's action sequences have a been there, done that feel.
